The United States is experiencing the equivalent death rate of 3 commercial plane crashes a day due to COVID-19. Your average commercial aircraft might have about 90 passengers on board. In a horrific crash all 90 might die and that is happening 3 times every day as most wrongly think the pandemic is over.
The pandemic is not over. The virus is till an ongoing challenge. The pandemic is not like a hurricane, or other natural disaster that quickly passes, it is an ongoing war and the end is not yet in sight. How the war ends is unclear.
In January of 2022 over 2 thousand people were dying every day, now hundreds are dying every day. Is that success? Over 200,000 children have lost parents and care givers due to the virus. Is this acceptable collateral damage? For those who are done with the pandemic, the answer is a resounding yes!
There is a lot of virus out there right now. Honestly it keeps hitting closer to home, with people I know getting infected. BA4 and BA5 are to blame. These new variants have a heightened immune evasion. Previous infection from the original Omicron variant offers little to no protection against re-infection. Re-infectionss can result in serious infections, hospitalizations, long COVID and deaths. Portugal is experiencing a surge in cases due to BA4 and BA5 and the deaths rates doubled to equal the worst days of the pandemic for them. Will the same happen in America? Only time will tell. Hospitalization have been slowly rising but not spiking like the last surge in January 2022. Israel is also experiencing a surge and they have reported their highest case rates since April 2022. Seriously ill patients in Israel have doubled in the past week.
Complacency and ignorance are our worst enemy. Vaccines are offering less protection against BA4 and BA5. Breakthrough deaths are becoming more common due to waning immunity and the ability of these new variants to evade our immune response. Before the Omicron variants became predominate, vaccinated individuals over the age of 65 were 9 time less likely to die of COVID. Those who were vaccinated and boosted were 20 times less likely to die. In the last 60 days, with BA4 and BA5 predominant, vaccinated people without boosters were only 1.1 times less likely to die. Vaccinated with boosters are only 3 times less likely to die. The odds of survival if infected have substantially dropped.