When Will The Covid-19 Virus Become Endemic ???

 

• The Omicron Variant destroyed Christmas 2021 - much like the Delta Variant wrecked Summer 2020
• The Omicron Variant is more transmissible - but less virulent than the Delta Variant
• We need to embrace Non Pharmaceutical Interventions - or NPIs
• NPIs include: rapid COVID-19 testing / wearing iso masks / staying home during major outbreaks / etc
• Once these NPIs are followed - we move on from a state of acute emergency to a state of transition to endemicity
• Endemicity means that immunity and infections will have reached a steady state
• Not enough people will be immune to deny the virus a host
• Not enough people will be vulnerable to spark widespread outbreaks
• Endemicity isn’t a promise of safety. - rather it’s a guarantee of having to be on guard all the time
• We can’t eradicate SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind Covid, because it has other hiding places in the world
• As long as another host for Covid exists, there is no hope of being safe from it forever
• Covid-19 herd immunity is a pipe dream
• It’s a weird irony that the US, so well supplied with vaccines that you can get shots without an appointment, is short of rapid tests, when they’re a routine part of the Covid response in Germany and the government distributes them for free in the United Kingdom
• Learning to live with the long presence of Covid will require acknowledging that breakthrough infections may happen to us all at some point, even though a full course of vaccination plus rapid use of antivirals will mute their severity
• The fate of the pandemic is governed by the vulnerability of the least protected
• We need to make sure everybody in the world has access to their two doses of vaccines by the end of March 2022