Good Riddance, But Now What?
By Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
Come, children, gather
round my knee;
Something is about to be.
Tonight’s December
thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is
crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark!
It’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year.
From Read Me 2: A Poem For Every Day Of The Year
We are just days away from a new year. Now what? What will 2022 bring us in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic? We are all tired of restrictions and safeguards; however, the fact is that in the waning days of 2021, coronavirus cases are being reported at record levels around the world – surpassing even last winter’s devastating peak in some places – as officials grapple with a surge caused by the omicron variant.
Right now, omicron appears to be more transmissible than the delta variant but it also seems to cause less severe disease. We can look on the bright side and carry hope into 2022.
When is the surge going to end? How is it expected to continue to affect us in 2022? This blog entry addresses those questions by looking toward the new year through the predictions of experts.
If we've learned anything in the past 18 months it's that the coronavirus can – and does – surprise us. Many experts say that COVID-19 will have an impact on us for at least the next few years and, possibly, the rest of our lives.
However, read on.
Maybe … just maybe … 2022 will reward our best efforts to end the death and destruction.
The End?
The global pandemic should come to an end next year, according to officials at the World Health Organization.
“2022 must be the end of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking at the organization’s last planned briefing of the year on the coronavirus.
That “must be the end” comes with conditions though.
Tedros said he believed the pandemic will end next year because, two years into the situation, “we know the virus very well and we have all the tools [to fight it]."
The tools cannot operate themselves. They require people to operate them.
Tedros claims WHO projections show that vaccine supplies should be sufficient to vaccinate the entire global adult population and to give boosters to high-risk populations by the first quarter of 2022.
What issues are left to overcome to end the pandemic? Tedros says …
Implementing all the tools effectively, and
Taking care of equity.
“Unless we vaccinated the whole world, I don’t think we can end this pandemic,” he concluded.
(Helen Colis. “WHO forecasts coronavirus pandemic will end in 2022.” Politico. December 22, 2021.)
Meanwhile, the WHO is still monitoring whether disease from Omicron is as severe as previous variants such as Delta. This data is still “uncertain,” said Van Kerkhove.
Dr. Elizabeth McNally is the director of the Center for Genetic Medicine and the Elizabeth J. Ward Professor of Genetic Medicine at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine. She believes 2022 will be the beginning of the endemic phase of the virus – the phase when a disease outbreak is consistently present but limited to a particular region.
McNally says …
"In 2022, we will move more to the endemic phase of SARS-CoV-2 infection, where we continue to learn to live with the virus. Although there are many concerns about new variants, especially Omicron, at this stage it seems like those who are vaccinated and boostered are not likely to become very sick after being exposed to the virus. The greatest risk remains for those who choose to avoid vaccination.
"Since natural immunity from prior infection and immunity from vaccines both wane over time, the overall U.S. population will have a range of protection in 2022. To manage this broad range, I predict we will rely more on antibody testing to help guide patients with underlying medical conditions and inform their need for additional boosters. I suspect we will see a vaccine specific to the Omicron variant.
(Lila Reynolds and Marla Paul. “The year of the endemic phase? 7 predictions for 2022.” Northwestern Now. December 09, 2021.)
McNally predicts consequences for the unvaccinated …
"For those who choose to remain unvaccinated, I doubt the world will get easier for them. The vaccinated are losing their patience with having to take so many steps to protect the unvaccinated. At some point, we may just stop doing so much testing on those who are vaccinated and boostered, and instead just focus resources on better protecting the unvaccinated.
"The newly arriving medications will help reduce need for hospital beds. But moving forward, all attention needs to focus on managing the availability of hospital beds."
Harry Nelson – founder and managing partner of Nelson Hardiman, a healthcare law firm – says, “For the unvaccinated Covid-19 will remain much more of a wildcard. I suspect we will see at least another 100,000 Americans dead in 2022, drawn from the ranks of the unvaccinated.
(Lila Reynolds and Marla Paul. “The year of the endemic phase? 7 predictions for 2022.” Northwestern Now. December 09, 2021.)
Expect a winter wave. Dr. Andrew Noymer, associate professor of population health and disease prevention with the University of California Irvine Program in Public Health, predicts that, “The pandemic in 2022 will have another winter wave, less severe and less deadly than in winter 2020-21, but nonetheless still significant, and, in most places, more concerning than the ‘Delta [variant] wave’ of summer 2021.”
(Edward Segal. “Predicting The Course And Impact Of The Covid Crisis In The New Year.” Forbes. December 08, 2021.)
Jason Hiner, Senior Editorial Director of CNET Advice and former Global Editor in Chief of TechRepublic, looks at tech advancement in the near future. He believes …
“Healthcare will never be the same post-pandemic. Expect telehealth to become commonplace now that a lot more people have been exposed to using video calls for health visits. And the COVID-19 vaccine will forever change the way vaccines (and potentially other therapies) are created. It's not unusual for vaccines to take a decade to develop, but these were created in 10 months using genetics and mRNA technology. This could prove to be one of the most important medical breakthroughs of the century.
(Jason Hiner. “5 trends to shake the world in 2022: Predictions for the year ahead.” C/Net Tech. December 26, 2021.)
And, speaking of vaccines and treatments …
Both Pfizer and Merck are working on antiviral medications aimed at reducing the severity of COVID-19 symptoms. The Pfizer option (Paxlovid) appears to be 89% effective at reducing hospitalization and death among those most vulnerable, early data suggest.
While neither drug is authorized or approved by the Food and Drug Administration right now, experts anticipate them being available soon – and say they could play a significant role in our fight against COVID-19.
"It's really exciting to potentially have options for oral therapy that act very early," Dr. Judith Currier, professor of medicine in the UCLA division of infectious diseases, told TODAY. The medications will probably be used mainly in the populations where they'll have the greatest potential benefit for reducing hospitalization, she said, which would include those who are older, those who have underlying health issues and those who are unvaccinated.”
(Sarah Jacoby. “What will life with COVID-19 be like in 2022?” Today. December 17, 2021.)
Will we need additional COVID-19 booster shots in 2022 (and beyond)?
Experts say that depends on how long the protection from the current round of boosters lasts and how well it protects against new variants that might pop up, Dr. Thaddeus Stappenbeck, chair of the department of inflammation and immunity at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, told TODAY.
Initial lab data from Pfizer suggests that its booster is effective against omicron. And, for now, the boosters we have will likely be enough to protect against this new variant, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Biden, said.
How about schools remaining open in 2022?
"There's an emerging consensus that we just have to keep the schools open, we have to go back to interacting, and that kids are lacking socialization that's really detrimental," Bruce Walker, director of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, says. "We have to use other mitigation approaches to try and keep the schools open."
“Schools must employ mitigation” … are they listening?
Those mitigation strategies can include many of the same tools we know are effective, such as masks, rapid testing and pediatric vaccines. That might also mean adopting some creative solutions. For instance, some schools now use a "test to stay" protocol that takes advantage of frequent rapid testing.
(Sarah Jacoby. “What will life with COVID-19 be like in 2022?” Today. December 17, 2021.)
What Does "Learning To Live With COVID-19" In 2022 Actually Look Like?
In 2022, experts anticipate that we'll adjust to living with the coronavirus by doing the following:
Leaning on vaccination,
Continuing to mask up in high-risk situations,
Expanding access to rapid testing, and
Introducing new antiviral tools.
Together, these strategies will help us feel more comfortable taking calculated risks.
One way to feel more comfortable is to be certain about our status.
“If there’s one major frustration that I’ve had so far, it’s that we are not using rapid tests the way that we need to at the scale that we need to,” says Dr. Taison Bell, assistant professor of medicine in the divisions of infectious diseases and international health and pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Virginia. Rapid testing is one of our totally underused mitigation measures.
Help is already here for those needing rapid tests.
The Biden administration recently announced a new plan to reimburse people for at-home rapid tests through their health insurance. For those without insurance, free tests will be available at places in their community, like local health clinics, White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeffrey Zients explained earlier this month.
(Sarah Jacoby. “What will life with COVID-19 be like in 2022?” Today. December 17, 2021.)
Simple strategies work … listen up … the temptation to stop using them can be dangerous and contribute to the “staying power” of the virus.
Masking works – not just in helping to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but likely for the flu and other illnesses as well. "My motto has been, 'If you can see their full face, don't be in their space,' especially when I'm indoors in public," Dr. Bell said. "I still think that's a good strategy."
Although pushing the same preventative measures may sound like a broken-record to the populace by now, those who care and who wish to avoid infection should follow the advice of the experts and do the routine – mask up, social distance, wash hands, and avoid large crowds (especially those with swarms of unmasked or even unvaccinated people).
Of course, more variants are always a possibility. And with that, we’ll need to make sure as many people as possible are vaccinated everywhere in order to prevent new variants anywhere.
With that advice, I'll wish you a Happy New Year.
You may think that I'm being sarcastic, but I'm not. We are weathering a terrible, long storm together, and we should remember the old Friedrich Nietzsche adage: "That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” As we know, suffering is part of life, and much of the suffering we are doing is actually inconvenience. For God's sake, my mother and father endured the Great Depression and World War II. In their honor, I need to shoulder any burden that comes my way.
Noam Shpancer Ph.D. Reminds us that the American culture, “itself born of trauma and imbued with a hopeful can-do ethos, wants to believe this idea (of strength from struggle), finding it self-affirming.”
Yet our human brains can be our worst enemies.
Once we have acquired a certain belief, we tend to see, remember, and report mostly instances and events that support it. This is called confirmation bias – the tendency to interpret observations or data in a manner consistent with previously established beliefs and values. Studies have consistently shown that people uncritically accept evidence that confirms their beliefs, while subjecting disconfirming information to rigorous skeptical evaluation.
It is largely confirmation bias – including social media misinformation, medical distrust among some communities, and the politicization of COVID – that is responsible for vaccine hesitancy and refusal to continue to follow simple health directives.
The Happiest New Year will be made possible by those who continue actively to fight the virus, not to resist health officials' requests to keep up their guards. Concerned citizens will do so in 2022.
To close, 2022 is the Year of the Tiger – the Chinese zodiac sign that is the symbol for strength, exorcising evils, and braveness. I believe those who resist efforts to fight COVID need exorcised from their dangerous confirmation bias. In the United States, once considered the home of the brave but now as famous for clueless anti-vaxxers, those who take precautions are the strongest, as they must carry the burden of others who care nothing about infecting their fellow humans.
Will 2022 see the end of the COVID-19 pandemic? The tigers here are doing everything possible to make that a reality. Other little kittens simply do not care.
In the Time of Pandemic
By Kitty O’MearaAnd the people
stayed home.
And they read books, and listened, and rested,
and
exercised, and made art, and played games, and
learned new
ways of being, and were still.
And they listened
more deeply. Some meditated, some
prayed, some danced. Some met
their shadows. And the
people began to think differently.
And the people healed.
And, in the absence
of people living in ignorant,
dangerous, mindless, and heartless
ways, the earth
began to heal.
And when the danger
passed, and the people joined
together again, they grieved their
losses, and made new
choices, and dreamed new images, and created
new
ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had
been
healed.
No comments:
Post a Comment