Pandemic’s Next Test – Atlantic

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Suddenly a pandemic feels different. as colleague Catherine J. Wu I have written Yesterday, the relatively low COVID-19 rate was this winter And spring marked “the longest stretch of quasi-normalcy humanity has had since the start of 2020.” rearI called Katie and told her why.

First, three new stories from . Atlantic:

no obvious pattern

Kelly Maria Kordatsuki: You write that it’s true that things are better than they were a few years ago, but that’s not an entirely fair comparison. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Catherine J. Wu: Consider what you are comparing it to. Two and a half years ago there wasn’t even a vaccine. And two years ago, we were at the point where vaccines were beginning to spread to a wider segment of the population. Getting a quick test was still really difficult. I just started putting together the whole COVID toolkit. Certainly things are better now than they were when there were virtually no tools. But now that we’ve ticked all those boxes, shouldn’t we aim higher?

Kelly: Where are we lacking? And what needs to be done to improve those results?

Katie: No one can reasonably expect things to start looking exactly like they did in 2019. That’s not the world we live in. Freshly vaccinated and People were still taking behavioral precautions. Not going back yet in summer 2021More low price, adjusted infection mitigation and treatment tools that we didn’t have then, and now we do. I think we would be in a better place if people were more proactive about getting up to date on vaccines and wearing masks when necessary.

Kelly: What are the best-case scenarios researchers predict for the next few months?

Katie: The best-case scenario, within realism of how Americans might act, is that the virus basically gives us a break. That’s the leap that will evade our vaccines, fully reinfect everyone, and overwhelm the healthcare system. The condition is to continue, and the way it is now is how it will continue, as there may be seasonal bumps in infection in the winter. .

There is an even more ambitious scenario in which we do better in ensuring that people without health insurance have access to treatments and vaccines in a more equitable and systematic way. But I honestly think that’s pretty unlikely.

Kelly: And what is the worst possible case?

Katie: Basically, having a variant that takes over. Not as bad as Omicron was compared to Delta. And a big concern is that people aren’t kept up to date on vaccines. Uptake rates with bivalent boosters are still worryingly low. Most experts I’ve spoken to are very concerned that the annual COVID vaccine dose is far worse than the already pretty bad flu vaccine dose. Knowing that it is a potential recipe for disaster, even in the absence of new variants, more serious illnesses can occur.

Kelly: We also note that researchers are looking at this summer as a sort of predictor. Why?

Katie: I think people forget about summer, especially since a lot of the coverage in the US is centered around the East Coast.But in the American South, summer really of The indoor season for many is indoors, indoors is an air-conditioned place, and people are perfectly happy to congregate outdoors until December, January and February. I’ve seen it happen in the summer, and it’s no coincidence.

I predict the summer season will play a big role in determining what a typical COVID yearly schedule actually looks like. Will there be a big winter and summer peak each year? will eventually follow a consistent flu-like pattern that is largely confined to the winter? Not enough data.

Last summer was a very heavy summer for BA.5 specs. This summer may be an echo of that, or it may be something completely different. It’s a situation where many experts are trying to figure out what’s going on. No clear pattern yet.

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PS

Quite differently, Katie new Atlantic Ocean Story On the characteristics of certain drugs that have been talked about that are probably underreported. she said: But her colleague Rachel Gutman-Wei puts a fun, slightly crude new twist on the topic in an article about the drug’s strange side effect, burping like sulphurous rotten eggs. I’m here. ’ And you have it.

— Kelly

Catherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.