LETTER: Learning to live with COVID-19

Last week the delta variant tanked financial markets when stock investors sold off shares on the belief that vaccines aren’t working and vaccinated persons aren’t immune. Calmer heads prevailed on subsequent days, and the markets came back. Here’s what we know.

The Biden administration, in cahoots with social media and public health authorities, oversold the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines, promising miracles with vaccinations, which haven’t materialized yet. Previously vaccinated individuals, such as the Texas legislators fleeing to Washington, D.C., on board private jets without face masks, were prone to virus-variant reinfection, although at lesser degrees of symptomatic illness. Still, the thought of more lockdowns, mask-wearing and government imposed social/economic restrictions spooked investors.

Here’s the reality. We have to live with the ongoing threat of COVID-19, and we can. The Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-1920 proves it. There were no therapeutics, vaccines, mass lockdowns or school closings. Virus attenuation took its course, Americans exercised personal prudence, without government mandates, and the country got back to normal. The same holds true now as it did then.