President Biden has declared an end to the pandemic. A Definition of What That Means

Corona mask - The End

Corona mask – The End Credit – Getty Images— FHM

The World Health Organization (WHO) was pressed into service when reports of COVID-19 cases began piling up in different parts of the world. When the news broke, rapid response measures were put into motion to stem the tide of infections.

Now, in an interview with 60 Minutes, Vice President Biden declared that “the pandemic is gone,” citing the fact that individuals are no longer wearing masks and huge public events like the Detroit Auto Show have resumed in person.

Public health officials, however, are sceptical of the statement out of fear that people may relax the shaky protocols they’ve put in place to prevent a highly deadly virus from spreading again. Concerningly, this opinion emerges precisely as health officials in the United States initiate a booster campaign to reinstate diminishing protection from immunizations before the fall and winter, when respiratory viruses like SARS-CoV-2 tend to be at large.

While it is true that few people are actually donning masks in public, this is mostly due to public fatigue and the fact that a judge in Florida has ruled against federal laws requiring masks in government buildings and on mass transit. As a result, we can’t simply attribute the lack of masks to a reduction in the spread of the infection.

Dr. Eric Toner, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in the Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the President’s declaration is “counterproductive because it reinforces the perception that many people have that we don’t have to worry about COVID-19 any more.” When people talk about a pandemic, they usually mean that a disease that nobody has immunity to is spreading rapidly over the world and could kill millions of people. It is undeniable that the pandemic is not as bad as it once was. But the reality is that every day there are still 65,000 new cases reported and 450 deaths, which works out to 170,000 deaths each year. Therefore, it has not yet ended.

Since the Omicron wave arrived earlier this year, both new infections and fatalities caused by COVID-19 have dropped considerably. On average, more than 500 people are dying from COVID-19 every week, and it’s becoming increasingly common for the elderly to be hospitalised as their immunity from vaccination wanes.

It is the opinion of infectious disease professionals that a declaration that the pandemic is over will lead to a false sense of security among the general public. COVID-19 still causes many more illnesses and deaths than flu does on average, even if we are moving toward a scenario in which COVID-19 becomes more like the flu, with an annual (or more frequent) vaccine. Omicron and its most recent subtypes, BA.4 and BA.5, are extremely contagious. But here’s the thing with viruses: the more infections they create and the more hosts they infect, the better their odds of replicating, even if they don’t seem to be causing more severe disease. And each time it replicates, it has the potential to introduce new mutations. More mutations increase the possibility that some of them will result in a strain that is more capable of causing severe disease.

In light of the development of vaccinations and antiviral drugs, the risk posed by COVID-19 is unquestionably lower than it was before. The government declared COVID-19 a public health emergency, allowing Congress to allocate funds to administer those doses and therapies free of charge to the American people. As of right now, neither the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) nor the World Health Organization (WHO) have declared victory over COVID-19.

If the pandemic is declared gone, funding to administer the first Omicron booster shot before winter may be cut off, exactly when it’s needed most. Toner comments that the administration’s efforts to solicit additional funding from Congress for COVID-19 come at a time when the messaging looks both incongruous and inappropriate. Secretary Xavier Becerra recently briefed reporters and said that the HHS has already reallocated resources to make these boosters available at no cost to the public.

When do you anticipate that COVID-19 will conclude? There is no universally accepted definition of a pandemic or its endpoint. Among the key factors for declaring a pandemic is the scope of the disease, in terms of its distribution over the world, and similarly, decreases in cases and propagation of illness would weigh into its conclusion. These choices are both epidemiological and economic in nature, as the latest IMF projections show that the world economy will lose $12.5 trillion to the COVID-19 pandemic by 2024. This funding has put a pressure on governments in both the developed and developing worlds; if COVID-19 is no longer a pandemic, governments may not feel as compelled to devote substantial resources into testing, vaccine programmes, and therapies. It’s possible that governors who are leaning toward reducing or eliminating COVID-19 response measures would be further encouraged by the White House’s declaration that the pandemic is finished. That might make matters worse, as more unprotected people congregate indoors during the colder months, when illnesses spread more easily, without wearing masks.

This next winter will be crucial for gauging the pandemic’s future trajectory; if a new booster is developed that better matches the Omicron strain, the pandemic may continue to diminish and begin behaving more like seasonal influenza. Omicron, or even a version that hasn’t been named yet, could cause another outbreak if people stop worrying about COVID-19.