This New COVID Wave May Be More Like a Flood
A new COVID wave now fueled by four Omicron subvariants continues to drive up infections throughout the country. Though there are signs that the surge in the Northeast has begun to stabilize, infections are on the rise in other regions and the level of community transmission remains high across the vast majority of the country. There is also reason to worry that the current wave may not subside for a long time, particularly now that the two newest and most troubling Omicron subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5, may be starting to outcompete their predecessors. While previous nationwide surges in cases have mostly played out as single waves, this new one might be more like a flood. It could plateau, or dip and swell from that higher baseline across the coming weeks or even months.
The BA.2.12.1 subvariant, which overtook BA.2 as the nation’s dominant strain last month, still makes up an estimated 62 percent of cases nationwide according to the CDC. BA.4 and BA.5 may be even more transmissible than BA.2.12.1, and it seems clear that they are better equipped to evade immunity induced by prior infection or vaccination. The CDC now estimates that the BA.4 and BA.5 account for a combined 13 percent (5.4 percent BA.4 and 7.6 percent BA.5) of U.S. cases, up from a combined 1.1 percent a month ago.
The sister subvariants, which arrived in the U.S. in March, are on the rise across the country, but especially in some parts of the central U.S. and Southwest. It’s not yet clear whether or not BA.4 and BA.5 will overtake BA.2.12.1 in the U.S. but some COVID experts are predicting it will become dominant in the U.S. and globally, based on some preliminary studies. In recent lab research conducted by scientists at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, BA.4 and BA.5’s unique combination of mutations were found to equip them with a more than 4.2-fold advantage over BA.2 in escaping antibodies in people who have been vaccinated and boosted, whereas BA.2.12.1 only had a 1.8-fold advantage over BA.2 in that regard. The researchers also found that antibodies of vaccinated people who had breakthrough infections offered less protection against BA.4 and BA.5. That suggests, as previous research has, that BA.4 and BA.5 are going to cause a lot of breakthrough infections and reinfections, including among people who caught the original Omicron strain over the winter. That’s what has already happened in South Africa, where BA.4 and BA.5 fueled a wave of cases, despite most of the population having already had Omicron.
The ability of BA.4 and BA.5 to outcompete BA.2.12.1 will become clear very soon, now that they are starting to get a foothold in places like New York where the spread of BA.2.12.1 has been rampant. CNN additionally reports that data out of the U.K. found that the sister subvariants were spreading faster there than BA.2.12.1 was. “The betting favorite now suggests that BA.4 and BA.5 would be able to take out BA.2.12.1,” the assistant director of the University of Washington’s clinical virology laboratory, Dr. Alex Greninger, told CNN, adding that, “For the summer, going into the winter, I expect these viruses to be out there at relatively high levels.”
The good news across the board with all of the Omicron subvariants in the U.S. is that there is not yet evidence that any of these strains cause more severe illness than Omicron does. U.S. COVID hospitalizations have been trending up since the middle of April, including a 16 percent nationwide increase over the last two weeks, but the climb hasn’t been as steep as during previous waves. And while there has always been a lag time between hospitalizations and deaths, thus far COVID deaths haven’t trended up much at all. During the BA.4/5 wave in South Africa, hospitalizations rose but remained low compared with previous waves, and there wasn’t a substantial increase in the number of deaths from COVID there. Scientists have attributed those trends to the very high immunity levels among the population. In other words, while immunity from prior infection or vaccination may not protect well at all against catching BA.4 and BA.5, they may still protect very well against severe illness, particularly among people who have been vaccinated and boosted, or who have hybrid immunity from both vaccination and prior infection.
Still, though the U.S. may see nothing like the spike in hospitalizations and deaths the Omicron wave produced, the country could remain inundated with COVID infections for the foreseeable future — a sustained-spread summer, or as The Atlantic’s Yasmin Tayag has framed it: the “When will it end?” wave. And the level of infections may not drop off before what the Biden administration and many scientists have warned will be a large spike this coming fall or winter.
The other issue is that nobody really knows how many infections this wave is producing — and that will likely remain unclear, both for this and future waves. The wave is undoubtedly much larger than confirmed case counts indicate, since they don’t include all the unreported infections detected by now-ubiquitous at-home COVID tests. Hospitalization rates, COVID levels in wastewater, and test-positivity rates are now a better indicator of wave size than confirmed-case tallies, but each metric has its flaws and they don’t offer a complete picture.
According to the CDC’s community-transmission dashboard, which factors in both reported cases and test-positivity rates, more than 78 percent of U.S. counties are currently experiencing high community transmission of COVID, and nearly 11 percent are experiencing substantial levels of transmission. Some COVID experts have recently speculated that the number of new infections were between five to ten times higher than official case counts indicated. The real number could be even higher than that, according to a new (preprint) study from researchers at the CUNY Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health.
Focusing on the recent surge of infections in New York City, the researchers estimated that more than one in five adult New Yorkers — about 1.5 million people — likely had COVID at some point during the two weeks ending May 8. “It would appear official case counts are under-estimating the true burden of infection by about 30-fold, which is a huge surprise,” one of the study authors, CUNY ISPH epidemiology professor Denis Nash, explained to The Guardian. Furthermore, Nash added, the undercount may be even worse in other places without the relatively high access to testing that New Yorkers have. As he and the study’s other authors warn, the bottom line is that routine COVID surveillance, in its present form, isn’t up to the task of measuring the scope and scale of COVID surges, which denies scientists, politicians, and the public the accurate data needed to make informed decisions about risk and response. (Another alarming estimate from the study was that nearly 56 percent of the New Yorkers who had COVID were not even aware of the antiviral Paxlovid, and only 15 percent said they had received it, indicating a troubling lack of information about, and effective access to, one of the most powerful post-infection weapons we currently have against severe COVID-19.)
America isn’t flying totally blind through this wave, but leaders, public-health officials, scientists, and of course, the public, are stuck with an obstructed view. Even armed with more complete, timely information, it’s far from clear how fast or effectively local, state, and federal leaders would respond. And that’s assuming they are willing to respond much at all; it’s an election year, pandemic interventions are perceived to be politically toxic, and many Americans, now left to manage their individual COVID risk on their own, have dropped their guard and/or diverted their attention to other concerns.
Again, America may avoid the worst outcomes during this wave, namely overwhelming numbers of hospitalizations or a large spike in the number of COVID deaths — but nothing about this wave is good, either. Subvariants that appear to have the most immune escape yet seen during the pandemic are taking hold in a country where waning immunity was already undoubtedly a big problem. The expiration date of Americans’ immunity is still a mystery, as is what will happen after. U.S. booster uptake is among the worst in the developed world, including among seniors, who during Omicron and after have once again become the U.S. demographic disproportionally attacked and killed by COVID. How the wave plays out among the many Americans who remain unvaccinated who have survived previous infections remains to be seen, and the risk of reinfection, overall, also remains unclear. We don’t know if reinfections increase the risk of long COVID, either. And every infection, every reinfection, is another opportunity for the coronavirus to evolve more tricks up its sleeve. BA.4 and BA.5 might not wallop the U.S., but don’t bet on a similar or better outcome from BA.6 or whatever else comes next.
Another Grim Milestone for Joe Biden
He promised to 'shut down the virus.' He failed miserably.
President Joe Biden celebrated another grim milestone this week as his approval rating continues to flounder. Despite pledging to "shut down the virus" during the 2020 campaign, Biden has now presided over the deaths of more than 600,000 Americans from COVID-19.
That is more than twice the number of U.S. soldiers who perished in combat during World War II.
The virus our president promised to shut down has killed approximately 1,008,712 Americans, according to Johns Hopkins University, which means that Biden is responsible for almost 200,000 (or 50 percent) more COVID deaths than his predecessor, Donald Trump.
By his own logic, Biden should have resigned a long time ago.
The approximately 600,261 Americans killed on Biden's watch is three times the number of COVID deaths he said should disqualify a president from serving in the White House. During an October 2020 debate against Trump, he argued that any leader who presided over more than 200,000 COVID deaths "should not remain as president of the United States."
Days later, Biden delivered an emphatic message to the American people via his Twitter account. "I'm not going to shut down the economy," he wrote on the popular social networking website. "I'm going to shut down the virus."
Fact check: Four Clintons
Published under: COVID-19, Democratic Party, Joe Biden
Biden administration lifts COVID testing requirements for international travelers
The Biden administration announced starting Sunday it would end all COVID-19 testing requirements for international travelers inbound to the US. The mandate that had been placed into effect on January 26, 2021, shortly after Biden took office, required all international passengers give proof of a negative COVID-19 test prior to boarding their flight.
A senior administration official said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would reevaluate the issue of COVID-19 testing for international travelers every 90 days. However, the statement amounts to nothing more than a rhetorical diversion as the CDC has become an open instrument of big business and the financial markets.
The CDC’s decision essentially ends the last remaining restrictions to contain COVID in the US. Airline stocks climbed briefly in the early hours of trading on the news before turning down again on the broader global economic dismay caused by surging inflation.
Apparently, travel remains the one bright spot in the economic news. The US Travel Association reported that though the US economy contracted in the first quarter, travel spending in April exceeded 2019 levels for the first time during the pandemic at $100 billion, or 3 percent higher.
However, travel from overseas to the US has remained suppressed. CEO of US Travel Association Roger Dow commended Biden in an email, stating that rescinding the requirement “will welcome back visitors from around the world and accelerate the recovery of the US travel industry.”
US Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo released the National Travel and Tourism Strategy for the year on June 6. The initiative “focuses the full efforts of the federal government to promote the United States as a premier destination grounded in the breadth and diversity of our communities, and to foster a sector that drives economic growth, creates good jobs, and bolsters conservation and sustainability.”
According to their five-year plan, the Biden administration hopes to attract 90 million visitors who will spend close to $300 billion annually by 2027. Per point two of the strategy, in order to facilitate travel to and within the United States, they intend to “reduce barriers to trade in travel services and make it safer and more efficient for visitors to enter …” The lifting of the current restrictions could bring almost 5.5 million travelers (an additional 4.3 million more passengers) and garner $9 billion in spending through to the end of the calendar year.
To place this succinctly, public health measures during a continuing pandemic cannot be allowed to place any constraints on the ability to extract profit, including limited restrictions on travelers who may very well be carrying the latest variant of SARS-CoV-2.
Republican Senator from Mississippi Roger Wicker who is the ranking member of the Senate committee overseeing transportation, reveled in the lifting of the testing requirment, saying, “Ending this burdensome requirement is long overdue and something I have been urging for months. [I am] relieved that the Biden administration has finally seen reason and removed the requirement.”
Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto from Nevada seconded Wicker’s endorsement, “I’m glad CDC suspended the burdensome coronavirus testing requirement for international travelers, and I’ll continue to do all I can to support the strong recovery of our hospitality industry.”
One must ask what is meant by burdensome? COVID infections have been climbing since April, having reached a seven-day average of over 116,000 infections per day. Deaths have turned sharply upwards since June 2, with 448 deaths each day on average, according to Johns Hopkins.
Meanwhile, more than 60 percent of the population has been infected at least once and Long COVID affects 20 to 25 percent of those previously infected. On top of the more than 1 million deaths, the long-term impact of COVID on the population’s health will be considerable.
A recent study published in The Lancet Regional Health Europe found that people infected with SARS-CoV-2, especially older people, had more than three times the risk of dying one year after recovering from their acute infection compared to those that were uninfected. Another study from Veterans Affairs found that mortality increased even after breakthrough infection, even among those with mild disease.
The policy of herd immunity continues to dominate the ruling elite’s calculations and fortunes. COVID in permanence will continue to cull the eldest and most vulnerable, expunging those the ruling class sees as an unproductive liability. Charlatan Ezekiel Emanuel’s hope for swift natural death has been combined with Thomas Friedman’s demand that the cure can’t be worse than the disease to assure Wall Street that only those who can work will survive.
In a report published by the World Socialist Web Site, Keith Begg and Virpi Flyg wrote “Johan Giesecke, a former Swedish state epidemiologist and senior adviser to the World Health Organization who was contracted to work with the FHM [Folkhälsomyndigheten, the Swedish public health authority] during 2020, stated that when the herd immunity strategy was in full swing in Sweden, ‘The people who are frail and old will die first. And when that group of people begins to sort of thin out, you will get less deaths as well.’”
Attempts were quickly made by the likes of biosecurity expert Eric Toner to downplay the dangers posed by lifting the international travel testing restrictions. He said in an interview with Bloomberg, “I have long thought the testing requirement for travel to the US was not evidence based or logical—and most other countries have abandoned this approach. It’s been a hardship for the airlines and a real hardship for travelers as people get back to travel for business and leisure.”
What Toner should say, if he were being sincere, is that almost every government has adopted a “live with the virus” strategy and there is no enforcement of any measures to stem infections or track and trace where they are spreading. Therefore, the current mandate under such conditions only impedes the free flow of commerce.
Dr. Vin Gupta, health adviser to the Biden administration’s post-election transition team, made a more callous observation in the Wall Street Journal. “It’s well past time to drop the testing requirement to international travelers to the U.S. There was the assumption that international travelers were bringing in new variants. Now we know new variants are cropping up in the US.”
The Subordinate Citizen
I recently led a group of about 100 citizens to tour Israel for nearly two weeks. Before returning to the United States, all participants had to indicate their vaccination status and take a COVID-19 test for reentry.
Anxieties swept the group as Israeli testers swabbed them.
Anyone testing positive would have to delay his or her return. That quarantine would entail spending thousands of dollars in finding scarce hotel accommodations, additional living expenses, and rebooked airline tickets - depending upon the length of the mandatory sequestration.
Contrast the tens of thousands of foreign nationals now mustering to cross illegally into the United States again this summer. They follow the already 2 million who have entered the country unlawfully since Joe Biden became president.
Does any foreign national worry about being tested for COVID-19, much less fear being turned away if he tests positive or for lack of proof of vaccination?
Or do we scrutinize far more carefully U.S. citizens entering legally their own country than we do noncitizens crossing our borders unlawfully?
For that matter, the government is still determined to fire thousands of federal workers and U.S. military personnel who refused the new mRNA vaccinations. Most citizens who were not vaccinated feared that the inoculations were either possibly dangerous to their health or ineffective in preventing COVID-19 infections or would not necessarily lead to herd immunity.
Are 2 million non-vaccinated foreigners arriving unaudited from impoverished countries less of a threat during the pandemic than fully audited American citizens employed by the federal government? Why would we fire unvaccinated Americans but welcome equally unvaccinated noncitizens?
The Biden Administration blasted the Trump southern border wall and canceled all further funding.
Yet it just appropriated $40 billion to Ukraine to ensure that it does not lose its border war against Russian aggression.
That is a tiny percentage of the federal budget. But the aid is full of symbolic irony, nonetheless. The multibillion-dollar appropriation would have more than covered the completion of the entire wall along our own southern border.
An outside observer might conclude that the U.S. government intends to uphold the universal idea of national sovereignty, internationally recognized borders, and the security of citizens inside their own country - as long as they are not American citizens.
There are currently over 550 "sanctuary" jurisdictions established by state and local governments. They aim to prevent federal immigration authorities from deporting illegal aliens, including tens of thousands detained by law enforcement for committing additional crimes.
The nation has not experienced such blatant nullifications of federal laws since the efforts of pre-Civil War Southern states - or the 1960s southern governors who defied federal efforts to enforce U.S. civil rights legislation.
So, can any citizens now simply vote to declare their hometown or local county immune from federal legislation?
That is, can a city or county nullify as it pleases the IRS tax code, endangered species laws, or federal gun registration legislation?
Or is nullification only permissible in the interest of non-citizens and lawbreakers?
These asymmetries also transcend noncitizens.
We have developed entire classes of American elite citizens who are not subject to the enforcement of the law - at least as it is applied to others either less influential or ideologically incorrect.
Federal prosecutors sought to jail Lt. General Michael Flynn for six months for not telling the truth to federal agents.
They put another Trump subordinate, George Papadopoulos, in jail for two weeks for lying to federal prosecutors.
Recently the FBI stormed into an airport to arrest former Trump advisor Peter Navarro for contempt of a congressional subpoena.
OK, defying federal law has consequences.
Or does it?
Former Obama Administration Attorney General Eric Holder brazenly defied congressional subpoenas and was found in contempt - an historic first.
Did the FBI ever arrest Holder, much less as he boarded an airplane?
James Clapper, former director of national intelligence, confessed he flat-out lied under oath to a congressional committee.
So did former Central Intelligence Agency chief John Brennan - twice!
Andrew McCabe repeatedly lied to federal investigators as acting director of the FBI.
Were any of them arrested or tried in the manner of Flynn, Papadopoulos, or Navarro?
If not, what then is left of the foundation of U.S. citizenship - universal equal treatment under the law?
There are lots of reasons why the looming November midterms will likely see historic levels of pushback against the Biden Administration, Democratic candidates, and the entire progressive agenda.
Take your pick of the many self-induced Biden disasters, among them hyperinflation, unaffordable gasoline, out-of-control crime, and foreign-policy humiliations.
But one reason why voters are furious is rarely expressed.
Americans feel that ordinary citizens like themselves who follow the rules are treated more harshly by their own government than are both non-citizens and our own progressive elites.
And they are right, and they are angry, and we will hear from them very soon.
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of "The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won," from Basic Books. You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment