A 🧵 on why 2023 is shaping up to be yet another dangerous new phase for the pandemic.
In the worst week of the pandemic thus far, eleven months ago, the world saw 24 million confirmed cases. China is about to enter an enormous surge after lifting most of its precautions, and experts are predicting China could see 800 million cases in the next three months:
Of course, we won't see this surge in the data; China can't test or report that level of infections. And, much of the rest of the world has reduced testing and reporting. So, we'll fly largely blind through the worst part of the pandemic globally.
What we lack in data, we may make up with horror stories out of China; in fact, they're already starting, and it's only been two weeks since China eased its COVID restrictions:
https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/world/story/covid-horror-in-china-overloaded-morgues-hospitals-exhausted-crematorium-workers-357027-2022-12-20.
The US is already in a COVID surge, driven by new immune evasive variants. The BQ family became predominant a month ago after surpassing BA.5, and the XBB family of variants is racing up behind it. XBB.1.5 is growing phenomenally quickly, showing a 100% growth advantage over BQ.1 according to virus modelers. In New York, XBB has a head start and is already the most common variant, and hospitalizations in the state are the highest since February and rising steadily:
https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/daily-hospitalization-summary
We may not beat last holiday's COVID patient totals, but we don't need to because hospitals are also filling up with patients with RSV, flu, Strep A and other illnesses. Hospitals are the fullest they've been since the start of the pandemic dealing with all of these patients. It won't take much of a COVID surge to max out capacity in many hospitals. Parents are already struggling to find hospital beds for sick kids in parts of the US:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/17/pediatric-bed-shortage-tripledemic-rsv-flu-covid/
And LA County hospital beds are already at the lowest availability since the pandemic began:
We won't only see problems with hospital capacity, however. We've already experienced a shortage of fever-reducing and painkiller drugs, and China's new surge has triggered panic buying and new shortages:
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/21/economy/china-covid-chaos-global-run-medicine-hnk-intl/index.html
Do what you can to avoid infections with COVID or anything else in the weeks ahead because medications and hospital beds may be in short supply.
What happens next after BA5 becomes BQ becomes XBB in the US? Who knows? But COVID continues to mutate rapidly. And with 10% of the world's population likely to get infected in the next three months or so, experts fear a spectacular rise in the speed and diversity of new COVID mutations:
I suspect we'll see still more immune-evasive variants rise in the US and elsewhere, so the pandemic is looking a long way from being over.
The US is concerned China’s runaway Covid-19 outbreak might spawn new mutations of the virus, as the world’s most populous country continues to grapple with the impact of loosening “Covid Zero” protocols that had kept the pandemic at bay.
People would rather believe our partial masking and brief and uneven isolation is causing today's rise of viruses because otherwise, they'd be force to change their behaviors. In fact, dozens of studies show COVID can harm the body's immune system, not to mention heart, brain and other systems long after infection and recovery:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12VbMkvqUF9eSggJsdsFEjKs5x0ABxQJi5tvfzJIDd3U/edit?usp=sharing
We won't be able to keep blaming immunity debt if 2023 continues to be a year of elevated viral and bacterial infections.
At some point, we'll have to face the fact that repeated COVID infections are dangerous, and that with COVID continuing to mutate, we'll need better solutions than merely ignoring it and trying to act normal. Those solutions may include new pan-coronavirus vaccines:
We also need new regulations governing safe filtration and ventilation in public buildings:
DURHAM, N.C. – In laboratory and primate tests, a new pan-coronavirus vaccine developed by the Duke Human Vaccine Institute (DHVI) has demonstrated wide protection against SARS-CoV-2 viruses and variants, including Omicron BA.5.
And the other thing we require is more masking. We ought to treat masks like we do the weather--if the forecast calls for rain, we carry an umbrella; when the forecast calls for COVID, we put on a mask.
The forecast is for more COVID. New dangerous variants are growing, COVID in wastewater is rising, and the positive rate of testing is rising. Three-quarters of the US is at the highest level of COVID transmission, and another 16% is seeing substantial transmission:
Regrettably, quite true. Reinfection is not uncommon. Covid appears to suppress the immune system leading to further infections- not only Covid but other diseases as well. Repeated infections can cause increasing damage to organs. The risk of developing Long Covid is always there.
Not least of all, there are the people that one might inadvertently infect to consider as well.
I am doing my very, very best to avoid (another) reinfection. And I really wish others would too.
Augie Ray
CyberMan
Invisiblyillin