Frieden shared on Twitter that, “We are in a very different place now than we were two years ago. Now, the virus is more contagious but less virulent, we have a wall of immunity vaccination and previous infections, and better testing, treatment and disease surveillance.”
Two years ago, Covid led to hospitalizations and deaths in a high proportion of those infected. Almost everyone who tested positive in hospitals was there because the virus was making them sick—after all, there was no immunity to it, and at the same time, the virus was more deadly than omicronHe tweeted.
90% of Americans have some level of immunity to COVID – from vaccination, prior infection, or both. “The virus itself has evolved, becoming more infectious (alpha), more infectious and more virulent (delta) and much more infectious but less virulent (omicron). It can change again unexpectedly and will almost certainly change,” he said.
Even though many at-home COVID test results are not being reported, the actual case rate is now much lower than it was a few months ago, and many people are unable to travel, gather indoors and take off their masks. feel more comfortable. “If you are healthy and up-to-date with your vaccinations, this is an appropriate approach. COVID puts you at relatively low risk of serious illness, especially compared to other daily risks that we voluntarily accept. Let’s do it,” he tweeted.
Flu vs Covid-19:
It is important to spend a moment on the entrenched issue of flu vs covid. It is pertinent to use the comparison with the flu as a guide to understand how much COVID has changed.
“First, let’s be clear: We react very rarely to the flu. The flu kills thousands of people every year, sends hundreds of thousands of people to the hospital and results in a huge hit to our economy, schools, and productivity. Hence comparing Covid to flu, comparing Covid to cold,” he wrote.
For most of the pandemic, it was clear that Covid was much deadlier than the flu. Today, there are probably fewer people hospitalized with Covid in the US than there are hospitalizations for the flu during the average flu year. He tweeted, but in the last six weeks hospitalizations have started in some places and have almost doubled.
This is challenging to explain, but the fact is that today a higher proportion of people hospitalized who test positive for COVID are in hospital for other reasons than two years ago, when we had no immunity, And the stress was deadly, he said.
“New data from the CDC shows that COVID was the third leading cause of death in 2021. Nearly half of US COVID deaths in 2020 could have been prevented through better public health action, and more than half of 2021 deaths could be prevented.” could have been prevented through better vaccination,” he said. That with vaccines, our immune wall and new highly effective treatments.
And with vaccines like Paxlovid, “we can now place the odds of severe disease caused by omicron variants at or below those caused by the flu. A measured approach to both could prevent deaths while limiting disruption to our lives, ” they wrote.
But Omicron can still be dangerous, especially in people who are older, immunosuppressed or not up-to-date with their vaccinations, as we tragically saw in Hong Kong. And in the long run, COVID is a serious risk that we can neither dismiss nor take lightly. A new meta-analysis reported that half of the people infected with Kovid show symptoms after at least four months.
What To Do Next:
Frieden said that “we need to accelerate clinical trials for long-term COVID patients – too many people are suffering. ACT UP showed us that we can advance the science faster.”
Weighing all of the above is no easy task, and each of us can come to different conclusions about what activities we are comfortable doing, such as our vaccination status, risk tolerance, age, underlying health. And to whom can we potentially spread the virus?
“If you are immunosuppressed, aged, or medically vulnerable – or live with someone who is – you will likely want to continue to mask up, and in fact, step up your mask game to N95 and make sure You can make sure you’re up-to-date with vaccinations and seek prompt treatment if you do get sick,” he said.
Frieden highlights that even though we may not personally feel at risk from COVID, those around us may, “we have a responsibility to protect those who are most vulnerable by taking the appropriate precautions , including wearing masks in high-risk environments or when community spread is high.”
Finally, he notified that public health needed to be strengthened, not undermined its budgetary stability and legal authority. Covid was not supposed to kill most of the people who died from it in the US and globally. “If we heed the lessons of this pandemic, we can create a safer, healthier, more stable society,” he said.