The number of new cases is still ‘dramatically higher’ than the peak of last summer, said dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday.
But understanding what the rest of the year will bring depends on who you ask. Some experts accept optimism, and others support a storm. Many say it is too soon to know. Everyone is worried about the new variants. And they hope that you will contribute to the growth of the number of varieties.
“Despite the trends moving in the right direction, we remain in a very serious situation,” Walensky said Monday at a White House briefing on the coronavirus. “Covid-19 continues to infect too many people.”
Walensky warned that the spread of variants is “a threat that could reverse the recent positive trends we are seeing.”
Viruses change as they spread, and with so many cases worldwide, the coronavirus has had many opportunities. Some changes are harmless. Others make it more contagious.
This is what happened to the variant that was first detected in the UK. The ability to transmit is so worrying that some experts like dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, described the upcoming boom as a “hurricane”.
According to him, this is the eye of the storm.
Hotez told CNN on Tuesday that the new variants, first found in the UK, South Africa and Brazil, could improve current positive trends.
“Everything is going in the right direction. The numbers are going down. We are starting to increase upwards in terms of vaccinations. Everything looks really promising. Unfortunately, we have these peak variants that seem to be increasing, and that really worries me,” Hotez said.
Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm calls the threat a “category five hurricane” and warns that the country has not yet seen the end of new business records.
Even with vaccinations in progress, more cases can lead to more hospitalizations and deaths.
And although this has not yet happened, experts are concerned that the virus could mutate in such a way that tests, vaccines and antibody treatments that are sensitive to the original coronavirus will stop working. More research is needed, but so far there are indications from trials against vaccines and antibodies that it still works against the variants, although some may not work as well. Vaccines are already looking at ways to adapt it, if necessary.
Variants are one of the reasons why dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, wants you to be vaccinated as soon as it’s your turn.
“You need to be vaccinated if it is available as quickly and as quickly as possible,” Fauci said in a newsletter with the White House Covid-19 response team. “Viruses cannot mutate if they do not repeat. And if you stop their replication by vaccinating widely and not giving the virus an open playing field to continue responding to the pressure you put on it, you will have no mutations. do not get. “
Still other experts are more optimistic that the country will come before the variants. Former commissioner for food and drug administration, dr. Scott Gottlieb, told CBS on Sunday that matters should level off, even if the variant causes ‘localized hotspots’.
Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University, said the country is in a “much better place” today than it was three weeks ago. “Business is falling and the optimism and future prospects are very bright when we first arrive in May and June,” Jha said. “The next few months could finally be tough.”
Jha said that the ‘issue’ that could determine the future of how the country experiences the pandemic is how it handles the variant. This could cause the problems that Osterholm warned about, Jha said; however, if people have a short-term strategy to manage it and stay vigilant, “things will go much, much better.”
Dr. Claudia Hoyen, a specialist in infectious diseases at the University Hospital Cleveland Medical Center, thinks it is still too early to know what the future of the pandemic will look like, with the variants and the slow vaccination of vaccines.
In the immediate term, Hoyen said she’s pretty sure things look a lot like that for a while.
You will still be wearing masks for the foreseeable future and you should not eat indoors on Valentine’s Day.
“We’re going to learn more every day,” Hoyen said. “I know it’s not something people want to hear, because it’s not something I want to say. I would like to be able to say by March it will look like this, and then by June it will look like this, but unfortunately there are still so many moving pieces in this puzzle. Every time we think we’re getting to a place where we know what to expect, something different happens. “
Hoyen said she understands people’s frustration.
“But they also need to understand that it’s really like nothing we’ve ever seen before, and that it’s changing so fast that you should try as hard as you can to stay one step ahead of it,” Hoyen said. said.
To stay one step ahead, you know the exercise. Maintain physical distance. Wear a good mask. Wash your hands. Avoid crowds.
“We have to be patient,” Hoyen said. “It’s hard, very difficult. We are people, we love each other. But we still have to watch. You do not want to be the person who created another one. variant and you want to stay safe. ‘
“Ultimately, this is what we want all of us to go through here together, so that maybe this coming Christmas will hopefully look better and we can celebrate with everyone who is here today.”