Is Vermont squandering its Covid-19 success?

Is Vermont squandering its hard won gains keeping Covid-19 in check? That’s the argument of Anne Sosin, a public health specialist and Policy Fellow at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences at Dartmouth College. She recently wrote an essay for Time Magazine titled, “Vermont Offered the U.S. a Textbook for Reopening Schools Safely. Why Is It Throwing Out the Lesson Plan?” “We see a departure from the evidence-based approach that’s been so critical to Vermont’s success in earlier phases of the pandemic,” Sosin tells The Vermont Conversation. “Right now, we need to be prioritizing the health and education of our children. That means aligning what we’re doing with the best evidence, local epidemiology and the guidance coming out. And I’m concerned that we have shifted very far away from that in the last several weeks.” The U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends universal indoor masking in schools regardless of vaccination status. Gov. Phil Scott said masks are "a good idea," but he has declined to mandate them in schools or elsewhere. The Delta variant is now surging in places that were recently hailed as Covid-19 success stories, such as Iceland, Israel and Hawaii. These places are a cautionary tale for Vermont, Sosin said. “All of these places have very high vaccination rates like Vermont, yet this variant has led to very rapid increases in transmission and has had significant impacts on health systems, schools and businesses,” she said. “We need to learn and be really humble in our approach as we respond to it.” Vaccines are not enough, she said. “Employing other tools right now helps us to safeguard the gains that we’ve made as a state. It doesn’t diminish our success,” Sosin said.