Tag: endemic

COVID-19 cases rise every day in Denmark, but the country is confident it can live without restrictions for now

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-13/denmark-has-taken-living-with-covid-to-a-whole-new-level/100812736

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Excerpt:

At the beginning of February, the Danish government decided COVID-19 was no longer a “socially critical disease” and it scrapped all restrictions.

Danes aren’t even legally required to quarantine.

Denmark was among the first countries in the world to implement a lockdown, in March 2020, amid the rapid spread of COVID-19.

It also invested heavily in genomic sequencing to track new variants like the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron, which is now dominant in Denmark and even more transmissible than the original strain.

And when the Omicron variant began spreading rapidly last year, Denmark reimposed restrictions on workplaces, hospitality and schools in December.

But Tyra Grove Krause, the chief epidemiologist at Denmark’s State Serum Institute, said it also sparked a major rethink in the country’s approach to COVID-19.

Author(s): Nick Dole

Publication Date: 12 Feb 2022

Publication Site: ABC News Australia

Covid-19, Endemic or Not, Will Still Make Us Poorer

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-endemic-or-not-will-still-make-us-poorer-11642608213

Excerpt:

Endemic Covid-19 could thus become a lasting “supply shock” that degrades how much economies can produce, similar to the surge in oil prices in the 1970s. In October, the International Monetary Fund estimated global output this year would still be 3% lower than it had projected in 2019, with Western Europe and Latin America showing much bigger hits than China and Japan, where Covid-19’s toll has been much lower.

The U.S. is an exception: Output in the last quarter of 2021 was roughly back to its pre-pandemic trend. But the economy, distorted and disrupted by Covid-19, is struggling to sustain this level of output, as the surge in inflation to 7% demonstrates.

Covid-19 might have boosted efficiency in some industries by speeding up digitization and adoption of remote work. Goldman Sachs economists estimate this delivered a 3% to 4% boost to U.S. productivity.

But some of the shift to remote operations is involuntary, and some of the rise in productivity might reflect an overworked workforce. Indeed, the pandemic has left the labor force smaller, sicker and less happy. Absences due to illness among employed workers have averaged 50% higher in the last two years. In early January, nearly 12 million people weren’t working because they were sick with Covid-19, caring for someone with coronavirus, or concerned about getting or spreading the disease, according to a regular Census Bureau survey. The figure hasn’t been below 4 million since June 2020.

In the past year, workers have reported declining satisfaction with their wages and a rising “reservation wage,” that is, how much they would have to be paid to accept a new job, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. This might reflect inflation, changed expectations, or stress due to Covid-19 testing, masks and vaccine mandates, or their absence.

For employers, this makes it much harder to attract the necessary staff. Nursing homes have boosted hourly wages 14% since the start of the pandemic, yet staffing has plummeted 12%, impairing their ability to accept new patients. Such shortages impose a cost that doesn’t show up in gross domestic product.

Author(s): Greg Ip

Publication Date: 19 Jan 2022

Publication Site: WSJ

How Malaria Brought Down Great Empires

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-malaria-brought-down-great-empires-11634320669

Excerpt:

Malaria could stop an army in its tracks. In 413 BC, at the height of the disastrous Sicilian Expedition, malaria sucked the life out of the Athenian army as it lay siege to Syracuse. Athens never recovered from its losses and fell to the Spartans in 404 BC.

But while malaria helped to destroy the Athenians, it provided the Roman Republic with a natural barrier against invaders. The infested Pontine Marshes south of Rome enabled successive generations of Romans to conquer North Africa, the Middle East and Europe with some assurance they wouldn’t lose their own homeland. Thus, the spread of classical civilization was carried on the wings of the mosquito. In the 5th century, though, the blessing became a curse as the disease robbed the Roman Empire of its manpower.

Throughout the medieval era, malaria checked the territorial ambitions of kings and emperors. The greatest beneficiary was Africa, where endemic malaria was deadly to would-be colonizers. The conquistadors suffered no such handicap in the New World.

Author(s): Amanda Foreman

Publication Date: 15 Oct 2021

Publication Site: WSJ

Covid-19 Could Become Like the Flu if More People Get Vaccinated

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-could-become-like-the-flu-if-more-people-get-vaccinated-11631439002

Excerpt:

Covid-19 might become a routine illness like a common cold or the flu one day, virologists and epidemiologists say. But it will take a lot to get there, and the ferocious spread of the Delta variant that has filled hospitals again shows how challenging that path could be.

More than 20 months after the pandemic began, people around the world are having to change the way they think about a disease that many public-health authorities once believed they could conquer. A terrifying emergency has become a long, grinding haul.

The supercontagious Delta variant has made the virus virtually impossible to get rid of. It has fueled surges in cases across the globe, even in countries like Australia that had largely kept the pandemic out.

…..

For Covid-19 to become mild, most people will need some immunity, which studies have shown reduces the severity of the disease. Infections provide some immunity, but that comes with the risk of severe illness, death and further spread of the virus, compared with vaccines. People could become vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 if that immunity erodes or is weak, or if the virus mutates.

….

A future Covid-19 could be less deadly than the flu, which kills up to a half-million people a year globally, because the most widely used Covid-19 vaccines are better than flu vaccines, said Dr. Garcia-Sastre, an influenza expert. The disease could still remain serious for people with weaker immune systems, doctors said.

Author(s): Betsy McKay

Publication Date: 12 September 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

How elimination versus suppression became Covid’s cold war

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/03/covid-19-elimination-versus-suppression?mc_cid=919aa668d9&mc_eid=983bcf5922

Excerpt:

The rest of the world is pursuing a mitigation and suppression strategy, according to which we will have to live with Covid-19 and therefore we must learn to manage it – aiming for herd immunity by the most painless route possible. The poster child for this approach is Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, who told me last week that elimination was a pipe dream for most of the world because even if a country were able to achieve it once, it would be impossible to prevent reintroductions without maintaining a costly and potentially restrictive surveillance apparatus. If the strategy failed, the country would have to revert to suppression anyway, but the population would have paid a much higher price. He too is in it for the long haul, he says; “sustainability” is his watchword. This is how he justifies the gradual tightening of restrictions in his country, from a very relaxed start.

And so the world is cleaved in two, with each bloc operating according to a different set of assumptions, in a kind of public health rerun of the cold war. One bloc assumes that Covid-19 can be eliminated, the other that it can’t. The latter thinks the former is chasing an impossible utopia. The former thinks the utopia could be achieved if only everyone pulled together.

Author(s): Laura Spinney

Publication Date: 3 March 2021

Publication Site: The Guardian

As Covid-19 Vaccines Raise Hope, Cold Reality Dawns That Illness Is Likely Here to Stay

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-vaccines-raise-hope-cold-reality-dawns-covid-19-is-likely-here-to-stay-11612693803?mod=djemwhatsnews

Excerpt:

Vaccination drives hold out the promise of curbing Covid-19, but governments and businesses are increasingly accepting what epidemiologists have long warned: The pathogen will circulate for years, or even decades, leaving society to coexist with Covid-19 much as it does with other endemic diseases like flu, measles, and HIV.

The ease with which the coronavirus spreads, the emergence of new strains and poor access to vaccines in large parts of the world mean Covid-19 could shift from a pandemic disease to an endemic one, implying lasting modifications to personal and societal behavior, epidemiologists say.

“Going through the five phases of grief, we need to come to the acceptance phase that our lives are not going to be the same,” said Thomas Frieden, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I don’t think the world has really absorbed the fact that these are long-term changes.”

Author(s): Daniela Hernandez and Drew Hinshaw

Publication Date: 7 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal