Fauci said the pandemic retreated after ending in the United States. What do experts say?

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, will be screened in Bethesda, Maryland on December 22, 2020. (Patrick Semanski / Pool / Getty Images / TNS)

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Philadelphia (Tribunnews.com) —Anthony Fauci caused a turmoil this week when the United States said on national television that it was “out of the pandemic stage.”

Nationally, epidemiologists clung to.

For one thing, the choice of language by the person responsible for infectious diseases in the country was wrong. But the bigger question is whether Fauci is right to suggest that the worst may have finally ended in this country. Currently, there is evidence to suggest that more than 90% of Americans have some degree of COVID-19 immunity.

Fauci later admitted that the world was still in the midst of a pandemic, but the United States went past the “full-scale” stage of COVID and moved to a more predictable “controlled” pattern in the long run. Said.

Is he right?

Maciej Boni of Pennsylvania State University, Thersa Sweet of Drexel University, and Abby Rudolph of Temple University are three epidemiologists who have been tracking COVID from the beginning to help dig deeper into the evidence.

What is a “pandemic” anyway?

The terms pandemic and epidemic are sometimes used in everyday conversation to suggest “often.”

However, there are many cases of influenza every winter, and in most cases it is not called an epidemic.

Instead, epidemic means a sudden increase in unexpected cases. A pandemic is an epidemic that occurs in multiple countries.

With COVID, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic underway in March 2020 after the virus had spread to more than 100 countries. Eventually, it will certainly reach all of them.

However, it is incorrect to say that one country is or is not in the pandemic stage, as the term applies to multiple countries, said Rudolph, an associate professor at Temples Public Health University. This means that the United States could get out of the epidemic stage while the pandemic is progressing globally.

So was Fauci wrong?

Technically it is. Even if the United States may be out of the epidemic stage, a pandemic is underway.

But let the man sag a little. It’s difficult to put together a complex subject into a simple answer on live television.

When he realized he was exaggerating things, Fauci immediately made a round with the Associated Press and The Washington Post, no, admitting we weren’t there yet.

The same thing happened during the early controversial week of the Mask debate. Initially, Fauci and other prominent doctors stated that most people do not need to wear a face cover. As more evidence became clear about how easy it was for the coronavirus to spread in the air, he admitted that he was wrong and explained why.

What does COVID “normal” look like?

COVID may feel like it’s been dragged in forever, but it’s still a fairly new illness. Therefore, it is difficult for a professional disease tracker to pinpoint exactly when the epidemic or pandemic stage has been reached and the number of “normal” cases and hospitalizations have been reached. Everything about this was unusual.

For example, in the early days of the pandemic, the surge in spring and autumn surprised many experts.

However, two very large spikes occur in winter, and evidence suggests that the number of cases may increase at all times in the colder months in the future, Associate Professor at Drexel University Dornshfe School of Public Health. Sweet says.

This is due to a combination of factors such as more people gathering inside and the dry air making it harder for the nasal passages to filter the virus. Therefore, COVID will become a seasonal illness like the flu, Sweet said.

“Even if that happens, the question is how serious it will be in winter,” she said.

In other words, what does it usually look like? It’s hard to say for sure, but there are clues, said Boni, an associate professor of biology at Pennsylvania State University.

The important thing is to determine the number of people who have some degree of immunity through vaccination, infection, or both.

When that percentage reaches mid-90s or high, public health authorities can make reasonable predictions about the damage caused by illness each year. Almost everyone is exposed to the flu in some way, which is why they can cope with it well. Thousands of people die each year, but most are protected from serious illness, and the numbers follow a predictable pattern.

How can I know the COVID immune level?

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the number of COVID tests has fallen far behind the actual number of infections. To estimate the true number, the CDC tried another route. Testing blood samples collected in hospitals and laboratories for other reasons.

This week, government scientists reported at the end of February that nearly 60% of all blood samples contained a special type of antibody against the coronavirus.

Blood tests have detected antibodies to an internal viral protein called nucleocapsid. It is only present in the blood of infected people. This is different from the antibodies that the immune system produces in response to a vaccine. Vaccines are based on “peplomer” proteins protruding from each virus particle.

Translation: By the end of February, 3 out of 5 people had been infected with COVID.

Still, even the new CDC estimates are low, Boni said. Blood samples may only reflect the infection in the past few months when the Omicron variant was endemic, as antibodies decline over time.

Do more than 90% of Americans have immunity?

Researchers need to dig deeper to estimate more cumulative infections.

Boni was part of such an effort and worked with colleagues at Harvard, Brown, and Yale. The team analyzed data from hospitals and health agencies in three New England states and was able to estimate the number of cases missed in official aggregates.

By the end of May 2021, researchers said nearly 70% of people in the three states of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts had some immunity from vaccination, infection, or both. I decided.

Another group of researchers at Yale University, Harvard University, and Stanford University conducted a similar detailed study nationwide six months after the emergence of the delta variant. They found that nearly 90% of people have some degree of immunity.

Boni believes that there are additional cases from Omicron, the number of which is now in the 90’s. This means that almost everyone, except very young children, has some degree of protection.

What does the “end” look like?

If so, is the United States really nearing the end of the “abnormal” phase of the COVID epidemic?

That’s not always the case, said Professor Drexel Sweet. Immunity weakens over time, and other variants will appear someday. And they are not always calm.

“Many people get the impression that a virus mutates to make it less virulent and more like a cold,” she said. “I don’t know what the next variant will be.”

After all, that’s what happens with the flu. It follows the pattern of most years, but often there are new strains with few strong immunity and epidemics occur.

Although the future is unpredictable, Boni said the number of “normal” winter cases of COVID could be one-third during the last two winters. Perhaps.

“The numbers are more regular and smaller,” he said. “I’m 70% sure it looks like that, but at COVID everything was amazing.”

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