Here at The Beachcomber, we approach this holiday editorial with a touch of trepidation — we want everyone to have a festive time with family and friends, and yet, stay safe as an alarming rise in COVID cases is predicted to be in full swing by the time this issue appears in print.
And by the time that islanders hold our Dec. 30 issue in their hands, we’re not sure what the headlines will be, but we’ll take each week as it comes as the news of Omicron plays out.
We don’t doubt that our own community will be affected by the spike in cases and yet we are heartened by the fact that Vashon is far more well vaccinated and boostered than many surrounding communities.
Repeatedly, we’ve been told by medical experts and public health authorities that this matters — especially with the Omicron variant, which can infect fully vaccinated and boostered people and yet will have much less severity in terms of its impact on those people.
Last week, President Joe Biden issued a stark warning about Omicron. “For the unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death,” he said.
And this, of course, is the reason to get vaccinated and boostered, and urge others to do the same.
Vaccination and booster shots protect everyone, as we are all prey to this highly communicable virus in one way or another. Our economy depends on functioning workplaces. Our schools cannot operate without healthy staff and students.
We all depend on the smooth operation of our healthcare system. Vaccination and boosters keep hospitals functioning, with beds available for accident victims, cancer patients, those who have suffered heart attacks, people giving birth and others who need more typical kinds of medical care.
This week, in this newspaper, a COVID update from VashonBePrepared states these statistical facts: “For King County, the PHSKC dashboard says unvaccinated people are seven times more likely to get COVID, 35 times more likely to be hospitalized for COVID, and 40 times more likely to die of COVID.”
COVID, all along, has been a lesson about our reliance on one another. A nation founded on the principle of independence has learned that interdependence matters more.
We don’t envy the current tasks of our school district leadership, including administrators and elected school board members, who may need to make tough choices in the weeks to come.
As we go to press, some institutions of higher learning have already announced that they will revert briefly to online education in early January as Omicron is projected to send case counts soaring across the nation. It seems like such a step backward, and yet, it may be just what is needed to move forward, for the good of all.
The decisions made by the Vashon Island School District (VISD) in the weeks to come will affect the entire community. What happens at VISD doesn’t stay at VISD, after all. So it makes perfect sense for the district to more deeply engage with our community’s expert Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) and listen to their expert advice during the coming surge.
Ideally, this would mean that the MRC would not only continue to leap to provide its expert help in terms of staffing vaccination clinics and testing operations following significant exposure events at the schools — as the group has done repeatedly and consistently throughout the school year.
It would also mean a more true partnership with the MRC to set and maintain policies that keep our students and educators — and, indeed, our entire community — safe throughout the Omicron surge.
