Our Endemic COVID Future Is Probably Not What You Think--Why More Action Is Necessary Now (A long 🧵 ):
Many think we're already “post-COVID.” We're not, but it does beg the question of what the future has in store for us. If we ignore how tired everyone is of #COVID19 and instead explore the latest data and studies, we may see that we've not yet fully understood or adjusted to our COVID future. We've gone back to “old normal” when a “new normal” is necessary.
WHY WE'RE NOT POST-COVID
No, the pandemic is not over. The World Health Organization says we're still in a pandemic. WHO declared the public health emergency on 30 January 2020 and a pandemic on 11 March 2020, and it's the entity that gets to decide it's over--not you, me, or President Biden. Days ago, WHO held a meeting to discuss COVID, and it determined the pandemic remains a public health emergency of international concern.
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/01/30/who-to-keep-highest-alert-over-covid-as-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern
BUT WHAT MIGHT OUR COVID-ENDEMIC FUTURE LOOK LIKE?
Too many folks repeat the discredited idea that COVID is “just the flu.” It's led to folks thinking that COVID will be a minor inconvenience for the vast majority of the public on some annual basis. First of all, "just another flu" would be nothing to take lightly. The flu hospitalizes between 250,000 to 600,000 people annually in the US most years, and it kills between 20,000 to 60,000 people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_influenza_statistics_by_flu_season
Some specific findings from this study include:
There's little individuals can do to protect themselves short of enormous sacrifice if we don't implement public health solutions. Vaccinated people wishing to reduce their frequency of infection by half will need to reduce their contact rate 10-fold. People who only reduce their contact rate by half will “experience infections rates only marginally less” than those who have a median level of contacts with others.
People who are vaccinated and not taking measures to reduce their contact rate can expect to spend an average of 6 days a year acutely sick with COVID-19 and be infected 1.4x annually. That's a #COVID19 infection every 8.5 months on average. Now is a good time to remind the "just the flu" folks that the average American gets the flu once every 10 years or so.
Augie Ray
Voron