Authors: Ariana Eunjung Cha, Dan Keating November 27, 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President Biden may have declared the coronavirus pandemic \u201cover,\u201d but from John Felton\u2019s view as the Yellowstone County health officer in Billings, Mont., it\u2019s not over, just different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In October, Felton\u2019s team logged six deaths due to the virus, many of them among vaccinated people. Their ages: 80s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 90s. They included Betty Witzel<\/a>, 88, described by her family as a tomboy who carried snakes in her pocket as a child and grew up to be a teacher, mother of four, grandmother of nine and great-grandmother of five. And there was Nadine Alice Stark,<\/a> 85, a ranch owner who planted sugar beets and corn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yellowstone County made the decision early in the crisis to recognize each death individually, and Felton said that is as important as ever to acknowledge the unrelenting toll on a still-vulnerable older generation, while most everyone else has moved on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think about someone\u2019s grandfather \u2014 the plays they wouldn\u2019t watch, the games on the football field they wouldn\u2019t see,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More than 300 people are still dying each day on average from covid-19, most of them 65 or older, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While that\u2019s much lower than the 2,000 daily toll at the peak of the delta wave, it is still roughly two to three times the rate at which people die of the flu \u2014 renewing debate about what is an \u201cacceptable loss.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And while older Americans have consistently been the worst hit during the crisis, as evident in the scores of early nursing home deaths, that trend has become more pronounced. Today, nearly 9 in 10 covid deaths are in people 65 or older \u2014 the highest rate ever, according to a Washington Post analysis of CDC data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some epidemiologists and demographers predict the trend of older, sicker and poorer people dying at disproportionate rates will continue, raising hard questions about the trade-offs Americans are making in pursuit of normalcy \u2014 and at whose expense. The situation mirrors the way some other infectious diseases, such as malaria and polio, rage in the developing world while they are largely ignored elsewhere.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n S. Matthew Liao, a professor of bioethics, philosophy and public health at New York University, argued that it is possible to keep the economy open while still aggressively pursuing a national booster campaign and requiring masks in health-care settings and nursing homes, for example. But U.S. leaders have chosen not to do so, he said. That worries him.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s a bit of ageism, so to speak, attached to it,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cPeople, even if they are older, they still have as much claim to live as me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an open letter published Oct. 7 in the BMJ<\/a>, formerly the British Medicine Journal, Gregg Gonsalves, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health, and about a dozen other experts emphasized that \u201cpandemics do not end with a flip of the switch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDespite the widespread belief that the pandemic is over, death and disruption continue,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n