BQ Is The New Trend
The BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 variants of Omicron are on the rise
Whether these new sub-variants result in higher transmission or more severe disease needs to be seen.
Close to the third year of Corona, projections by IHME are becoming less precise, which is caused by the scarcity of reliable data. For Tunisia, IHME's predicted actual infection numbers are a very unlikely 1000x higher than reported, which in no way aligns with my personal observations. However, IHME's predicted actual mortality aligns well with the reported numbers because Tunisia's deaths remain far below those of Europe or North America.
But nevertheless, for France, Germany and the USA these predictions resonate with what other public health experts say: Corona is certainly not going to vanish in thin air, no matter how much we wish that to be true.
During the first two years of the pandemic, the world economy was severely hampered by the lockdowns and some hospitals had to resort to even triaging their patients because they were so overwhelmed.
Lockdowns are a thing of the past but let's not be complacent: They can return should one of the new SARS viruses break out of an animal and, again, hit an immunologically naïve human population.
World economy, however, is faced with another threat: that of ordinary respiratory infections going overboard. This is currently particularly bad in children getting infected by RSV in the US (ars technica, PDF), which not only puts a strain on the children's hospitals but puts parents out of the workforce, either because they need to take care of their children or because they are themselves infected. Other countries might see similar effects.
RSV is a very common virus, just like the viruses causing the common cold (some even being coronaviruses). These virus infections spike during the winter but the last two winters were a wasteland for these viruses because their potential hosts were all wearing masks.
Now, with most people sharing infectious agents again, these viruses are having a rebound, and that with a vengeance.
This phenomenon will pass when most people have been infected and got over it.