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In March of 2020, we kept hearing about COVID on the news and talk of shutting down the country. My husband and I decided to shelter in place. He works at a local university and they shut down. I have several pre-existing conditions including diabetes and smoldering multiple myeloma, which has weakened my immune system. Because I am vulnerable, I stayed home.

It is not surprising that during the COVID-19 pandemic many of us have turned more than ever to television, the internet and social media. An unfortunate consequence is that as we continue to live with the pandemic, we are still exposed to an infodemic of at times misleading, unreliable and even malicious disinformation.

If you have had COVID, you can still get reinfected, especially if you had COVID before Omicron. Having had COVID before gives you some protection, but how much protection depends on your age, the strength of your immune system, how sick you were with COVID, and what variant you get.

In Dec. 2020, three friends concerned about the misinformation and lack of coordinated information about the COVID 19 virus in Lycoming County joined with members of the medical, public education, media, human services, education, business, faith and public service communities to form a public education organization, Let’s end COVID!

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to put COVID-19 in the rearview mirror? Don’t we have enough other life-threatening problems to focus our attention? When is it okay to be normal? There is good news about COVID because the current Omicron variant, while very contagious, appears to cause less severe illness.

We all know how contagious Omicron BA.1 was, infecting approximately 50% of Americans last winter in fewer than ten weeks. Epidemiologists had never seen a virus burn through a population so fast. This highly mutated Omicron subvariant is even 40% more infectious than its parent BA.1.