For now, wary US treads water with transformed Covid
WASHINGTON: The fastchanging coronavirus has kicked off summer in the U.S. with lots of infections but relatively few deaths compared to its prior incarnations.
COVID-19 is still killing hundreds of Americans each day, but is not nearly as dangerous as it was last fall and winter.
It’s going to be a good summer and we deserve this break, said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. With more Americans shielded from severe illness through vaccination and infection, COVID-19 has transformed for now at least into an unpleasant, inconvenient nuisance for many.
It feels cautiously good right now, said Dr. Dan Kaul, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Michigan Medical Centre in Ann Arbor.
For the first time that I can remember, pretty much since it started, we don’t have any (COVID-19) patients in the ICU. As the nation marks July Fourth, the average number of daily deaths from COVID-19 in the United States is hovering around 360. Last year, during a similar summer lull, it was around 228 in early July. That remains the lowest threshold in U.S. daily deaths since March 2020, when the virus first began its U.S. spread.
But there were far fewer reported cases at this time last year fewer than 20,000 a day. Now, it’s about 109,000 and likely an undercount as home tests aren’t routinely reported.
Today, in the third year of the pandemic, it’s easy to feel confused by the mixed picture: Repeat infections are increasingly likely, and a sizeable share of those infected will face the lingering symptoms of long COVID-19. Yet, the stark danger of death has diminished for many people. And that’s because we’re now at a point that everyone’s immune system has seen either the virus or the vaccine two or three times by now, said Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Over time, the body learns not to overreact when it sees this virus.