'This Problem Isn't Over Yet': CT's COVID Perceptions Differ From Reality

CONNECTICUT — Despite an apparent public perception that the COVID-19 pandemic is nearing its end, Tolland resident Dipen Shah still wears a mask at work, and the cash registers at his wine and liquor store still feature plastic shields in front of them.

After an early spring pause following the winter omicron variant surge, Shah said he's aware of COVID-19 transmission rates going up statewide.

But he said he's also less fearful than, say, two years ago, when the coronavirus represented a frightening onslaught on normalcy.

Shah, who owns Lafayette Wine & Liquor at 30 Lafayette Square in Vernon, said many of his customers feel the same way.

"I think people are less fearful than they are in the past because there is more known than unknown," Shah said, shortly after tending to a customer. "I feel like we can still proceed with caution, but feel comfortable in our daily activities."

Over the past couple of weeks, state transmission rates — a key indicator in determining how much of the virus is out there — have gone up. The most recent figures released by Gov. Ned Lamont's office Wednesday show 13.76 percent of COVID-19 tests administered over the past seven days have turned up positive.

Considering in 2020 the federally advised positivity threshold was under 5 percent to reopen businesses, it's easy to surmise a return to lockdowns and mask mandates.

But state officials and medical experts say a lot has changed — though a lot hasn't.

"We are in a very different place today compared to more than two years ago when it comes to our pandemic response," Lamont spokesman David Bednarz wrote in a statement. "Today we know what works and our residents know what works: well-fitting masks, vaccines, boosters and looking out for your fellow residents.

"These tools have been adopted across the state and our residents know what they need to do to keep themselves and to keep those they care about safe."

Since the COVID-19 pandemic was first declared in March 2020, Dr. Ulysses Wu, system director of infectious diseases at Hartford Healthcare, has become a public face of Connecticut's pandemic battle.

While most folks have moved on from the pandemic, Wu hasn't. He can't. That's his job.

"It is still a fairly serious disease at this point," Wu said recently. "If this happened in the middle of winter, it would be much different."

He said the current spike is being fueled by multiple factors, as is its seemingly lessened impact.

For example, Wu said, the elimination of post-winter surge mask mandates has fewer people wearing masks indoors, and that's leading to increased community spread.

The fact omicron variants are more transmissible and dominant further explains why a mid-spring spike is going on, according to Wu.

As for why this surge doesn't appear to be as serious, Wu said improving weather has folks outdoors more and the public has easy and greater access to effective vaccines and treatment.

Wu, however, speculates one other factor has the public believing the pandemic is over — apathy.

Whether it is over statistically or not doesn't matter, he said, people are simply done with thinking about it.

"People don't care. That's why," Wu said. "People are still getting COVID and they're not worried about it because people are not going to the hospital."

The latest figures amid the current surge point to 365 patients being hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Wednesday.

That's far, far fewer than during the worst of the pandemic, when the state was expecting to have to build temporary, mobile hospitals and total COVID-19 hospitalizations approached 2,000.

Anecdotally, Wu said, his COVID-19 interview requests from the media are way down compared to before.

Clinically speaking, Dr. Jo-Anne Passalacqua, infectious disease expert at Hartford Healthcare's St. Vincent Medical Center in Bridgeport, said the population today is simply more resistant to the worst COVID-19 has to offer.

"The American population is different than what the American population was two years ago," she said. "We, immunologically, are different than we were two years ago."

She said most of us have been vaccinated, infected or both, leading to increasing levels of immunity within the community.

That, and a less-virulent strain of COVID-19, has impacts such as hospitalizations and deaths coming at lesser rates even as transmission spikes, Passalacqua said.

Passalacqua draws parallels between COVID-19 and another virus-caused disease that made headlines a few years ago — the mosquito-borne West Nile virus.

Like COVID-19, she said West Nile arrived from another part of the world and immediately caused an impact.

If you were a bird, it likely killed you. If you were elderly or infirm, there's a chance it made you very sick and even could be fatal.

Passalacqua said she recalls seeing dead birds on the side of the road at the same time people were coming to her office complaining of headaches and other West Nile symptoms.

But, she said, people no longer are getting West Nile the same rate as before.

"The reason behind all that was we were immunologically naive to the West Nile virus. You could watch West Nile go across the country," Passalacqua said. "At about two or three seasons, it just petered out. I haven't had anybody show up in my office with West Nile in years."

Passalacqua said there are early signs COVID-19 may be on the same path.

"I haven't seen someone critically ill with COVID in the hospital in many, many weeks," she said.

But, Wu points out, people are still getting sick and dying.

It is a sobering fact as the nation recently passed the 1 million fatality mark with COVID-19, dwarfing the estimated American death toll of the 1918 flu pandemic — 600,000 — which this one is most often compared to.

Connecticut has had more than 10,800 COVID-19 deaths.

"It is absolutely still a killer. There is no doubt about it," Wu said.

And as far as Passalacqua is concerned, the masks on trains, planes, buses and other public indoor settings should stay on, even if the government isn't mandating it.

"I don't think it is time for us to rip off our masks and say there's nothing to be concerned about," Passalacqua said. "This problem isn't over yet."

For Shah, it means face masks and clear plastic shields will remain tools of the trade at his liquor store and Subway sandwich shop, which he owns nearby in Vernon.

And, he said, there's nothing wrong with that. It's a small price to stay in business and keep folks safe.

So far, Shah has managed to avoid a positive COVID-19 infection, despite working with the public for years.

But, as he discloses that information, he also taps into superstition amid his sea of libations.

Said Shah, "Knock on wood."

For Dr. Ulysess Wu's biography, click on this link.

For Dr. Jo-Anne Passalacqua's biography, click on this link.

For the latest Covid-19 information from the State of Connecticut, click on this link.