COVID-19: how has it changed since the 2020 shutdown?

COVID numbers gathered from the Washtenaw County Health Department. Grace Faver | Washtenaw Voice

Alice McGuire

Staff Writer

Four years ago, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued a stay at home order for Michigan residents prompted by the rapid spread of COVID-19. Now, concerts, parties, work and gatherings are back in full swing. Here’s how people can continue to keep themselves safe when the world is back and running.

For Susan Ringler-Cerniglia,the Public Information Officer for Washtenaw County Health Department, COVID-19 wasn’t the first pandemic that she had encountered.

But it was–and continues to be–unlike anything she had seen in her profession.

“There was a lot of confusion and lack of information about the virus in terms of what we could tell people,” she said, when reflecting on the early days of the pandemic.

One of the greatest challenges has been maintaining the public’s trust as new information came in and strategies changed to adapt to the changing landscape.

“It’s kind of a fascinating thing that we believe changing guidance supports mistrusting an organization when it is exactly what a scientific organization should be doing as more information is learned. But it’s not how we as humans seem to react to it,” she said, citing universal masking in the wake of the highly transmissible omicron variant as an example of policy changing to reflect the science, only to spark backlash with the public.

“We couldn’t get those nuances across. Or people just didn’t believe them. There was so much mistrust,” she said.

Communicating such nuances to the general public was also an issue with regard to messaging around vaccines, and Ringle-Cerniglia attributes this to the “apathy” and “confusion” which she sees currently affecting peoples’ ability to stay current on their shots.

“As we’ve moved forward, people have lost interest in staying up to date. If you haven’t gotten that updated vaccine, the strain is different enough so that it does provide some protection,” she said.

Comparing the COVID-19 and flu vaccines, she added that people tend to be discouraged from vaccinations due to the misconception that contracting the virus means that the vaccine didn’t work–when it is actively providing protection from serious illness and death.

“Because we haven’t seen so many of the illnesses that vaccinations exist to prevent, people worry more about the harms of vaccination. And I don’t want to say there is never harm. There are real vaccine injuries and there are real allergies. But, statistically, the chances of that happening are rare,” she said.

When asked about where we are now and how to read the current landscape when it seems as though every new COVID-19 wave is reported as the biggest yet, Ringle-Cerniglia emphasized that with vaccinations and prior illness, the impact is very different so people are somewhat less susceptible, but are still dying.

However, Ringle-Cerniglia also stated that the number of people becoming seriously ill and dying has declined, with the best explanation for this being that a significant number of people have built up some level of immunity due to vaccinations and natural immunity.

Rachael Kapchus is the Assistant Unit Manager on Three South at Trinity Health Livonia. From this station, she has seen the pandemic evolve from a crisis in which she had to ration personal protection equipment, such as medical-grade masks, to an ongoing situation in which the full effects of COVID-19 are, presently, unknowable.

“In general, it does seem like people are a little sicker,” Kapchus said, noting that her patients’ comorbidities seem to have worsened since the pandemic.

However, she adds that the data to determine whether this is due to people having skipped medical care during the pandemic, COVID-19 infections, both, or neither–simply is not there yet.

Kapchus also urges the public to wash their hands and to be aware of their capacity to spread the virus while asymptomatic.

“By wearing that mask, you’re protecting others,” she said.

Kapchus also emphasized the importance of staying home if one feels sick, noting that, even if one doesn’t have COVID-19 specifically, they are likely contagious and that it is not at all impossible to contract more than one respiratory virus at once.

“I don’t want to encourage people to stay away from their loved ones, but to be smart about making sure that they haven’t been exposed and that they’ve tested themselves,” she said.

Going forward, whether trying to prevent COVID-19 or any other respiratory viruses, Ringler-Cerniglia urges people to fend off what they can and stay home when they’re sick.

For current COVID-19 trends, see:

https://www.washtenaw.org/3108/Cases

https://um.wastewatermonitoring.dataepi.org/