- With omicron rates soaring, you may find yourself despairingly asking when — or even if — this pandemic is ever going to end.
- So how should you be thinking about the trajectory and timeline of the pandemic going into the new year?
- Although she cancelled an international flight over the holidays, she still felt comfortable going over to her colleague’s house for a Christmas meal.
The variation has changed how we move from “pandemic” to “endemic,” but it doesn’t imply we’ve come full circle as reported by Vox.
Predictions
With omicron rates soaring, you may find yourself despairingly asking when — or even if — this pandemic is ever going to end.
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.
“That means one infected person, on average, infects one other person.”
Nobody can look at the following chart and reasonably conclude that we’re in the endemic territory.
Looking at this data might make you wonder about some of the predictions that were floating around before omicron came on the scene.
So how should you be thinking about the trajectory and timeline of the pandemic going into the new year?
Endemic territory
Here’s one big question you’d probably like the answer to: Does omicron push endemicity farther off into the future?
Or could it actually speed up our path to endemicity by infecting so much of the population so swiftly that we more quickly develop a layer of natural immunity?
Is the health care system overburdened to the point that there’s a precipitous space or staffing shortage?
Are there treatments available to reduce how many people are getting seriously ill?
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.
“And that’s going to be different from community to community.”
Population-level immunity
Even if it turns out to be true that omicron tends to result in milder disease than previous variants (we don’t yet have enough data to say conclusively), a massive increase in cases could still lead to a big increase in hospitalizations and deaths.
But there are also some hopeful things to bear in mind.
The incredible number of infections is building up population-level immunity.
“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.”
Omicron surge
But it makes sense to modify our behaviour during the omicron surge.
We’ve manufactured effective masks, vaccines, boosters, treatments, and rapid tests.
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.
Take Bob Wachter, for example, the chair of the department of medicine at the University of California San Francisco.
Here’s how he explained his reasons: The other experts I spoke to agreed that now is a time to limit risky activities.
I cancelled plans to go to New Jersey to visit my family over Christmas.
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Source: Vox
