PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE:  This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Think of the term in the headline “herd immunity.”

Before the coronarivus took over our lives more than a year ago, most of us never had heard of the term.

Now, we know something it. 

Here is what the term means:

“Herd immunity occurs when enough people become immune to a disease to make its spread unlikely.  As a result, the entire community is protected, even those who are not themselves immune.  Herd immunity is usually achieved through vaccination, but it can also occur through natural infection and recovery from it.”

According to a recent story in the New York Times:

“Amid the dire Covid warnings, one crucial fact has been largely ignored:  Cases are down 77 per cent over the past six weeks.  If a medication slashed cases by 77 per cent, we’d call it a miracle pill.  Why is the number of cases plummeting much faster than experts predicted?

“In large part because natural immunity from prior infection is far more common than can be measured by testing.  Testing has been capturing only from 10 to 25 per cent of infections, depending on when during the pandemic someone got the virus.”

Now add people getting vaccinated and you begin to see herd immunity coming into view.

Again from the New York Times this morning:

“Public discussion of ‘herd immunity’ often treats it like an on-off switch:  When the U.S. reaches herd immunity, the crisis will be over; until then, the country has little immunity from Covid-19.

“Herd immunity is more like a light dimmer. The more people develop immunity — either from having been infected or from being vaccinated — the less easily the virus will spread.

“Nearly 30 per cent of Americans have now had the virus, and about 18 per cent  have received at least one vaccine shot. There is some overlap between these two groups, which means that about 40 per cent of Americans now have some protection from Covid.

The Washington Post puts it this way:   “After millions of infections and the start of a vaccination campaign, the virus is finally, slowly, starting to run out of new people to infect.” So, to all of these perceptions, I add my own.  Stay the course.  Continue using masks regardless of whether you have had the virus or have received the vaccine.  Avoid big crowds.  Practice social distancing. We may be seeing the light at the end of the virus tunnel, but this is no time to obscure the vision. And, we still need government help, both what the Biden Administration is doing to create more vaccines (including the Johnson & Johnson “one shot” option) and what state and local governments around the country should be doing, which is to make vaccines more readily available to the general population.