COVID 19: A Brief Update

Environmental & Science Education, STEM, Health, Medicine, Science & Society, Evolutionary Biology, Nature of Science

Ed Hessler

A few comments about COVID-19. It has not gone away.

According to Teresa Hanafin, Fast Forward*/ Boston Globe for December 9, 2023, "(COVID) is on the rise, along with flu, RSV.... Daily COVID hospitalizations nationwide are up 14 percent in the past two weeks, and have hit levels this fall not seen since April. Hospital admissions for COVID per 100,000 residents are highest in Delaware, Missouri, North Carolina, Arizona, and Pennsylvania."

While "deaths are up 9 percentages in two weeks nationwide," there is good news: about 2.5 percent of COVID patients are dying from the disease." At year's end in 2021 the rate was "29 percent...The highest death rates currently are in West Virginia, Michigan, Maryland, Utah, and Illinois."

The Star Tribune's Science & Health Section for December 3 had a long article by New York Times science writer, Carl Zimmer. Both columns are behind a subscription payroll but you may read it at the Seattle Times for November 21, 2023. The essay focuses on the "reigning variant," omnicron and its mutations.

Here are a few highlights:

--Omnicron "has proved to be staggeringly infectious but also an evolutionary marvel, challenging many assumptions virologists had before the pandemic."

--It is possible that "omicron will become a permanent part of life, steadily mutating like seasonal influenza."

--About Omicron, Dr. Jacob Lemieux said that  "It was the first virus to figure out in a major way how to escape immunity." He (and others) propose a likely mechanism.

--"Compared with previous variants, omicron put a small fraction of infected people in the hospital." (explained).

--"Omicron caused so many new infections (~half of all Americans)...that it still unleashed a devastating wave of hospitalizations."

--China which enforced  the most severe "zero COVID policy" backed off from this "brutal policy"...when protests grew intense enough to disrupt the social order. "President Xi Jinping dropped it abruptly in November 2022. This was followed by one billion infections, of which one million died. (my emphasis)

--A new hybrid, XBB, is the result of "two omicron viruses" winding "up in the same cell. It is a powerful infectious virus and "became dominant in the United States in early 2023." "Vaccine makers (have) tried to keep up with omicron's rapid evolution and the XBB shot faces "a menagerie of even more evasive variants."

--Virus expert, Marc Johnson of the University of Missouri notes that "right now we're in a period of chaos," one which according to other experts "might soon end." (reasons are included).

--Between October 2022 and September 2023, more than 80,000 people died of COVID, more than eight times as many as those who died of influenza."

--Public health researchers still see a benefit to vaccinations "which" could save up to 49,000 lives a year. For information on benefits see here.

--Crucial to this defense is genetic sequencing of new variants but this depends on funding as government financial support is withdrawn. Katrina Lythgoe of Oxford University" put it this way. "'If we don't sequence things then we won't

see them."

We seem to have a roller coaster method of funding basic research such as genetic sequencing. Omnicron demands a secure base because of the way the virus mutates. The title for Zimmer's article includes this stark statement on why: the omicron virus "is not done with us yet."

Teresa Hanafin believes that "The real problem is that far too few people have gotten the bivalent booster vaccine.  Although 69 percent of Americans completed the primary series, only 17 percent got the bivalent shot (43 percent of those 65 and older have gotten the first booster, but that's still not high enough). And there's been another booster since that one. For information about the bivalent injection which is no longer available for use in the United States see this somewhat lengthy CDC report (November 8, 2023). It is easily scrolled.

"Get all the vaccinations your doctor recommends for you, and don't be embarrassed to don a mask if someone in your circle of family or friends has the sniffles and hasn't been tested."

*Hanafin publishes Fast Forward twice a week.. Subscription is free. Hanafin includes a variety of items: current Boston weather, something from the Farmer's Almanac), comments on Boston area professional sports, politics, essays from readers on topics she chooses, etc.  She brings her intelligence and experience to this report--zip, style, humor and grace. I can't link you to the column from which comments attributed to her are taken. 

 

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