All the things that can prolong the COVID-19 pandemic – that can make this virus a part of our lives longer than anyone wants – are playing out right before our eyes.
The whole picture: At the moment, the US is still making fantastic progress with vaccinations. But as variants of the virus cause new outbreaks and infect more children, the US is also getting a preview of what the future may hold if our vaccination vapor loses steam – as experts fear it could soon be.
Send the news: The British variant leads to a new increase in cases in Michigan, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer resisted reinstating the closure measures she had earlier adopted in the pandemic.
- Variants are starting to infect more children, even though schools are fast on their way back to reopening, making the pandemic ‘a brand new ball game’, as the University of Minnesota epidemiologist Michael Osterholm recently put it.
- New research confirms that our existing vaccines do not work so well against the South African variant.
Between the lines: This is a preview of the longer, darker future of the coronavirus that the United States may face without adequate vaccinations – one that many experts believe is quite likely.
- Although the rate of vaccinations is still strong, there is a growing fear that it will slow down. In some parts of the country, especially in the south, the demand for shots has already slowed down to create a surplus of available doses.
How it works: The wider a virus can spread, the more opportunities it has to mutate. If the US and ultimately the world do not vaccinate a sufficient percentage of the population, we will set ourselves up to allow the virus to spread and continue to mutate, and we will continue to provide new variants that will continue to pose new threats.
The concern is not necessarily that the facts on the ground today could be disastrous. The vaccines work against the British variant; the South African variant is not a dominant tension in the USA at this stage; and eventually we will be able to vaccinate at least a few children, which helps the US promote herd immunity.
- But if we do not control the virus well enough, we may even experience more new variants for years to come – some of which may be more deadly, some of which are more resistant to vaccines, some of which may be more dangerous to certain specific populations.
- This could lead to a continuing risk of disease or possible death for unvaccinated people and new breeds to reformulate vaccines as new variants emerge.
- And this will lead to a world in which the current population of vaccines will have to stay abreast of the emerging risks, get shots if available, and perhaps revive some measures of the pandemic’s social distance to stay safe.
The conclusion: This darker future is preventable, and our abundant supply of many effective vaccines is the way to prevent it. The more people vaccinated now, the smaller the role COVID-19 is likely to play in the rest of our lives.
Go deeper: Explore Axios’ coronavirus variant tracker