July 16, 2022
Midway through Year 3 of the pandemic, it has come down to this. Denial is pervasive. No longer confined to the most fringy anti-science types, denial seems to be everywhere. We are so weary that we’ve convinced ourselves the pandemic is over.
Call me the skunk at the garden party, but I’m here to tell you the pandemic is not over. The BA.5 subvariant is here and it is not fun. If you can’t afford to miss a week or two at work, or face the risk of long Covid, or live with someone whose immune system is compromised, you must be careful, even vigilant.
Here’s the latest data. In the past week in the United States, reported cases rose 22% (averaging 131,000 cases per day), hospitalizations rose 7% (41,536 patients overall) and deaths rose 26% (averaging 421 deaths per day, more than the daily death rates from breast and prostate cancer combined). Alabama averaged almost 2,400 reported cases per day this week, giving us a higher per capita rate (48 per 100K) than the national average (39 per 100K). The State has 766 Covid patients (including 100 in intensive care), an increase of 11%. Thankfully, Alabama’s death rate is holding steady for the moment at 5 deaths per day.
Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN this week, "This is a full-on BA.5 wave that we're experiencing this summer. It's actually looking worse in the Southern states, just like 2020, just like 2021. We're looking at probably close to a million new cases a day.” (Actual infections exceed reported ones by a factor of 7x-10x due to the prevalence of unreported at-home tests). If Hotez is right, then it puts us in the range of cases reported during the first Omicron wave, in January.
Don’t get me wrong. Things ARE getting better, in just about every way. We are traveling and enjoying life more than we were a year ago. We worry less about our loved ones, grateful for the antiviral drugs that work and for the shots that keep us alive. But the advent of the BA.5 variant means that the incidence of reinfection is rising at an alarming rate. And here’s the thing about reinfection - a recent study comparing the health of people who'd been infected multiple times found that the risk of new and potentially long-term health problems rose with each subsequent infection.
On Tuesday, Dr. Fauci reminded us of another reason why it is so crucial to reduce the rate of infection. If the virus is not rapidly replicating, he said, “it gives it less of a chance of a mutation, which gives it less of a chance of evolving into another variant.” To that point, experts are closely watching another Omicron descendant, BA.2.75, which has been detected in 10 countries (including the United States) and seems to be growing quickly in India. Little is known about BA.2.75, but it has all the hallmarks of a variant that could go global. One of these days, a variant will come along that is not only more transmissible but also more deadly.
That’s why booster shots and behavioral precautions remain so essential. Adults over the age of 50 who've had one booster shot have four times greater risk of dying from Covid than those with at least 2 booster shots, according to CDC data. Therefore, it seems inevitable that a 2nd booster will soon become available to healthy adults under 50 years old, a point that was made by Dr Fauci just this week.
Until that happens, what is a healthy sub-50 adult supposed to do? Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt Medical Center, offered this advice: "People are not usually quizzed too thoroughly. I would just come up and say 'Hi, I've got bad diabetes' or 'I have underlying heart disease' and stuff like that, and at least in our neck of the woods, you'll be able to get a vaccine." Just sayin’. The totals:
7/2 - not reporting
7/3 - not reporting
7/4 - 3,337
7/5 - 806
7/6 - 4,376
7/7 - 3,222
7/8 - 2,892
7/9 - not reporting
7/10 - not reporting
7/11 - 4,575
7/12 - 3,878
7/13 - 2,699
7/14 - 2,893
7/15 - 2,604