(Saturday, January 23rd)
Sometimes I'm called "Dr. Doom" for gloomy projections about what we can expect in the future when it comes to disasters. But, I'll start this time with a bit of good news. Likely, we are seeing the tail end of the surge in cases, hospitalizations and deaths coming from the 2020-2021 Christmas and New Years holidays and their associated family gatherings and travel. There will be some hot spots in the nation, but there should be a trend downward for a little while anyway.
The biggest challenge for now is the fight to get enough vaccines produced and then turned them into vaccinations. The two weak links are the ability to have vaccines produced in quantity and then the slow roll-out of vaccinations. It has been a yin and yang between there being more vaccines being shipped and not getting into people's arms to today when the vaccination efforts in states are ramping up and now the vaccine supply appears to be the looming issue.
On the vaccine front there is the promise of new versions of vaccines going through the approval process. It appears that Johnson & Johnson's vaccine will be the next version presented to the FDA for emergency approval. I don't see how that vaccine can start shipping until sometime in March. I do not know if they have stockpiled any vaccines already, anticipating the approval going forward. With new vaccines there will be more inventory available.
The wildcard we collectively face is the new variations of the coronavirus that were found in different countries and now are starting to appear in the United States. The Center for Disease (CDC) has two predictions that are disconcerting, one is that the new variant of the virus first found in England will be the predominant one here in the USA by March. The other prediction is that we will pass 500,000 deaths sometime in March. Remember that the 1918 Flu Pandemic had an estimated 675,000 deaths in the United States. At current rates will will be come precariously close to that total in deaths from COVID--if we don't make considerable progress in mitigation measures being taken by the general population to slow the spread.
We do know now that the new variant of the virus is 50% more capable of spreading. It also appears that researchers in England believe that the version of the virus is more deadly, causing a higher percentage of patients to die. That still needs to be confirmed.
What we don't know yet, as the virus continues to mutate, if the current version of the vaccine will remain as efficacious in preventing infections from occurring. On that front the technology used to produce the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines can be tweaked to adjust to the virus as it also mutates.
President Biden has warned that we are going to be fighting the virus and its impacts for many more months. Originally, I was hopeful that by September we could be getting back to normal--now, I'm not so sure of that prognosis.
I'm still waiting for my turn to be vaccinated.
