Covid-19 update: Isn't this thing gone yet? Not hardly

 

I hadn’t checked Worldometer’s covid numbers of late, but then I found these charts it provided to be of interest:

 

During a press conference on Tuesday, the director-general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, declared that a state of emergency regarding Covid-19 still exists, and that “I am concerned that cases of Covid-19 continue to rise, putting further pressure on stretched health systems and health workers. I am also concerned about the increasing trend of deaths,” and that the pandemic “is nowhere near over.”  

Hans Kluge, the head of WHO Europe, sounded a similar message, reporting 3 million new cases in Europe in just the last week. “It’s abundantly clear we’re in a similar situation to last summer – only this time the ongoing COVID-19 wave is being propelled by sub-lineages of the omicron variant, notably BA.2 and BA.5,” he asserted. Kluge also noted that deaths have risen to 3,000 a week in Europe.

In Japan, hospitalizations quadrupled in just the last month, but the head of the Covid-19 “expert” panel insisted that “if everyone does what they can do, there is no need at this point to impose movement restrictions.” It isn’t clear what “doing what they can do” actually pertains to, perhaps no more than mask-wearing which not many people are still doing. Perhaps not doing things like breathing on each other is what they mean. According to the Asian news site The Asahi Shimbun,

A seventh wave in the COVID-19 pandemic is shattering daily records across Japan, placing a gargantuan burden on the medical care structure. An unprecedented 152,536 cases were reported July 20, with daily records shattered in 30 of the nation’s 47 prefectures. Five prefectures reported that more than half of their hospital beds set aside for COVID-19 patients were already filled as of July 19. Beds have been filling up fast in recent weeks. For example, Wakayama Prefecture in central Japan reported 16 percent of hospital beds for COVID-19 patients filled two weeks ago, but by July 19 the figure had reached 59 percent.

Daily records? Wasn’t this supposed to be over?

What do the numbers suggest, exactly? They certainly are baffling for those under the impression that Covid-19 has been “beaten” and nothing to worry about. That certainly seems to be the case in the U.S., where new cases and deaths have at best been sporadically reported, and at worst, not at all (uh, Florida anyone?). The CDC admits that it is impossible to know what is happening outside of hospital cases, given the decline in testing, or the use of “in-home” testing kits where it is up to the test-taker to report the results. According to a CNN report earlier in the week, for every one reported case, seven have gone unreported, as new Omicron variants like the BA.4 and BA.5 are more transmissible and more evading of current immunizations. And if that isn’t bad enough, a variant of the BA.2, BA.2.75, could be even worse yet.

Of course in the U.S., Covid-19 fatigue set in long ago and most people don’t feel they need to wear face masks or do any social distancing, and it might not be easy to persuade them to do so again, unless we see more hospitalizations and people dying. Currently about 300-350 people are dying a day from Covid in the U.S., yet the New York Times notes that “Covid Rises Across U.S. Amid Muted Warnings and Murky Data,” allowing “Many health officials say the wave is cause for caution, not alarm.” This suggests that there is a deliberate effort by public officials (if not necessarily the media) to downplay any potential “surge” for political reasons. Not surprisingly the experts warn that this attitude w,ill likely lead to a surge no one will be able to ignore, especially the Southern states, like Florida.

While older people are being advised to get booster shots now, where I’m at there is as yet no governmental run operations as there have been in the past for people to walk in and get their shot. Still, even with them there remains the question of how effective they will be against the latest variants. Moderna claims that its latest “update” is effective against the BA.5 strain, but not necessarily a booster shot utilizing its previous vaccine. The Harvard Medical School claims that even the fully vaccinated and boosted—as well as the previously infected—are not protected against the BA.5, and that is not even addressing the BA2.75 variant, or any other future variants of Omicron strain.

So what does this all mean? For one, don’t be “surprised” to see another pandemic on the horizon.