One of the country's leading experts on the coronaviruses has told the Guardian that Joe Biden was wrong to proclaim the US to be free of the disease.
China will not be able to fix Covid quickly.
Dr Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's hospital and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said that the US president's statement in September that "the Pandemic is over" was incorrect.
Hotez said in an interview that it was not over. There are still0-300 deaths per day. The United States has three or four leading causes of death. Given the fact that we are desperately trying to convince the American people to take this booster, it is definitely the wrong message to give.
The booster shot is the most important thing people can do to protect themselves against Covid, according to Hotez. According to the Centers for Disease Control, only 14.1% of the US population over the age of five has received the booster shot. In Texas, where I live, only a small percentage of Texans have gotten their booster.
The next big coronavirus pandemic is coming
Hotez and Dr Maria Elena Bottazzi were nominated for a peace prize for their work developing Corbevax, a Covid-19 vaccine they refused to patent so it could be replicated by middle and lower income countries.
The coronaviruses are the next big ones. He warned that it was coming, but he couldn't say if it would be next year or five years.
Hotez was not able to give any good news about the US's standing in comparison with other nations.
The US is not doing well. We didn't convince a third of the country to get vaccines. Around a third of those who have gotten two doses have not yet gotten their booster. The anti-vaxers have won. Too many lives are being lost.
The US has the 16th highest mortality rate per 100,000 people since the beginning of the Pandemic. The weekly average of new cases in the US has decreased from the previous week.
Hotez said it was the greatest self-immolation he had ever seen. It's so sad.
The US is not the only one with poor Covid performance.
I call it the greatest self-immolation in American history. It’s just so tragic
The US isn't safe. Canada isn't as much so. Australia isn't as much so. Less so may be European countries. The US, India and China are vulnerable due to the fact that China is getting vaccines that don't protect nearly as well against the variant.
China has taken a drastic approach to its response to the flu. There was a surge in infections. The deaths of 10 people from the far western region of Uyghur, who perished in a fire that engulfed a high-rise residential building they were unable to escape in time, were the result of that policy.
There was a policy shift away from restrictive measures after mass protests demanded the end of the zero- Covid policy.
Hotez said that the relaxation was a good sign and that harsher does not necessarily mean better.
He said that the strategy China has used is a failure. The population is naive and they don't have the infrastructure to deal with a surge. They have the greatest vulnerability right now.
He said that China kept it very primitive. They didn't use the technology that was available
What will happen in the future for the Pandemic? The winter season is a good time to get the flu, the respiratory syncytial virus, and the variant of Covid-19.
Hotez said that they are in a holding pattern and want to know what happens with the new variant. We have had a series of waves from individual variant. The Alpha wave hit in the winter of 2021. We had the Delta wave in the last half of the year. In early 2022. then BA.212 and then BA.5.
We have vaccine technologies at an unprecedented level. We have the technology to solve this. What we lack is the political will
I think we will see one in the US this winter. Maybe we are seeing the start of it. It is not clear how bad it will be. We are still seeing hundreds of deaths a day. It isn't as bad as the flu. It has been bad, maybe not as bad. The key is getting Americans to protect themselves.
Hotez encourages tuning out anti-science conspiracy theories in order to protect yourself.
The globalization of anti-vaccine activists is a big problem. That is a globalizing force because of the far-right members of Congress. More Americans are killed by anti-science activism and aggression than by gun violence.
There is a wave of Covid-19 misinformation that goes all the way to other countries. It's a deadly force that we still haven't even begun scratching the surface of Combating and Countering.
The phoney-baloney Covid origin stories take our eyes off the prize, because we don't actually know when the next big one will erupt.
According to Hotez, the key to preventing the next big Pandemic can be found within one animal in particular, bats, which can host a variety of Viruses.
The coronaviruses are found in the Middle East and even parts of Latin America, so a thorough landscaping exercise of bats is needed across the face of Asia. Climate change is one of the reasons why we are seeing more and more of this. Climate change is a combination of other social factors.
Hope is still alive and well. Hotez said it will take a combination of technological and political infrastructure to get ahead of the next Pandemic.
At an unprecedented level, we have vaccine technology. This can be solved with the technology we have. We don't have the political will to investigate these outbreaks in low and middle income countries. Our social and political infrastructures have not kept up with the times. He said that they are not willing to implement it.
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