Dear America,

I decided to do something that has impacted us all: COVID. Whether it was the multiple lockdowns, endless ridiculous guidelines to follow, or the multiple vaccine doses that were supposed to end the pandemic, everyone is tired of COVID and simply wants it to be over. 

Because of all the hysteria and fear surrounding COVID many people find themselves too scared to take off the mask, stop taking rapid tests every time they get a slight head cold, and move on. But after looking at some data, I think many of these people would feel silly.

For starters, I think many people need to focus more on actually being healthy as opposed to relying on their mask and vaccine for complete protection against COVID. After two years of data, it is quite clear that the overwhelming majority of COVID deaths come from comorbidities, as high as 83%. Based on a study from April-August 2020, only 16% of COVID deaths had zero comorbidities.

To top that off, the same study cited that 70% of the deaths were aged 60+. From what I gather from this, if you are under the age of 30 and relatively healthy, I would take a long hard reconsideration of still being paranoid of catching COVID.

“If we all just wear our masks and stay socially distant COVID will go away”…. We have been saying this for two whole years. If you still have not figured it out, COVID will never go away and we have seasonal sickness.

Why should we stop going along with the juristic COVID restrictions? Look to Australia for a perfect example. Australia has experienced a TOTAL of 2,522 deaths. In 2020 alone in Australia, there were 617 more deaths by suicide than the total COVID deaths throughout the entire pandemic.

After hearing this, do you still truly believe all these COVID restrictions are for your health and well-being? Melbourne Australia declared a state of disaster after they recorded 671 cases. “Those restrictions include a curfew in Melbourne for the next six weeks, a ban on wedding gatherings, and schools must go back to online classes. Only one person per household is allowed to leave their homes once a day — outside of curfew hours — to pick up essential goods, and they must stay within a 5 kilometer (3.1 miles) radius of their home.” If this does not motivate you to start to look more critically at COVID rules/measures, I do not know what will.

I say we need to look at COVID measures more logically. Just within our school, I think we can all see COVID rules that make absolutely no sense. For example, many teachers lose their minds if they see a student with their mask a quarter inch below the nose in class with a maximum of 20-25 people spread out. But, they see no issue with hundreds of students sitting next to each other with zero masks eating lunch.

Overall, I would say after two-plus years it is time to stop trying to control COVID with masks and restrictions and find a way to move past COVID.