Covid-19 Is Here To Stay
I expect no big surges or declines in the amount of virus in circulation, nor in hospitalizations, nor in deaths, even as new variants come and go. The winter surge this year has not materialized nationally, even with new variant XBB.1.5. This is in stark contrast with the last two years, with peaks in deaths being in January 2021, September 2021 (Delta), and February 2022 (Omicron), as shown below from the Washington Post.
In the last nine months, U.S. covid-19 deaths have been fairly constant at 300-500 per day.
And hospitalizations have been in the range of 25,000 to 50,000 for the last eight months (the pink area to the right of the vertical line in the graph below).
Covid-19 was the third leading cause of death again last year, after heart attacks and cancer, with less than 300,000 deaths (https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/17/health/covid-death-reporting-2022/index.html ) and will drop to maybe half that number if the present levels continue.
Most People Will Get Reinfected Over and Over Again
Maybe you think you have never had it? You could be like half the people in the U.S. who have had it with such mild symptoms they didn’t realize it. Such is the conclusion of multiple studies, including two with links shown below.
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/19/1118402942/omicron-variant-unaware-covid-research-study
Overall, 9 in 10 Americans "have been infected with the COVID-19 virus at least once, according multiple studies of covid-19 antibodies in the blood.
As long as most people do not take practical precautions (including good fresh air ventilation, selective use of highly-effective masks, and smart use of antigen tests), the virus will not die out, and reinfections will become the norm.
“Long Covid” Is Affecting Millions
Long Covid is affecting millions of Americans. The precise number can’t be pinned down because definitions vary from study to study, but the CDC has pegged it at 15 million U.S. adults.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/20220622.htm
And even though you don’t have to have had a bad case of covid-19 to get it, the impacts can be profound. A large multi-country study "found that … 90% of people living with long COVID initially experienced only mild illness with COVID-19. After developing long COVID, however, the typical person experienced symptoms including fatigue, shortness of breath and cognitive problems such as brain fog – or a combination of these – that affected daily functioning."
The Good News …
is that readers of this blog know how to use the best available practices and technology to reduce the frequency and severity of their covid-19 infections. See our previous post, “Highlights of the 2022 Blogs”, for more details.
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