Dr C: “Covid will stay – but won’t wipe us out”
There is a lot of discussion about another dangerous wave, worrying new variants and vaccine effectiveness. Dr C discusses what the future holds BRACE BRACE New Covid wave could hit when school and office workers return NEXT MONTH
Everyone is wondering what the future holds regarding this pandemic and I think there are two possible outcomes. The first is that there will be significantly fewer cases, but it won’t completely disappear, just like other SARS-type viruses. Bird flu and swine flu, for example, are still around but they’re just not in the news any more. BSE [also known as Mad Cow Disease] is another example – people are still dying from it, we just don’t see it reported because the numbers are much smaller than in the ’90s. Covid will become one of the established vaccine-preventative diseases, and areas of the world that are lucky and rich enough to vaccinate their populations shouldn’t have too many problems. The other option is that a new strain will come along that vaccines aren’t very effective against, or that targets a particular group (younger people, say) we haven’t really focused on. We’ve seen a hint of that with the Delta variant. I suspect, though, that as there has been a worldwide response to Covid, it’s likely to go the first way.
PUT THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE
The vaccine doesn’t stop you from getting Covid – it stops you from getting seriously ill.
That needs to be more widely stressed. You will have seen reports of deaths of doublejabbed people, but they have overwhelmingly been very vulnerable, either because of their age, various underlying health issues or more likely both. The vaccine may have made the illness slightly better for them, but it still wouldn’t have been enough – with all their health problems – to pull them through. Those cases hit the news and cause a lot of damage to people’s confidence, but when you read the details, you can see why this person was so vulnerable. By early August, vaccines had prevented more than 84,000 deaths and 23 million infections in the UK. That really makes you realise how incredible this vaccination programme has been.
RESET EXPECTATIONS
Now the kids are back at school, a generally healthy family, where the adults have been vaccinated, are at risk of catching Covid but it is likely to be so mild they may not even be aware of it. The same is true for people returning to offices – there will be an increase in the spread, but I don’t think many people will become incredibly sick. I now know that I had Covid in the early days of the pandemic, but at the time it felt like a very bad cold and a fever. That’s what it will be for most people. It’s likely to become one of those illnesses that hits people at a certain time of year and we just have to deal with it.
TAKE PRECAUTIONS
There was a huge spike in infections after the Euros, because lots of people gathered to watch football matches indoors. It was no surprise, but we have to learn from it. The government isn’t imposing restrictions any more – they may still do in the future, but for now it’s over to us. If you’re concerned, you know what to do – wash your hands regularly for 20 seconds with soap and water, meet outside where you can, ventilate spaces if not, wear masks in crowded spaces and keep your distance from others. We now have the information and treatment options we were missing a year and a half ago – and we’re far more protected thanks to vaccines. With coronavirus spreading so easily, and mutating, I doubt we’ll ever be free of it, but that isn’t unique to Covid because pretty much all viruses are constantly mutating – it’s why we get a new flu jab every year. Covid will join the big cohort of other diseases we already deal with. We’ll probably give elderly and vulnerable people a booster jab this winter, too, and evidence about increased protection looks good.
IGNORE SCARE STORIES
Some people are terrified that Covid will wipe us out, and are sharing those fears on social media. We’ve seen how Covid managed to stop the world
in its tracks so we shouldn’t become complacent, but I don’t think it will wipe us out. There are other viruses we haven’t been able to produce a vaccine for, like HIV and Hepatitis, but those haven’t wiped out humanity. We’ve seen millions of deaths from Covid worldwide, but it still only kills less than one per cent of people. It’s very unlikely it would start killing huge numbers of young, healthy people. Every 50 years or so we get a pandemic. It’s been happening the whole time we’ve inhabited this planet. Some cause problems – flu certainly does, but we in the West are very privileged in that we’re fairly unaware of it. In other parts of the world it’s a very different situation. If we’re all going to have to live with Covid, you may worry what that means for elderly and clinically vulnerable people. They’re at more risk of disease in general, not just Covid. It’s an extra risk, but it’s known about, we have the vaccine, and we know what to do if someone gets sick.
PROTECT THE ELDERLY
As a more concrete example of what this means, if my parents told me they were going abroad on holiday, I’d check their awareness about how Covid is spread and that they had health insurance and access to healthcare where they were going, but I wouldn’t try to stop them, I’d tell them to adhere to guidelines. We need to get on with things now.
WEIGH UP RISKS
For anyone who feels nervous, the same applies; weigh up the risks of doing something versus the risks of not doing it. Continuing to stay relatively housebound is starting to take its toll on people, and the risk of dying from Covid for most people is now really quite low. There are lots of benefits to seeing others, going out and travelling abroad – we just need to continue doing it as safely and sensibly as we can.