Medical experts say virus not done with US
Fauci warns against complacency as worst-hit nation approaches 1m deaths
As the United States approaches 1 million deaths from COVID-19, people are “still dealing with this virus” and medical experts remain wary of the virus’ path.
As of Wednesday, the total number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the US was 995,747, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to US President Joe Biden, recently said the US is much better off now than it was a year ago because of vaccines and booster shots, but “we are still dealing with this virus”.
“It’s not behind us,” said Fauci, who as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has been battling the virus since the onset of the pandemic.
Many people in the US, especially political leaders, want to push the pandemic as far behind them as possible, even as people continue dying from COVID-19 every day, reported The Guardian on Tuesday.
“The United States is edging toward a grim milestone: 1 million dead from COVID-19. But there has been little recognition of the massive fatalities from the pandemic,” stated The Guardian.
Kristin Urquiza, co-founder of grassroots nonprofit Marked By COVID, said there is an opportunity to understand what went wrong and correct the path. But before that can happen, the country first needs to look at its losses and understand them, Urquiza was quoted as saying by The Guardian.
“It’s a taboo subject. There’s a rush to downplay and normalize this experience,” she said.
Driven by the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron, new confirmed cases in the US are on the rise again after a sharp drop in Omicron’s winter surge. The US is averaging 77,092 cases a day, up 52 percent from two weeks ago, according to a New York Times tracker.
Cases are climbing in all but seven states and territories, with more than a dozen states doubling the number of cases compared with two weeks ago.
“I know we all want to be done with COVID, but I don’t think it’s done with us,” Jessica Justman, associate professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, told USA Today.
The Biden administration is preparing for the possibility that 100 million people — roughly 30 percent of the US population — will be infected with the coronavirus this fall and winter, reported The New York Times citing an administration official.
The number is based on a range of outside models, though the official who spoke on condition of anonymity did not specify which ones and assumes that a rapidly evolving virus in the Omicron family will spread through a population with waning immunity against infection.
COVID-19 still kills an average of 300 people in the US per day, said David Dowdy, associate epidemiology professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. “People are still dying of COVID, and we can’t rule out the possibility of a major wave in the coming months,” he added.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted last week that COVID-19 “will not be over anywhere until it’s over everywhere”.
Relatives lost
Another number — 9 million — reflects the actual impact of COVID19, reported The Washington Post. That is the number of people in the US who have lost spouses, parents, grandparents, siblings and children to COVID-19.
The number was derived from the work of sociologists at Penn State and the University of Southern California who developed a “bereavement multiplier”, a way to calculate how many close relatives each COVID-19 death leaves behind and bereft.
On average, each COVID-19 death leaves nine close relatives behind — not including extended family or close friends, longtime co-workers or next-door neighbors.
Since February 2020, COVID-19 has been listed as the underlying cause of death on at least 90 percent of those death certificates, according to the CDC. COVID-19 quickly became the third-biggest killer of US citizens, behind only heart disease and cancer, the CDC says.