There’s good reason to keep taking COVID-19 seriously

Trump could have urged Americans to be vigilant, but he did the opposite

You could almost hear the collective sigh Monday from the world’s public health officials, epidemiologists and front-line health-care workers.

U.S. President Donald Trump, upon announcing his release from the Walter Reed Medical Center, having improved in his condition with COVID-19, could have taken the occasion to repeat his previous thanks to the medical staff who treated him.

He might have warned the American people to wear masks and social distance in order to slow the spread of the illness that made it necessary for him to be given oxygen.

He could have simply said nothing. Instead, he did the other thing. “Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life,” he tweeted Monday evening, hours before leaving the hospital. “We have developed, under the Trump

Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”

News that the president was well enough to leave the hospital despite his diagnosis of COVID-19 was met with gratitude and support from American public figures of all political stripes.

Less universal was an appreciation for the president’s insistence on downplaying the seriousness of the virus, apparently using his own experience as evidence Americans needn’t be afraid.

Here’s some of what’s actually going on around COVID-19 right now.

> People continue to die of COVID-19: The fact that Donald Trump appears to be on the mend is not unexpected. In fact, his recovery is the most likely outcome of getting COVID-19, even with his age and weight putting him at higher risk for a serious form of the disease compared to other parts of the population.

Nevertheless, people are still dying of COVID-19 in the United States, Canada and around the world. As of Monday, more than one million people have died of the disease worldwide, including more than 209,000 in the U.S. America continues to count as many as 1,000 deaths from the disease every day. > Many places are in a second wave: A second wave of COVID-19 cases had been predicted by public health officials since the height of the first wave, when experts said the summer might provide a temporary respite from rapid spread of the disease, only for it to pick up again in the fall.

What we are calling a second wave in Canada is more like a continual rise in cases in the United States. Transmission of COVID-19 continued throughout the summer while the U.S. economy remained largely open.

Jurisdictions outside of North America are also facing a second wave. That includes France, the U.K., the Netherlands, Malaysia and Myanmar. > Winter is coming, and flu season along with it: Colder weather brings people indoors, and that’s where COVID-19 likes to spread.

But the reasons to take COVID-19 even more seriously in the winter go beyond the likelihood of transmission.

Mental health experts have pointed out that as winter descends, so may a new sense of gloom, as options to socialize outdoors disappear.

“With the lack of sunlight, and less social connections from not being able to spend as much time outdoors, that’s a triple whammy,” Steve Joordens, professor of psychology at University of Toronto, told the Star.

Winter is also flu season, and that means the possibility of more people entering hospitals.

> Contact tracing is struggling to keep up: Contact tracing, the process through which public health workers find people who have likely been exposed to the virus and ask them to isolate or monitor for symptoms, is one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“We’ve seen contact tracing work really well in some settings, like New Zealand, where they eliminated transmission for 101 days,” said Jean-Paul Soucy, a University of Toronto researcher who has been tracking the spread of the coronavirus in Canada.

But, Soucy explained, contact tracing begins to fall apart when there are just too many people to contact who may have been exposed to COVID-19.

Then, public health organizations, such as Toronto Public Health, may have to make a decision to suspend contact tracing and prioritize contacting only the people they know to be sick.

> Vaccine trials are making progress — but there’s no guarantee: One thing is for sure about a COVID-19 vaccine: Even in the best-case scenario, it is not right around the corner.

Canada is doing its first review of a potential COVID-19 vaccine, which could become available to Canadians if it passes rigorous clinical trials.

But that will take several months.

Still, once a vaccine is approved and available for the public, it must clear the hurdle of vaccine hesitancy — those who, for a variety of reasons, won’t enthusiastically volunteer for the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as its available.

There are, unfortunately, still plenty of things to worry about.