Thankfully, the CDC and other trackers are rating the risk of COVID-19 in Tennessee and Hamilton County as “low” these days. But don’t be lulled into thinking the virus — still a leading cause of death in our country — is done with us. Because it is not.
People here and everywhere are still getting COVID. And still dying with it. If you read our obituaries page, you saw that it claimed at least one man here just last week. And on Wednesday — just Wednesday — the Hamilton County Health Department listed 24 new daily cases.
Again, we’re glad and grateful our risk, and that of much of the country, is factored now as “low.” Just this summer, we were high.
But even while President Joe Biden in September termed the pandemic “over,” hundreds of people were still dying of it everyday.
The headline snatches of Biden’s comment were, and still are, confusing at best. But a full viewing of the “60 Minutes” interview with the president offered context. He cited the fact that people are no longer wearing masks, that large public events such as the Detroit Auto Show have resumed in person, and that concerns about COVID-19 no longer dictate our behaviors in the way they did over the past two years.
Still, from either a snippet or from the entire interview, no one should take any of it as a declaration of COVID’s end.
The end of helplessness against COVID, sure. But let’s not count our chickens before they are hatched. The end, alas, is up to us.
Experts say they expect COVID, which was our country’s third leading cause of death in 2020 and 2021, to remain among leading causes of death at least on par with Alzheimer’s, chronic lower respiratory diseases and stroke indefinitely — whether or not the pandemic is over.
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, COVID deaths since April this year have trended down and stayed relatively flat nationally at a weekly average of around 300 to 500 a day.
If that trend continues, the U.S. could expect 113,000 to 188,000 deaths a year from the novel coronavirus. For comparison, flu kills about 12,000 to 52,000 people a year. (Flu and pneumonia combined were the ninth-leading cause of death in 2020, and in 2021 they fell out of the top 10.)
Health experts, including Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House’s COVID response coordinator, says we can make or break this improving trend.
He says we must not be complacent. Instead, we should step up to get the updated Omicron booster by Halloween to have maximum protection against the virus (and another surge) by Thanksgiving and the holidays.
Jha said the U.S. has the tools, both from vaccines and treatments, to largely eliminate serious illness and death from the virus. If we will.
“We are not helpless against these challenges,” he said. “What happens this winter is up to us.”
Jha this week also criticized Congress, which has refused the White House’s $22 billion budget request for virus response, saying that has kept the nation from building a stockpile of tests to use in the event of a new winter surge.
“You can’t fight a deadly virus without resources,” he said, “and congressional inaction is really costly.”
Yeah, well: Perhaps the president shouldn’t have said it was “over?”
But to be fair, this has become a partisan issue, with Republicans decrying masking and even vaccines. And here’s the thing: According to some research, that partisanship is biting Republicans themselves.
Studies of COVID excess deaths (defined as the difference between the number of predicted and observed COVID deaths) and found that excess deaths were 76% higher in Florida and Ohio Republicans than in Democrats. What’s more, according to the research, vaccination rates, mask use and social distancing — or the lack thereof — could all be culprits.
“Political affiliation has emerged as a potential risk factor for COVID-19, amid evidence that Republican-leaning counties have had higher COVID-19 death rates than Democrat-leaning counties and evidence of a link between political party affiliation and vaccination views,” says the working paper of the research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Jacob Wallace, an assistant professor of health policy at the Yale School of Public Health and co-author of the study, told NBC News: “This is not saying: If Republicans were in fact Democrats, they’d be less likely to die.” But he said there’s a price when hesitating to get a vaccine. “We’re talking about a lot of preventable death and morbidity.”
So — COVID complacency is premature.
This winter may well tell the tale when it comes to seeing where the pandemic goes from here. With the new booster, it could continue to decline. Or, if people believe that they don’t have to worry about COVID any more, Omicron, or a yet-to-be named variant, could give us something new.
Consider the nature of viruses: The more infections a virus causes, and the more hosts it infects, the more chances it has to replicate and mutate to a more virulent version — and perhaps a rebound pandemic.
As it stands now, few people are availing themselves of the new vaccine. Only 7.6 million Americans — out of 333 million — have gotten the booster, compared with 225 million who received the first vaccine.
Who’s going to control what happens here? Us or a bug?