Can We See The End Of The Pandemics Road?

When news about the vaccine was announced, we all thought it was coming to an end. As a country, we have reached over 70% vaccination rate just a few weeks after the Biden administrations original goal of reaching 70% vaccination by the Fourth of July. This was promising for us as a country, and it looked like we started to turn the corner away from the mess we had been living in. Then, the virus mutated into the Delta variant. The Delta variant was first discovered in India, but moved into the rest of the world where it quickly became responsible for more than 80% of COVID cases, and then mutated again into the Delta Plus variant. Now the Delta variant is “vaccine resistant” meaning that even individuals who are fully vaccinated can still get the virus and spread it to other people. What is scary about that, is the fact that people can have COVID without even knowing it, then spread it to other people because they are not quarantining because they don’t know they have it. Why do they not know they have it? Because, fully vaccinated people can still get the virus, but their symptoms are far more likely to be less severe. This means it can feel like a mild cold, or they can be completely asymptomatic, which leads to them transmitting it to other people without knowing. Another part is, fully vaccinated people are being more lax because they know their chances to be hospitalized or die are slim to none. Due to the Delta and Delta Plus variant, not just the United States, but the rest of the world is seeing an uptick in COVID cases.

So when does it end? Is the end of this pandemic any where near? The answer is we don’t really know, but things are looking like we have only started fighting this battle. Deseret News states, “(Larry) Brilliant, an epidemiologist who worked with the World Health Organization to help stop the smallpox outbreak, told CNBC this week that the delta variant is ‘maybe the most contagious virus’ ever.” Deseret then continued on to state, “He said the entire world is still suffering from the novel coronavirus, and it’s a sign the pandemic might not even be close to ending.” This is not the news that any one wanted to hear, especially considering the long road it has taken all of us to get where we are. The virus is picking back up again, and is this to show a pattern that we will always get waves like this every few months to a year? Brilliant continued on during his interview, “I think we’re closer to the beginning than we are to the end (of the pandemic), and that’s not because the variant that we’re looking at right now is going to last that long.” Essentially, we can look at COVID like the flu. There is a good chance that it just never goes away. What we need to focus on is how to minimize it as much as we can. It’s looking like variants are going to keep producing themselves, just like the flu does. The flu vaccine is a very educated guess on what the next year will look like, simply because it’s always evolving and adapting. In an ideal realistic world, COVID is just as big of issue as the flu. An ideal world would find a way to permanently end COVID for good. Brilliant states, “Unless we vaccinate everyone in 200-plus countries, there will still be new variants.”

The Delta variant is not going to be the last of the variants. Eric Vail, director of molecular pathology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, told Newsweek, "I wouldn’t be incredibly surprised if something else came along that’s even more transmissible." We are already starting to see this with the Lambda variant, which was first discovered in Peru and is now responsible for over 80% of their cases. The vaccines, however, are not resistant to the Delta variant. The vaccine will help lessen the severity of the case, meaning the chances of being hospitalized or dying are unlikely; however, you can be asymptomatic and pass on the virus to other people without even knowing you had it. What's even more intimidating is that it's not looking like the vaccine will be any sort of resistant to the Lambda variant, which could pose our biggest threat yet. In an article written by Infection Control Today, they state, "A preprint study by investigators in Chile suggests that the mutation, which first surfaced in Peru about a year ago and is highly infectious, may also be able to evade vaccine antibodies." These studies are done with the CoronaVac which is created by a Chinese company that Peru utilizes for vaccines. Peru has seen the highest death rate out of any country, and about twice as many deaths as the next country: Hungary. The Lambda variant has already made its way to over 30 countries in the world, and appears to be spreading quickly. It will be interesting to see what happens to COVID cases in the United States once state schools and universities are back in session. College kids like to party, and parties are where the virus can quickly spread. We may be seeing another large uptick in COVID cases due to this especially with all of the variants that are making themselves known.

The road we have traveled down for COVID has been a long one, but unfortunately we’re not even to the end of it, we still might not be able to see the end. It’s a matter of doing our due diligence to do what we can to keep COVID as minimalized as possible.