The Pandemic Might Be Over but Endemic Covid-19 Can Still Ruin Lives
My personal take on this: I unmask when deaths are below 0.1 per 100K for a month
In Washington State, Covid-19 has probably become endemic by now. The number of infections remain high and are going to remain this way for potentially several years. Incidence would then be expected to go down seasonally but would never go to zero as it is with the flu. At the same time, the satisfying immunity status, either through having been exposed to the virus or through vaccination, will keep hospitalisations at a manageable level and deaths relatively low. The population does not see the need for additional vaccination and even public health specialists are sceptical whether annual or bi-annual vaccination makes sense outside risk groups. Risk groups will need to remain vigilant as long as Covid-19 bears the risk of long-term side effects (Post-Covid syndrome AKA Long Covid).
In the entire USA, infection numbers are slightly up and so are test-positive rate and R-value. Hospitalisation is plateauing and mortality is going down but might be up soon again. Is this the foreshadow of the winter rise?
France and Germany see their infection numbers drop dramatically and also their test-positive rates and R-values are down, which is a good sign; for now. The cold season is just beginning. Germany has almost double the daily deaths as France, which is surprising giving the good state of booster vaccination and the fact that people are getting vaccinated here, unlike France, where vaccination has come to an almost standstill.
Tunisia's infection numbers have bottomed out and are going up again. This was confirmed by the director of the Pasteur Institute. The numbers are still low though and a far cry from the magnitude of those in Europe. But, most importantly, there is just one person dying of Covid in a week, which is practically zero.
Coronavirus seems to be full of surprises. It does not simply come and go, like other viruses from the SARS family that cause our common sneezes, no, it's way of infection seems to cause symptoms outside the respiratory tract and these can last for an extremely long time.
Now we are learning about another unusual behaviour, that of the rebound effect( ars technica, PDF). The natural history of COVID-19 is probably variable and undulating and may explain why in some people, the disease, and test-positivity, returns after it had been deemed over.
The rebound symptoms, however seems to be not worse than the original ones and are thus of no great concern. But they open questions about the nature of SARS-CoV-2 infections and research into this phenomenon could potentially lead to better treatment options.