Stine: Nothing but good news about COVID-19

Taken from Thursday’s edition of KIRO Radio’s John Curley and Shari Elliker Show with guest host Jack Stine, host of KIRO Nights.

There are two, simultaneous realities about the pandemic that are happening right now.

One of those realities is based in truth: The omicron variant of coronavirus is milder than its precursors, poses less risk of hospitalization, and new drugs to treat COVID-19 will soon hit the shelves.

The army is testing a universal vaccine that’s going to target all coronavirus variants. The first at-home pill to treat COVID-19 has been approved by the FDA.  President Joe Biden is sending out rapid testing kits to every single American.

That is nothing but positive information about COVID-19 this Christmas. It’s cause for celebration, not panic.

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Yet, when I opened my Reddit feed today, all I saw was just that: Panic.

I torture myself by going on NBC, CNN, or Fox News. All I see is craziness about COVID-19.

And don’t misunderstand me. I love and appreciate all my brothers and sisters working in health care right now, scrambling to accommodate this spike in omicron cases. Yet the majority of us, those of us who listened to our doctors and made an informed decision about the vaccine, are going to be fine.

The other reality is for those of us who fall victim to what I call the “televised mind” — who simply consume too much media, and who treat every new report of rising cases as cause for raw, lizard-brained panic.

That is not going to help. Instead, it ultimately undermines what should be confidence in our ability as imaginative, talented human beings to deal with a pandemic — a problem as old as time itself, and one which we will continue to treat and mitigate, no matter far down the Greek alphabet we go to denote COVID variants.

Listen to KIRO Nights weeknights from 7 – 10 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.