BA.5 wants its turn in the spotlight
People near me decided a cruise last month was a good idea. Both returned home with Covid souvenirs. Mild cases, but nevertheless. Another friend went to a rock concert. Unmasked. He came away with a case, too.
America has decided that the pandemic is over. It’s not:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tested positive for Covid and will be working remotely this week, according to his spokesperson.
But not to worry. Schumer will be running the Senate via “his trademark flip phone.”
Joel Achenbach warns that the latest variant is bringing a new wave of infection (Washington Post):
The size of that wave is unclear because most people are testing at home or not testing at all. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the past week has reported a little more than 100,000 new cases a day on average. But infectious-disease experts know that wildly underestimates the true number, which may be as many as a million, said Eric Topol, a professor at Scripps Research who closely tracks pandemic trends.
Antibodies from vaccines and previous coronavirus infectionsoffer limited protectionagainst BA.5, leading Topol to call it “the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen.”
Other experts point out that, despite being hit by multiple rounds of ever-more-contagious omicron subvariants, the country has not yet seen a dramatic spike in hospitalizations. About 38,000 people were hospitalized nationally with covid as of Friday, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. That figure has been steadily rising since early March, but remains far below therecord 162,000 patients hospitalized with covid in mid-January. The average daily death toll on Friday stood at 329 and has not changed significantly over the past two months.
Not changed yet. I’m traveling just now and not seeing people in masks anywhere.
“It’s the Wild West out there,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “There are no public health measures at all. We’re in a very peculiar spot, where the risk is vivid and it’s out there, but we’ve let our guard down and we’ve chosen, deliberately, to expose ourselves and make ourselves more vulnerable.”
Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan,would like to see more money for testing and vaccine development, as well as stronger messaging from the Biden administration and top health officials. She was dismayed recently on a trip to Southern California, where she saw few people wearing masks in the airport. “This is what happens when you don’t have politicians and leaders taking a strong stand on this,” she said.
With people becoming less vigilant, cases are going under-reported. The Institute for Health Metrics at the University of Washington, suggests infection totals for July are about seven times higher than reported.
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