In “Open Everything” published in The Atlantic on February 9th, 2022, Yascha Mounk discusses his arguments for lifting any remaining COVID-19 restrictions to “shake off the pandemic malaise.” He asserts that we are “in danger of prolonging the status quo more than is justifiable” and that “the time to end pandemic restrictions is now.” The broad strokes that Mounk makes are diametrically opposed to substantiated public health policy that currently exists as well as the minutiae of circumstances relative to COVID-19 when viewed from an equitable lens. I find his claims to be inattentive to the differences in American public health infrastructure that exist at local, city, and state levels, and come from a place of privilege tied to educational status and economic freedom that not all Americans are necessarily privy to.

Mounk states that “the strongest reason to keep up pandemic restrictions is that some people remain vulnerable” including unvaccinated people as the primordial example. He follows up with the rhetorical question, “What do we owe to them?” This argument is flawed for several reasons. First and foremost, by focusing on the unvaccinated, Mounk neglects two populations that are also highly susceptible to contraction of COVID-19 regardless of vaccination status: the elderly and the immunocompromised. While individuals of these two groups may be vaccinated, their weakened immune systems render them much more vulnerable than a younger vaccinated individual with a fully intact immune system. Also consider the case of children under the age of 5 years old, who are ineligible to receive the vaccine. Thus, vaccines are not the “end all, be all” seems to implicitly affirm. And neither is Paxlovid, the antiviral drug created by Pfizer with promising clinical results, as it is not yet standard of care and by no means fully accessible throughout the country.

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