What would determine when we're ready?
I'd say it's when we've got everyone who wants to be, vaccinated, and there's no reasonable expectation of near-future developments in vaccines being able to change the picture significantly.
I'm not sure if we're close to that point or not.
In practical terms being ready means having a healthcare system that can actually cope with the level of severely ill people generated by the number of cases present during the endemic steady state. Or being prepared to modify behaviours or introduce restrictions to bring that number down.
I do not consider the number of cases seen this summer, with the schools closed, to be a useful guide as to what numbers to expect from endemic covid. I consider we are currently in a wave and that things will change again in future, so there is little point in me trying to judge the eventual endemic status of this virus based on things we are seeing at the moment. And even if I turn out to be wrong about that, there is still no point proceeding with that line of thought until it has been clearly demonstrated that I'm wrong via the passage of time.
Here are some of the reasons I think the whole endemic angle has come up now:
Its being twisted to fit the 'learning to live with covid' agenda which I consider to be premature to say the least.
People were sold some lies involving simplistic versions of herd immunity, and were encouraged to believe that vaccines could carry more pandemic weight than was likely to be the case. Some of that now needs to be corrected, including peoples expectations about the end-point of this pandemic.
Lots of expert commentary was tied to framing and narratives involving waves and expectations about the timing and scale of those waves, and they got egg on their face due to the 'unexpected' July peak. They are now much less keen to offer predictions on this front going forwards, but their new narratives are still influenced by case data over the last month or so. So we inevitably end up with narratives that have a relationship to the relatively stable but high number of cases seen in England since the initial fall after that July peak.
The likes of Whitty always made no secret of his expectation that the virus would be endemic, and I dont think those authorities ever expected vaccines to be so brilliant as to offer sterilising immunity against this virus. So I dont really think there is anything new about the emerging consensus, other than more of them talking about it openly now. And I have to be a bit wary of that due to the timing relative to recent case levels, the learning to live with covid agenda etc. Which is not to say there are no valid reasons to go on about it more now, eg presumptions that vaccines would not offer sterilising immunity are increasingly backed up by actual data these days.
Also a permanently endemic state of affairs for this virus doesnt even mean that the era of waves of this virus are over. And it certainly doesnt automatically mean an end to all restrictions. Because a steady state implies an R of 1, and changes to the seasons, behaviours, levels of population immunity and the virus itself would be expected to create periods where R is not 1, and an epidemic wave becomes plausible. How well we manage to keep that situation balanced in the years ahead is in some ways epidemiological business as usual, whether that be via public health messaging, restrictions, or ongoing vaccination programme boosters and changes to the vaccines. A simplistic version of this is present in notions such as 'there will be good winters and bad winters', so I'm not suggesting that era will involve big scary waves as often as seen during the acute pandemic phase, it could be something that we have to act upon every few years. Or it might not pan out quite that way at all.
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, I’d really struggle without seeing my nieces regularly.
