Closing the Curtain on COVID?

Posted on by Thor

400 to 500 people continue to die every day due to COVID-19. Every week the number of people who die from COVID is about to the number of people ho died on September 11, 2001 when the twin Towers were attacked. That is our new normal. It is better that the several thousand who were dying every day back in January 2022.

Despite the ongoing death toll, President Joe Biden declared on 60 Minutes that the “the pandemic was over.” Biden himself had COVID twice just recently but with the beast healthcare options available, he and his wife pulled through. If you remember, a year ago for July 4, 2020,  Biden also declared we would be independent of the virus. Like any politician he want to downplay the virus as elections roll around.

So who actually gets to decide when the pandemic ends? No single person can flip a switch and declare a pandemic over. COVID remains a public health emergency in the United States, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services, and it’s still a public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC, according to US Department of Health and Human Services (WHO).

The World Health Organization did a horrible job on deciding when the pandemic should begin. Had they acted sooner and closed off flights out of China back in 2020, the virus could have been contained and eradicated. Last week, Tedros said the end of the pandemic “is in sight,” but he added that “we are not there yet.” So where is “there”?

Back in 1918, the Spanish Flue pandemic swept across America, starting in a WWI training base in Kansas where my great Grandfather was stationed.  The virus was ignored by press and the president because the country was at war. After a devastating wave of death in the fall of 1918, bodies lay in the streets and mass graves had to be dug. By the beginning of 1919 most mask orders, closures and social distancing orders were lifted. Waves of disease continued through 1920 the year my father was born.

Vaccines and treatments offer some protection from severe disease and death but they do not stop re-infection. The Biden administration has said it intends to stop buying vaccines, tests and treatments, shifting those things to the commercial market.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said, that in his estimation, cases, hospitalizations and deaths are still too high to say the pandemic is over. We also don’t know what variants of the virus could emerge or how our immunity will hold up against them. “I don’t think people really understand what the implications are for this virus,” Osterholm said. “All of us want the pandemic to be over, but you can’t make it go away by just making a policy decision.

New Strain Hurricane

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Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm recently told NBC that the new COVID-19 strains could create a new wave of cases. “The surge that is likely to occur with this new variant from England is going to happen in the next six to 14 weeks,” he said.

“The hurricane is coming. Because of this surge, we have to call an audible,” he said. “If we get a number of first doses in people, particularly 65-years-of-age and older, we can really do a lot to reduce the number of serious illnesses and deaths in this next big surge, which is coming.”

“We do have to call an audible. I think there’s no doubt about it. The fact is that the surge that is likely to occur with this new variant from England is going to happen in the next six to 14 weeks, and if we see that happen, which my 45 years in the trenches tells we will, we are going to see something like we have not seen yet in this country,” Osterholm said Sunday.

“That hurricane is coming. So I think we have to understand that because of this surge, we do have to call audible,” he said. This means he is advising that the distribution plan delay the second vaccine dose to prioritize first doses for as many seniors 65+ as possible.

“You and I are sitting on this beach where it’s 70 degrees, perfectly blue skies, gentle breeze,” Osterholm said. “But I see that hurricane five, category five or higher, 450 miles offshore. And, you know, telling people to evacuate on that nice blue sky day is going to be hard.”

Researchers from the University of Washington warned over the weekend that the new COVID-19 strains — like those from South Africa, the United Kingdom and Brazil — could create a deadly spike in the U.S. this spring, according to The Boston Herald. The U.K. variant, dubbed B.1.1.7, was first identified in the U.S. in late December but is thought to have been around as early as October. It’s soon expected to become the dominant strain of virus in the U.S.

While the strain has shown to be significantly more infectious and may cause more serious illness, the current vaccines being distributed seem to be effective in combating the variant.