Are we seeing the end of the pandemic?
Barring a terrible new variant, I feel we are. Everyone I know got it, nobody I know has it now.
I see that Pfizer has made a new Omicron vaccine. I'm all over that, because it'll give you some immunity to variants that have omicron ancenstry. That infection rate is worrysome if there is suddenly a more lethal version. Civil society could break down.
In the UK the signs are that we have reached the stage where, when the Omicron wave substantially diminishes, the orthodox establishment view of the disease will become firmly reestablished.
That view has much in common with the original 'herd immunity' approach, where an endemic state is the envisaged end game.
And so we will hear the term endemic being overused and misused, although some of what is said will be fair enough. Hopefully 2022 offers the opportunity for me not to have to go on about the other possibilities every day.
Key questions involve length of immunity, future variants, and what number of daily infections an endemic state actually involves. The timing and scale of these things will determine whether the word pandemic is dropped as far as the UK is concerned. If sufficient time passes before another wave, then that period will be seen as an endemic state which still includes the possibility of future, sporadic, epidemic waves.
Take the following article for an example of how this stuff is currently being painted. Variants with particular properties and their implications are the main caveat mentioned, but those are not dwelt on at all. Nor is the level of infection that an endemic state may settle on discussed properly at all, which is a mistake I will not make. There is a graphic in the article that provides a very simple sense of the differences between endemic, epidemic and pandemic. Some contradictions between that and what the body of the article says may be spotted. There are some scenarios where these shortcomings wont end up mattering very much to the UK approach in 2022, and some which could in theory force a reevaluation and quite some divergence away from the reassuring, simplistic picture painted in the article. I do not know what will happen, I am certainly be hoping that I at least get the chance to take a very long break from having to think about this stuff. Its a bit too soon for me to fall silent on all those matters just yet, but it is my intent to do so when the opportunity arises. If everything goes as well as could possibly be expected, then there will still be long-term healthcare matters to discuss. But they wont have the same intensity as the acute pandemic phase unless they involve a large epidemic wave that bypasses a large amount of immunity.
I am certainly hoping that we can go through at least 9 months without another variant with highly significant potential coming along, but I wont be able to offer any guarantees about that. Its worth noting that the narrative was already building to this stage after the Delta wave peak, but then Omicron eventually scuppered it that time. Maybe this time will be different, and certainly there will be many who will make this assumption despite past setbacks, we are invited to forget about the failures of such talk to match the reality that we then faced. Boosters and some behavioural changes were required to cope with Omicron, and that could happen again in future.
Are we about to start the era of endemic-Covid and what will that mean for our lives?
www.bbc.co.uk
