UCLA Health sent me an email that was very interesting. The email contained an interesting article about the possibility that COVID-19’s Omicron variant may signal the end to the current pandemic phase and the start of an “endemic” phase.
https://connect.uclahealth.org/2022/01/13/when-does-a-pandemic-become-endemic-and-what-is-the-difference/
Pandemics are defined as diseases that spread rapidly beyond control. A new infection infects more than one person, which causes the disease’s spread to the entire population faster.
A pandemic’s biology is one that slows down naturally through herd immunity. The process occurs when the entire population has been exposed and develops resistance. The ability to fight the disease is possible through artificial vaccination, or by suffering from the effects of the disease. It inoculates all members of the herd.
In early 2020, the sooner everyone gets it the sooner it’ll be over theory was one of the paths on how to deal with COVID-19 that was presented to the world. Boris Johnson was one of the first to advocate it as a national policy in England. Instead, the rest of the world adopted an isolationist and lockdown strategy, which England later also adopted. This is the way the world has dealt COVID-19 over the last two years.
This bunker mentality was originally meant to be a measure to “flatten the curve” until a way could be found to negate the mortal danger threat of the disease. Like all such fear driven strategies, the wild imagination of humans took the scientifically “temporary fix” to extremes.
Lockdowns were gradually relaxed as vaccines became more widely available. It became a complex network of policies at the county and state level that led to political chaos.
It is not clear whether people-control strategies made any sense scientifically or medically, especially in 2021’s second half, when vaccination rates started to increase. But human fear is predicable.
There have been endless arguments about the best way for individuals, businesses, and governments to deal with uncertainty and fear-driven opinions regarding how to establish public policy. While the world was waiting to find out if vaccines were effective, there has not been any change in the overall situation.
Some believe that the vaccine will protect them from the disease. Other people didn’t trust the vaccines.
As one might expect, corporations and governments reverted to the legal department to set up complicated procedures that would protect their properties from any lawsuits. Fear of being denied plausible denial is the only reason to be more cautious than a virus. However, viruses are capable of not caring about what human beings do.
Test of Herd Immunity
UCLA reports that late 2021 saw the Omicron variation of COVID-19 emerge. It has fundamentally changed disease dynamics. We will now test herd immunity theory, regardless of how human hubris may think about its control and flattening curves.
The article outlines three traits that scientists look for in a virus. These three characteristics include the “transmissibility (how easily the virus spreads), immune escape (how well it evades protection from vaccination or previous infection) and pathogenicity (severity of disease).” The article also notes that these three factors have “independent properties” in how an organism mutates.
Omicron can be transmitted much more easily and is able to evade immunity protection. Omicron is an extremely successful virus, infecting thousands upon thousands of people every day regardless of vaccination status. You may not get the disease if it is infected, and you might be more likely to die if there are no man-made vaccines.
“I think after this surge, most people on Earth would either be vaccinated or infected. Therefore, the whole global population would gain herd immunity,” says UCLA Health clinical microbiologist Shangxin Yang, PhD, “which would make the SARS-CoV-2 virus become endemic.”
The UCLA article points out that this could be a promising development in the pandemic’s trajectory.
“When we look back 10 years from now, I think the emergence of omicron will be considered a hallmark event, because it really brings the light at the end of the tunnel,” Dr. Yang says. “We potentially can see how the pandemic might end and become endemic.”
The Endmic Reality
The medical term endemic means “You can’t get rid of something.” So, you have to learn to live with it.
This article says:
Mike Ryan MD executive director, WHO Health Emergencies Program. An endemic illness, however, has a higher rate of circulatory disease. For example, colds and flu are an endemic disease that circulates every winter.
However, experts believe that COVID is already endemic due to the transmissibility high of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19).
“This virus is so well adapted for human-to-human transmission that it’s going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to ever get rid of it completely,” says epidemiologist Timothy Brewer, MD, MPH, noting diseases that aren’t eradicated are, by definition, endemic.
This is what the article concludes with.
Dr. Yang envisions a future where SARS-CoV-2 might behave like the flu or the common cold — a seasonal illness that’s more of a nuisance rather than a life-threatening condition. Season flu is still life-threatening for many, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths in the U.S.
Dr. Brewer says that vaccines, boosters, and the spread of the omicron variant may reduce the likelihood of new variants. Brewer says.
“As immunity rises in the population, case numbers will begin to fall because there’ll be fewer and fewer susceptible individuals for that particular variant to infect,” he says.
The eventual decline in COVID-19 case numbers, combined with new medications — including antiviral pills recently authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — and expertise in treating the virus gained over the course of the coronavirus pandemic could enable health care systems to better accommodate people who do become infected.
Individuals, Governments and Corporations
This raises an important question: If Omicron, the force that creates herd immunity without considering the actions of men, then when will humans pay attention to what nature has to say and stop trying to flatten the curve?
The human bond is most easily broken if we continue to isolate ourselves. And I’m not talking about the connections between people and their friends. Through the epidemic, we humans managed to figure out how this could be done. Indeed, those most afraid of the pandemic look angrily upon us because we keep in touch with friends and they avoid us all.
No, I’m talking about the breakdown of the connections and kindnesses of human society in our workplaces and our government. The borders are now closed. Some can be found at the borders of national countries. Others at entrances to buildings. Tolerance becomes less. Depression pervades life. Suicides rise. It’s easy to be mean to strangers from the anonymity of distance.
I wrote a piece about the macabre nature of this last week, “Reconnecting With Humans and the Culture of COVID-19: My First Week of 2022”, where I shared the surreal experience of entering a commercial building in Los Angeles, California under the strictest rules of corporate and government America. This piece is a reflection of the pure joy I have in finding human contact even when it seems impossible.
The internet is a source of intolerance, which was obvious. A few readers made accusations that I was selling out, by taking part in this charade. But if one wants to do business in person in corporate or government America in 2022, these “flatten the curve” rules apply. It’s a cost of doing business that one cannot avoid. If you aren’t in the room, you don’t count. It’s important to make sure one still counts when it comes to business and policy.
In order not to be stopped from attending trade shows in Las Vegas, attendees need to show proof that they have been immunized and must wear masks when collecting their badges. This is a significant indicator of US economic growth and is causing a drop in the attendance at industrial networking events. That’s not a good thing for an economy where sales and marketing once orbited around such human gatherings.
If these strange patterns persist through 2022, it will be three years — one full business cycle — of man-made economic depression impacting the economy. That’s the threshold where permanent downward adjustments begin to become institutionalized. “Building back” becomes harder. The goal of being boldly and better is no longer possible. Instead, society will be ruled by underemployment and overutilization.
This is the weird world we live in until people in power begin to accept what medical science is now beginning to express; that the time of “curve flattening” is over. It is not going away.
It is now time for routine vaccinations to protect against this and other seasonal diseases that are common in the population. It is now possible to return to normal daily living.
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