The variant has changed how we get from “pandemic” to “endemic,” but that doesn’t mean we’re back to square one, reports Vox.
Endemic phase
Endemicity means the virus will keep circulating in parts of the global population for years, but its prevalence and impact will come down to relatively manageable levels, so it ends up more like the flu than a world-stopping disease.
For an infectious disease to be classed in the endemic phase, the rate of infections has to more or less stabilize across years, rather than showing big, unexpected spikes as Covid-19 has been doing. “A disease is endemic if the reproductive number is stably at one,” Boston University epidemiologist Eleanor Murray explained.
The highly contagious omicron variant means each infected person is infecting more than one other person, with the result that cases are exploding across the globe.
In the fall, some health experts were saying that they thought the delta variant might represent the last big act for this pandemic, and that we could reach endemicity in 2022.
How to identify the endemic phase?
Endemicity isn’t just about getting the virus’s reproductive number down to one. That’s the bare minimum for earning the endemic classification, but there are other factors that come into play, too.
In general, a virus becomes endemic when we (health experts, governmental bodies, and the public) collectively decide that we’re okay with accepting the level of impact the virus has — that in other words, it no longer constitutes an active crisis.
Soaring omicron cases
With omicron surging right now and many governments reimposing stricter precautions as a result, it’s clear we’re still in crisis mode. “But so much depends on the burden it’ll place on the healthcare system,” Rasmussen said. “And that’s going to be different from community to community.”
Even if it turns out to be true that omicron tends to result in milder disease than previous variants, a massive increase in cases could still lead to a big increase in hospitalizations and deaths. That could further stress health care systems that are already in dire straits.
Population immunity
“The incredible number of infections is building up population-level immunity. That’ll be crucial in terms of muting future waves,” said Joshua Michaud, associate director for global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
In addition to omicron potentially building up some immunity in the vast numbers of people who are becoming infected with it, vaccinations and boosters are also contributing to “a significant immunity wall that’s being built,” he said.
But he cautioned that “that’s a wall to the variants we’ve seen already. There could be another variant which could evade immunity down the road.” Some experts are already conjecturing that getting infected with omicron may not give you much cross-protection against other variants, though a small early study showed positive signs on that front.
Improvement
Dire headlines notwithstanding, we’re in much better shape than we were at the start of the pandemic. We’ve discovered a lot more information about how Covid-19 works. We’ve manufactured effective masks, vaccines, boosters, treatments, and rapid tests.
We’ve also learned that having to hunker down comes at a real cost to our mental and economic health and wellbeing. The cost of a strict lockdown may have been worthwhile in March 2020, but by and large, that’s not what US experts are advising now.
They are, however, urging us to take more precautions than we might have been in the weeks leading up to omicron.
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Source: Vox
