As you may be aware Coronavirus cases are spiking in the United States and Europe. Europe is getting so bad that new lockdowns may be going into place. And things are getting relatively bad in the United States as well.
So why is this happening? I think some of this is part of the usual winter surge that happens with all respiratory viruses in northern climates. Since the weather is turning and getting cold, people are going inside and spreading the virus. This also explains why Florida is having fewer cases recently, all the people that were staying inside are now coming out due to lower temperature.
That explains some of it. But it doesn't explain it all. The Coronavirus was basically gone in the United States over the summer before the delta variant spread here. And the vaccination campaign looked successful in many states, with most states having more than 70% vaccination rates for qualified people.
I think part of this is due to widespread testing. Many companies have instituted mandatory testing for the virus, including mine. Some of these cases are probably false positives from these tests. Others are minor cases that people wouldn't even realize that they were sick. This probably accounts for some of the case increase because of Biden's mandates.
The elephant in the room though is the vaccine is not the panacea we thought it would be. We now know that the vaccine does not keep people from catching and spreading the virus. It may be somewhat effective in preventing hospitalization and deaths and may have some reduction in transmission (or it could be worse) but it is far from the solution we thought it should be.
As an aside, I am not anti-vax. I took it myself and I encourage people that are in vulnerable categories (the elderly, the obese, people with immune system problems and so on). I probably won't be getting the booster but both my parents did and I didn't have a problem with that. But I also wouldn't recommend it for children unless there is a damn good reason to do so.
So why are the vaccines having problems? I think the big problem is that they have not been updated in anyway since the delta variant came out. They are all based on the original Wuhan strain with I believe is functionally extinct. The virus has mutated quiet a bit since the original strain and the vaccines have not caught up.
With the reduction of effectiveness from the vaccines it has given an opportunity to bounce back and we aren't really that close to getting herd immunity. With the virus spreading we will probably reach it someday but I don't think the vaccines will get us out of this pandemic. We will just have to wait until enough people get it and then it will fade into the background. It won't ever go away completely though.
Given the vaccines fading effectiveness, it is fairly idiotic that the global focus seems to be on vaccination and vaccination alone. It's been clear for awhile though that we won't vaccinate our way out of this with our current vaccines. I know a few more are in development, such as Novavax and a few others, but they might have the same problems.
I think it would better to focus on getting effective treatments. But the media and medical community have been shooting down every treatment, usually with studies that don't even address how the drug is supposed to function. I know that a few companies have drugs in trials but we need those drugs now and doing so would be a much better use of our resources.
People need to understand that we have only eliminated two diseases, and one of them, Rinderpest, wasn't even a human disease. Smallpox was different as it was only found in humans. Unlike smallpox, Coronavirus is able to infect most mammals, to the point where they are vaccinating zoo animals now. But we can't vaccinate everything and even if we did, we now know that they could still get sick and spread the disease. For what it is worth, we can't eliminate this disease with our current levels of technology.
I am hoping this last major wave of the virus though. At some point it will run out of people that haven't been infected. People will have natural antibodies and eventually it will fade into the background. I don't think it will ever go away but I think it will fade into the background like most other cold and flu viruses. We just need to hold out until that point.
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