Three Things Thursday
End of the pandemic, effectiveness of the new boosters, and variants to watch
Given that we are living through THREE global health emergencies (COVID, polio, and monkeypox), new vaccines are being approved, new outbreaks are occurring, and the reality that being healthy is indeed a radical selfless act of loving others (read: we need to redefine what it means to be healthy), “Three Things Thursday” highlights three things I am paying attention to as an epidemiologist each week.
Hoping these posts help to educate and empower you to be healthy and create healthy communities.
Here we go… Three Things Thursday.
Biden Says the Pandemic Is Over
On Sunday, President Biden said on 60 Minutes —
“The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with Covid. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over.”
With case counts and hospitalizations decreasing (by 22% and 14%, respectively) and more than 400 deaths per day in the United States, President Biden’s quote has been a tough one for me to swallow. I believe the President was trying to say that we are all over the pandemic. It has been a long couple of years. We have lived through a global shutdown, home quarantines, fear of an unknown disease, new mandates requiring masks and physical distancing, remote learning, hybrid learning, and so much more. We have been sick, we’ve weathered new variants, and we’ve watched people die.
Despite all that we have been through —
COVID is not over.
COVID will be with us for the rest of our lives. It is not time to declare COVID over and forget about it. Instead, we need to learn from these past few years, and we need to use the vaccines, treatments, and mitigation strategies we have developed over the past two and a half years to decrease disease spread and death.
The fear that we experienced in 2020 — when we knew so little about COVID and we did not have vaccines or any treatments for the disease — is no longer warranted. But we cannot just declare COVID or the pandemic over.
COVID is here to stay.
We will need to learn to live with it — meaning we will need to get vaccinated (as instructed), stay home when we are sick, wear a mask when community spread increases, and seek out treatment when we become sick.
The New Bivalent Vaccine Is Safe & Effective
The results of a phase 2/3 clinical trial focused on the safety and effectiveness of the new bivalent COVID booster shot (made by Moderna) was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
During the trial, the new bivalent Omicron-containing vaccine elicited a neutralizing antibody response against Omicron. Meaning the vaccine was effective at preventing severe illness, death, and (in some instances) symptoms caused by the Omicron subvariants.
This is encouraging news.
The trial also showed that the new bivalent vaccine is safe.
Just a friendly reminder — everyone 12 and older should get their booster shot ~4 months after their most recent booster or COVID infection.
New Variants
The SARS-CoV-2 virus continues to mutate. And we are keeping our eyes on several new Omicron variants — BA.2.3, BJ.1, and BA.2.75.2. The number of BA.2.75.2 variant cases is doubling each week. This is the fast-growing lineage right now. If its growth rate continues at the current pace, this variant could be the dominant variant in about two months. It is possible that this variant could cause the spike in cases we are anticipating in the coming months.
At this point in time, we are just watching these variants. And we are conducting research to understand if these new variants will evade our immune responses.
We will wait and see…
What we do know and what we should expect in the coming months is that the virus will continue to spread and mutate. We cannot be surprised by this.
And we must continue to invest in public health infrastructure and advancements — we need reliable and up-to-date surveillance data, we need safe and effective vaccines, and we need clear and actionable public health education and messaging.
“Health care is vital to all of us some of the time, but public health is vital to all of us all of the time.” ~ C. Everett Koop
Thank you for stating the Pandemic is NOT over. I have neighbors that have been extremely sick with Covid. Great article and I shared it.
I got my 2nd booster just before the new booster came out, do I need the new one also? I love reading your weekly updates. It is informative and interesting to read each week. Hope you all are back to work and school. I always have a mask with me.