We are still not over the pandemic. However, the new cases have declined to 75,000 daily. It is estimated that the United States is working towards waiving off several restrictions it brought within the earlier half of 2020. The flight status reveals that people are gradually returning to pre-pandemic travel levels.
Today, several kids qualify for the vaccine and are returning to school. The good part is that there is no extreme surge in the covid infections. However, few students get compelled to wear masks as it is always better to stay on guards.
Most people today look at vaccination as a promise to return to the life they lived before the pandemic. According to MyBioSource, 69% of people in Colorado, 59% in Indiana, and 76% in New Jersey have felt that the vaccine mandate will not hamper their freedom.
Going by the current state of affairs, the pandemic is gradually coming to a halt in the United States in several different ways. However, it is happening without any milestone or a declaration of freedom from the deadly virus.
The perspective shift that matters
According to Jennifer Nuzzo an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the pandemic might not end. The idea is to stop caring and fretting so much. And she says that by now the virus has started to fade into the backdrop for many people and their lives. Having said that, there might still be a winter surge any year because the respiratory viruses usually start to thrive when people gather in the heated rooms.
A few people said they might anticipate a modest uptick in the infections in the past few weeks. The extreme winter infection wave last year, which peaked in January, was one such instance.
And even though the aggregate national numbers are less, several states with a cold weather have witnessed an increase in the hospitalization rates. Studies show that Alaska has a dark winter and moved to an increased infection rate for the nation.
The Biden administration and the dangerous-disease experts will not make definitive predictions about when the pandemic should end. The medical community by now has realized that the nature of SARS-CoV-2 is opportunistic and slippery.
Scientists have shared that the virus is still mutating. And in the past few months, there have been times when it has lost traction and surged again with a new behavior, thereby increasing the contagiousness.
The virus trends to expect
The deadly virus will thrive as its past variants have shown us the same.Since most people in the United States are vaccinated, and the infection rates are going down, we are walking into a new stage of the pandemic. In this phase, most people in the United States and across the globe are embracing to the constant presence of the endemic, which is a nonlethal pathogen. There hardly is any other choice as the virus won’t go away.
Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Irvine, asserts that the virus is gradually becoming a part of the home furniture. People do wear the cloth masks in the grocery but don’t wear the N95 masks. He asserts that gradually humans are developing herd immunity. That is not all.
Robert M. Wachter, who belongs to the Department of Medicine at the University of California, has another interesting observation. He says that he doesn’t get complacent about the virus. In fact, he went onto social media to warn people about the variants and requested people to exercise more caution so that they don’t get affected by the breakthrough infections.
But after he got vaccinated and the booster dose, he came up with new assumptions about the environment. Hence, he says that he would go on leading his life as he doesn’t want to let go of travel and moving outdoors.
He further says that the world is gradually moving towards a steady state, with things getting better in the coming years. The fact that herd immunity is becoming a reality will bring about a change.
However, Wachter never overlooks the importance of caution. Once he got the booster, he was ready to accept a bit of risk. Having said that, wearing a mask and using a sanitizer is essential. It is also necessary to abide by the safety protocols, such as taking the booster dose once there is a new virus variant.
The uncertainties as to what a virus can do in the forthcoming months pose a considerable challenge for the Biden administration. Here the White House urges people to see the virus, which is the root of the pandemic, is real and is a threat to public health.
Hence, it is essential for all to exercise continuous precautions along with universal vaccination. The objective here is to take all precautions so that the virus doesn’t win in any case.