COVID, Quickly, a Scientific American is a series hosted by Tanya Lewis.
This is a quick update on the COVID epidemic. We will show you the science behind the questions about the disease and the virus. We help you understand the research.
I'm Tanya Lewis.
Josh Fischman is the person.
Senior health editors from Scientific American.
We will explain the new official methods to determine if you are in a safe zone or danger area.
We will discuss what other Pandemics looked like when they were ending, and whether this one is heading down a similar path.
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The map of the U.S. changed last week. The map of COVID danger did. A lot of hazardous areas were deemed safer. What happened, Josh? Is COVID gone?
It was a weird moment. Covid has not gone away. A map from the Centers for Disease Control showed a lot of the nation was in high risk areas. About 60 percent of the US was shown to be at low or medium risk the next day.
There were three things that happened. We now have more ways to keep people safe, such as vaccinations and new drugs. As we slide down from the Omicron wave, we are seeing fewer infections. About 2,000 Americans are dying every day, and no one should tolerate that level of death.
Because of the first two, the CDC decided to change how it measured COVID risk. That changed the map.
The agency only used case counts in a particular county in the old scheme. The CDC said that people should wear masks if they have more than 100 cases per 100,000.
The new scheme takes measures of severe disease into account. The number of new hospital admissions and the amount of patients in the hospital are emphasized. Case counts are still included. For every 100,000 people, it increases the levels of high risk to 200.
You can use the agency's tracker to see if your community is at low, medium or high risk.
Public health experts generally supported the move. Mild illness can usually be dealt with by people. Everyone wants to avoid getting sick enough to go to the hospital. We need to stop overcomplicating the health care system with COVID patients.
Keeping case counts in the mix gives communities early warnings.
The new guidelines explain how to dial up protection measures if a community becomes high risk. There should be a push for more vaccinations and booster shots, and people should stay out of buildings with poor air quality. Measures can be adjusted back down when the warning indicators go down.
Jetelina is not happy with the 200 cases allowed before the community moves to high risk. She thinks this level of transmission is still unsafe with people getting long COVID and only a quarter of children fully vaccine.
If more people go without masks, it endangers people with weakened immune systems.
The US wants to push towards pre-pandemic normal, and government policies are following that line. The White House has a number of plans for getting there. People will be able to get test and treatment at local pharmacies and community centers.
Increased wastewater testing sites can be used to spot new waves of viruses. It will look more aggressively for new variants and have more genetic testing facilities.
J: What's up to each of us, it seems, is how to respond when one of these early warning flags goes up. The virus is a part of our world. Is it possible to dial up protections to stop the spread?
Government policymakers are banking on that response. People did that early on. Americans don't like going back to more restricted lives.
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Speaking of getting back to normal, you interviewed some historians about the end of the Pandemic. The end game for COVID can be learned from previous pandemics.
It is a fascinating question. John Barry is the author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the deadliest Pandemic in History and he spoke to me.
Barry said that the point at which people stop paying attention to the epidemic is the end. It seems to be happening in many places. When the virus is causing less severe disease and when there is ready access to vaccines and therapeutic, there is a scientific component to it.
Barry says that we don't yet have widespread availability of treatments like Pfizer's Paxlovid. Barry told me that the end of a pandemic is more of a human decision than a biological one. There is a danger in dropping all precautions too early.
The 1918 pandemic had three waves: in the spring of 1918, the fall of 1918, and the winter and spring of 1919. Barry says that a new flu variant emerged in 1920 and caused a fourth wave that was worse than previous waves.
Most of the US put in place restrictions during the second and third waves. No cities imposed restrictions by the fourth peak. Americans had moved on.
The disease became milder because most people had immunity to it, but also because it lost the ability to cause damage to the lungs. Barry says that there is no law of nature that says a virus has to evolve. Our immune systems exert pressure on the virus to make it harder to get into the lungs, similar to what we are seeing with the Omicron variant.
Barry is optimistic. Most people have some immunity from vaccine and infections. It doesn't mean every variant will be mild. The flu death toll spiked after the 1918 epidemic. Barry says that we shouldn't let down our guard just yet.
It won't be the VIRUS that decides when the Pandemic is over. It will be US.
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Lewis: Now you are up to speed. Thanks for joining us. Jeff Del Viscio is the show's editor.
Come back in two weeks for the next episode. You can find updated and in-depth COVID news atSciAm.com.
The above text is a transcript.
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