Is COVID still the common cold?

One of the worst things about SARS-CoV-2 when the coronavirus pandemic started was that it was so new. The world lacked immunizations, treatments and vaccines. It was also difficult to get tested, and unless otherwise, the diagnosis was painful. in some cases, symptoms Summer Chavez, an emergency physician at the University of Houston, said coronavirus infections have gotten so weird and out of the book that distinguishing SARS-CoV-2 from other viruses has become “a slam-dunk of sorts.” It has become. The patient presents with standard signs of respiratory illness such as fever, cough, Less ExpectedRash, diarrhea, shortness of breath, loss of taste and smell. A strange new virus was hitting people’s bodies in a compellingly unusual way.

Now, almost three years after the crisis, the virus is more familiar, and so are its symptoms. This winter, we put three sick people in the same room: one with COVID, another with a cold, and a third with the flu. Congestion, sneezing, coughing, and headaches are commonplace. And some of the oddities that once hogged the headlines have become rare. Many people can’t remember the last time they thought of the tragedy of.COVID toesEven Fever, a former COVID classic, No longer cracks the top 20 list According to Tim Spector, an epidemiologist at King’s College London, who is leading the project, from the ZOE Health Study, a long-standing symptom-tracking project based in the UK. But for most people, the symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 “look a lot like other viruses.” “We are headed for a cold-like illness.”

Its trajectory is many Expert from the beginning of the pandemicIncreased immunity to the coronavirus, repeatedly bolstered by vaccines and infections, could eventually tame COVID into a disease as minor as the common cold, or worse, on par with the seasonal flu. Either the severity of COVID will continue to be mitigated by broader immunity, or the idea will be like a curve curving toward a mild asymptote. A quick look at America’s immune system suggests that such a plateau may be approaching. Many people record their second, third and fourth viral infections. Maybe, just maybe, we’re approaching cumulative exposure levels that make COVID permanently cold. Also? It may not be, and it may never be.

Read: What does it mean to care about COVID already?

At least, the recent trajectory of COVID is peppered with positive signs. On average, symptoms travel up the airways, sparing some underlying vulnerable organs.got sick short Moderate, long-term COVID rates I think that the fall a littleMany of these changes roughly coincided with the arrival of Omicron in the fall of 2021, and some of the changes can be attributed to the virus itself. prefers infected cells in the nose and throat Above those in the lungs. But experts have told me that the build-up of immune defense that accompanies it is almost certainly doing more work prior to the spread of the variant. Both can corral the virus near the nose and mouth, laying a layer of protection to help prevent it from spreading to other tissues. says so. As SARS-CoV-2 found a narrower anatomical niche, our bodies became better at hunting it down.

Because most of the virus is relegated to smaller parts of the body, pathogens are cleared more quickly through the respiratory tract and are less likely to infect others. Some diseases are now reduced to a barely perceptible sense of smell and pose less risk to others. At population size, infection rates, hospitalization rates, and mortality rates decrease.

This is usually the case for respiratory viruses. Repeated struggles with RSV tend to subside. Influenza after vaccination is usually less severe. The few people who contract measles after being vaccinated are less likely to transmit the virus and experience such a trivial disease course that their disease is given another name, “corrected” measles. says Diane Griffin. Virologist and immunologist at Johns Hopkins University.

While the reduction in median COVID severity and duration around 2022 is good news, it’s a bit sobering given the relative lack of relief in symptoms in the months since. The full spectrum of disease outcomes, from asymptomatic infections to long-term disability, severe illness and death, is and will continue to be influential for the foreseeable future, according to Cherry. is.Immunization history and immunocompromised status can affect where someone falls on that spectrum. cause Patricia Garcia, a global health expert at the University of Washington, says that gender, genetics, underlying medical conditions, and even the amount of incoming virus are included.

New virus variants that evade antibodies can cause more serious illness, even among young and healthy people, as sometimes happens with influenza. High Omicron’s BA.2 variant appeared to accumulate more rapidly in the respiratory tract, which sparked more mildly annoying symptomsData are still being collected on recent Omicron subspecies, but Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist Shruti Mehta says there may be a slight reversal of certain gastrointestinal symptoms, such as vomiting. He said he saw a hint.

Read: Will it be Omicron again?

All this leaves the road ahead rather muddy. Harvard School of Public Health epidemiologist Yonatan Grad says that even if COVID one day turns into a common cold, that future is definitely not yet here. SARS-CoV-2 still appears to spread more efficiently and quickly than the common cold, making it more likely to cause severe and long-term illness. Still, previous pandemics may contain clues about what might come next.each Influenza Pandemics of the Last Century It led to a spike in mortality that returned to baseline after approximately 20 minutes. 2 To 7 years, Aubrey Gordon, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, told me. But SARS-CoV-2 is not an influenza virus. They do not necessarily follow the same epidemiological rules and do not necessarily follow comparable timelines. There is no magic number of vaccinations or past infections known to soften the disease, even for the flu.

The timing of how and when these defenses manifest is also important. Most people have had the flu, or at least received a flu shot, by the time they enter elementary school. On the other hand, vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 and his COVID appeared so recently that most of the world’s population was vaccinated in adulthood, when the immune system may be less adaptable. These late encounters could make it more difficult for the world population to reach an asymptote of its severity. We’ll be on the frontier of COVID for another generation or two until we’re human.

COVID could stabilize worse than a nuisance. “I used to really think it was closer to the coronavirus for the common cold,” Gordon told me. In Nicaragua, where she has been studying for years, cohorts of vaccinated people survived second and third rounds of SARS-CoV-2, which she said to her dismay was “even more serious than the flu.” ‘ she told me. Even if it eventually topples, if the coronavirus continues to actively infect this all year long, Still claiming more lives than the flu— like now.

Wherever we were, whenever the severity reached a plateau, Gordon told me that only hindsight could confirm that we got there. However, gathering the data needed to make that decision is becoming increasingly difficult. Public interest in viral craters and research efforts to monitor the changing symptoms of COVID are hitting roadblocks. The ZOE Health Study lost government funding earlier this year. COVID-Symptoms apphad about 2.4 million regular users at its peak, and now stands at 400,000. Some of them may have signed up to take advantage of new features for tracking food, sleep, exercise, and mood. “I think people said, ‘I need to move on,'” Spector told me.

Mehta, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, encountered similar hurdles in her COVID research. At the height of the Omicron wave, when Mehta and her colleagues were looking for talent for area studies, their roster was quickly oversubscribed. “We’ve been there for weeks now,” she told me, but she still hasn’t hit her goal. Long-term study of COVID decreased. As the number of infected people increases, the number of registrants will increase, but it will decrease especially rapidly when the wave recedes. Perhaps, in the view of some potential research volunteers, COVID haveironically, like a cold and not worth the time anymore.

For now, researchers don’t know if COVID-severity is nearing a plateau. Subvariants are still swirling in the US and elsewhere, and bivalent shot uptake remains stagnant. The number of hospitalized patients is on the rise again As SARS-CoV-2 pick up a human chair When RSV and InfluenzaAbroad, inequalities in vaccine access and quality, and the COVID-zero policy in China, stuck too long— left a large immunity gap. With so many daily deaths, so many off-season waves, her COVID this long, and the pace of this virus evolution, it will be tough to settle into a stagnation of symptoms. “I don’t think we’re that far yet,” Gordon told me. “Me hope we are not there yet. “