Covid-19 diary: Part 28

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
March 21, 2021

In my previous post, I explained why the continued declines in new Covid-19 diagnoses and new Covid-19 deaths don’t allay all of my concerns about the pandemic. One big issue — one of several — is that testing in the United States has dropped by nearly a quarter.

I have some good news on this front. If the disease were continuing to spread unchecked, I think we’d see evidence of that in our death figures. As long as deaths are going down at an appreciable rate, we’re generally going in the right direction. And that’s exactly what is happening right now.

Some bad news: Case numbers appear to be flattening out, even as testing has fallen significantly. Over the past few days, the nation’s rolling seven-day average of new daily cases has been around 55,000.

That’s surely better than the more than 100,000 new daily diagnoses that we had for nearly three and a half months beginning in early November. But it’s still close to the level of the summertime peak, which led to the U.S. rolling-seven day average pushing past 1,000 new daily deaths for about three weeks beginning in July — an appallingly high toll. We’ll have to see what emerges over the next week and beyond.

Some more bad news: The novel coronavirus is surging in some other countries, such as France, Poland and Germany. Europe hasn’t had as smooth a vaccine rollout as the United States, so flareups there don’t necessarily presage uncontrolled spread here. But it’s certainly not reassuring to witness other Western nations struggle to suppress the disease that’s held the world in its grip for more than a year.

^{Photo by RF._.studio on Pexels.com.}

That said, I wanted to look at the pandemic’s future.

My suspicion is that Covid-19 will turn into a seasonal disease, much like the flu. We’ll see outbreaks every fall and winter that kill perhaps 50,000 Americans annually. That would be slightly worse than the number claimed by the flu, which is around 38,000 most years, plus or minus about 5,000.

The malady will be a nuisance except for particularly vulnerable victims — the very young, the very old and those with compromised immune systems. Extraordinary measures may be needed if Covid-19 starts spreading rapidly in communities where vaccinations rates are particularly low, but such restrictions will probably only be required in a few localities each year. 

Mind you, I don’t think this necessarily will be the outcome. In fact, I think we could potentially eradicate the virus that causes Covid-19. But given the vaccine skepticism in substantial portions of the population in America and elsewhere, and given the time it will take to vaccinate every eligible person on the planet — an endeavor that will probably go well into 2022, if not beyond — eradication is unlikely to occur at any point in the near to middle future. 

I could be wrong about Covid-19’s future impact in another way. If its annual death toll remains high — say, 100,000 or more each year in the U.S. — then either we’ll have to find a better vaccine or we’ll have to continue to live with masks and physical-distancing measures, at least during the colder months when Covid-19 seems to be most potent. 

It’s going to be a long while before we really know where things are headed. For now, everyone should keep their guard up unless they’re in a small group of people whom they know have been fully vaccinated.