Reopening Safely and Confronting Uncertainty with Action

By David Lubarsky 

As the coronavirus spread across the country in early 2020, our UC Davis Health staff and teams worked around the clock to ensure our patients and the public were educated, protected, and cared for during this crisis. While we’re all more than anxious to move on, there are some things from the pandemic’s protections that I hope we won’t be too quick to leave behind. 

For example, frequent hand-washing, especially before eating, is just a good healthy practice. So is keeping some space between you and people you don’t know. And I hope staying home (and away from others) when you have any signs of illness are also behaviors that will stay in effect even after mask mandates are lifted. 

When mid-June arrives, Californians may start to see a world that looks a lot like a pre-pandemic one again as the state is likely to drop its mask mandate. While it’s likely we’ll see an initial increase in COVID-19 cases, these should be among those who at the lowest risk from the disease, and hopefully won’t fill up our hospital beds again.  Even low risk patients though have a lot more to lose from catching COVID and perhaps getting long-hauler syndrome compared to the incredible safety of vaccination.

But, COVID-19 or not, some of these general, common-sense, infection prevention habits we’ve learned should stick around, because they can also lower spread of colds, the flu, and many other sicknesses that were part of pre-pandemic society.  The flu season is predicted to be worse than normal this winter if we forget these important self-health facts. The U.S. population had almost no flu season over the last 18 months, so our immune systems are not all revved up and ready to go for the next influenza infection we may catch. So, the flu shot is even more necessary this season than last.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t ever shake hands again, or we should all be socially spaced, all of the time. I am saying we shouldn’t immediately forget what we’ve learned about virus spread, and let’s make it part of our everyday habits going forward. 

Of course, vaccines are our best defense against any virus. As UC Davis Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Mary Croughan recently explained, expect that anyone coming to any UC campus will be required to have had a COVID vaccination. Given this importance, the UC has proposed a mandated vaccination policy so that everyone will have ample time to obtain the vaccine ahead of the fall term. It’s encouraging that more than 50 percent of Californians have already been fully vaccinated. Let’s hope this trend continues as we all advocate for vaccine effectiveness. 

Here at UC Davis Health, we can take comfort in the fact there was no flu season this year, and as a result, basically thousands of deaths were prevented while we battled the virus with some very basic infection protections. Providers should still wear a mask or face shield with any infectious patient, and we all should practice good hand hygiene regularly. We should stay home with any signs of illness, and if colleagues develop symptoms at work, we should generally not get too close to others who are not part of our workplace pod.

This past year has been like a chapter out of a Charles Dickens’ novel. In many ways, it’s been the best of times and the worst of times. In the face of historic challenges, we pulled together in the same direction to make a real difference in the lives of patients, our fellow health care workers, and the public. But the pandemic also revealed glaring health care disparities among racial and ethnic groups that must be addressed. So, while we head toward a long-awaited reopening, much more work needs to be done on issues like health equity. 

COVID unveiled a worse effect on underserved populations because those without adequate resources have a higher rate of diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. We need to get at the root causes as to why this is the case, and then go upstream to address life stressors and environment to ensure our entire community is healthier. 

I’m deeply grateful for everyone’s perseverance, and I’m inspired by the strength, resolve and empathy that I’ve seen firsthand within the UC Davis Health community, especially on behalf of our patients and how we’ve kept our co-workers safe and healthy. I’m feeling optimistic, as I hope many of you are, as more people receive vaccines and infection rates continue to fall. 

We’re thankful for all the medical science that’s made this possible, and it’s a clarion call about why vaccines matter so much as we all do our part to return to normalcy.