Whither Covid?

I recommend this Twitter thread by John Burn-Murdoch, as most Americans and their political leaders have apparently decided that the pandemic is over. It isn't, although here in the U.S. we are in a better place than we were a year ago. 

In a nutshell, new cases and hospitalizations are rising in much of the world, including much of Europe. This isn't so much because of loosened mitigation measures, but because of the emergence of a new variant, Omicron B.A2 which is evidently even more contagious than the original Omicron and perhaps a bit better at getting around existing immunity. It's just starting to show up in the U.S. and we may therefore see something of a resurgence in coming weeks.

The good news is that because there is now a much higher level of population immunity than a year ago, the case fatality rate is now comparable to influenza. (This will not be the case in regions of the world with lower levels of population immunity.) Still, if you have a new virus circulating that's at least as deadly as the flu, and more contagious, you've got more than twice the problem you had before. And it keeps mutating, which means that we don't know what could happen next. You can presume you will probably need to keep getting shots, however. 

So we come to a question for which there is no "right" answer. People have had enough of not being able to go to restaurants and concerts and ball games, kids need to be in school, and while we've learned that not everybody has to be in the office every day after all, we do need to get back to fully productive lives. I'm planning on attending my first academic conference in person in June and believe me, that's much more productive than trying to do conferences on-line. (It doesn't work.)

But, there are a lot of vulnerable people who take a huge risk going out in public if we're "back to normal." That includes my cousin who has MS, my neighbor who has rheumatoid arthritis, my sister in law who has an uncommon autoimmune disorder, and it will include me as I grow older. There's also the bad news that it isn't just fatalities we're worried about with this virus, it's the potential to cause long-term symptoms and even substantial disability in a high percentage of infected people. And there's always the possibility of a more virulent strain emerging. 

Unfortunately I don't think we're going to end up striking the balance I would like. That doesn't mean I'm necessarily the gold standard. This is a difficult problem. Anyway, stay boosted and try to avoid indoor crowds. We can keep improving ventilation in schools and continue masking in high risk settings such as meat packing plants. There are other relatively painless measures. But we might need more painful ones again if we get cavalier now.