Returning to Covid

Returning to Covid

From an article by Topol who is very discouraged by the government's response to Covid. He supports the Chinese position of Zero Covid Deaths, taking a moral rather than scientific high ground. It's an interesting thought process, assembling points to create a collage, then vaulting to a program. Unsettling.

"Prior to Omicron we could, with a booster, assume there was well over 90-95% vaccine effectiveness vs severe disease. It is clear, however, from multiple reports, including the UK Health Security Agency and Kaiser Permanente that this level of protection has declined to approximately 80%, particularly taking account the more rapid waning than previously seen.

...we have a highly unfavorable picture of: (1) accelerated evolution of the virus; (2) increased immune escape of new variants; (2) progressively higher transmissibility and infectiousness; (4) substantially less protection from transmission by vaccines and boosters; (5) some reduction on vaccine/booster protection against hospitalization and death; (6) high vulnerability from infection-acquired immunity only; and (7) likelihood of more noxious new variants in the months ahead

During the Delta wave in the United States, vaccinated individuals accounted for 23 per cent of the deaths, whereas this nearly doubled to 42 per cent during the Omicron wave. This is attributable to waning of protection, lack of boosters, and the diminished protection against Omicron (BA.1).

...we should adopt the new policy of Zero Covid Deaths. This is diametrically opposed to Covid capitulation. This builds, in part, on the tools that we already have, knowing that the vast majority of deaths occur in people age 60 plus (92% of US hospitalizations have been in people age 50+). All such people need to have vaccination and booster coverage but our CDC has failed to convey their life-saving impact from the get go, a veritable booster botch job as recently reviewed by Kaiser Health News. That’s why we have 31% of Americans who had had 1 booster shot whereas most peer countries are double that proportion. And why we rank 60th in the world’s countries for boosters, and especially poorly among older Americans compared (<65%, age 60+) with many Western Europe and Asian Pacific countries (~85-90%). That doesn't even speak to the need for a 4th dose in this high-risk group or that lack of intensive monitoring of our 7 million immunocompromised people who are not getting help to guide their protection with assay of neutralizing antibodies, or receiving Evusheld monoclonal antibody preventive protection. But well beyond the use of boosters and vaccines, and easy, rapid access to Paxlovid, we absolutely need an aggressive stance to get ahead of the virus—for the first time since the pandemic began—instead of surrendering. That means setting priorities, funding, and the realization, unfortunately, that the pandemic is far from over. Our Covid vaccines and medications are an order of magnitude more effective than what we have for influenza, but even our current level of deaths (we have already had over 175,000 Covid deaths in 2022), no less what may be in store, is still >10-fold in excess of seasonal flu (about 30,000 per year). That is totally unacceptable, nearly totally preventable loss of lives at scale."