If you’re one of the final holdouts who has remained strict about COVID precautions even as most of the country has done away with masks and social distancing, prepare to breathe a sigh of relief: After almost 3 years of COVID-19 upending our lives, the CDC has announced it is now okay to die of the coronavirus.
Finally, one less restriction to worry about!
CDC director Rochelle Walensky gave a press conference this morning to announce the major change in CDC recommendations, explaining, “Early on in the pandemic, every death from the coronavirus was a tragedy. Thankfully, due to remarkable advancements in being desensitized to widespread sickness and death over the past several years, we have reached the point where dying of the coronavirus has become fine. Similar to dying of the flu or in a car crash—other causes of mostly preventable deaths that we could do more to curb, but don’t because it’s sort of hard and boring—dying of COVID-19 is now completely okay we recommend that Americans begin incorporating passing away from this disease into their daily routines.”
According to CDC’s updated “How to Protect Yourself and Others” page, the CDC still recommends hand washing, getting vaccinated, and increasing ventilation as ways of mitigating COVID risk, but under the subheading “Dying of COVID-19” it now states “COVID-19 is a deadly disease, but dying from it is now fine. Currently, close to 500 people a day are still dying from it, but that’s OK, because it’s not quite as bad as 3,000+ a day, and as long as you don’t do the math of how many that adds up to in a week or a month it doesn’t seem terrible, really.”
This new guidance couldn’t have come at a better time for the thousands of patients currently hospitalized with COVID-19 who are hanging on for dear life, as now they now know that if they do end up succumbing to the disease, it’s perfectly okay. Additionally, the CDC has announced that anyone who has been taking life-altering precautions to avoid COVID-19, including the millions of Americans of an advanced age and those who have preexisting conditions that make them more vulnerable to the disease, now has the official go-ahead to not only contract COVID-19, but to succumb to it.
Yep, it was definitely time for the CDC to take this important step towards returning to normal! This announcement couldn’t have come soon enough!
Of course, some will say the CDC waited far too long to make dying of COVID okay, and others will argue they should have waited until daily deaths were down to like, 150 a day before giving the all-clear to dying of COVID, but after almost 3 years of trying not to die, this is going to be welcome news for the majority of Americans. While the CDC is unlikely to announce that it’s okay to die of monkeypox or polio anytime soon, hopefully we can eventually get there as a nation as well. If you’ve been avoiding dying of COVID, trust in the CDC’s updated guidance and give yourself a break from all that stress and anxiety, get out there, and die from it.
