Here we are, settling now into our new reality after the COVID pandemic. The virus is ensconced well among us, still spreading and causing illness all over the United States and the rest of the world. We have good vaccines that fight the virus, and the last figure I read said 96% of the population of the US has either received the vaccine or has been infected, but either way has gotten some immunity. It took a lot out of us in terms of lost loved ones, lost wages, lost school time, and in some cases, lost confidence in some of our leaders, but we made it through.
Now, as far as interpersonal relations are concerned, we’ve gone back to doing things the way we used to, probably not for the better. During the pandemic, we wore masks, washed our hands, kept our distance, bumped only fists or elbows when we greeted one another, wiped down the handles of shopping carts, stayed home as much as possible, attended meetings on Zoom, and placed barriers between ourselves and others. Nursing home residents took a substantial hit. Much of that is gone and the new old has returned. We are back to shaking hands, masks are almost completely gone (though I still see a few people wearing them), and, in my limited experience watching people at the supermarket, most people don’t wipe the handle of a shopping cart anymore. (I began bringing my own antiviral wipes early in the pandemic, and I still do. I don’t rely on the ones at the store.) Yet now we are in the early winter of 2023 and at least three serious respiratory diseases are circulating in the population. Influenza, COVID, and RSV are out there, and the precautions we took against COVID will work against all of them. Public health officials never suggested using those measures against flu when we had a regular outbreak every year before COVID, which in retrospect, might have helped. It took a severe pandemic to bring out the “big guns” of disease control.
So, what now? I suspect, as do many, that COVID and RSV will become endemic in the population permanently, like flu, and we will have to get a regular booster shot against each of these every year just like we used to with flu. An annoyance, yes, but essential. COVID, like flu, has shown us that it has the power to mutate to, at least partially, avoid the immunity obtained either by vaccine or previous infection, similar to the way flu has been doing for a long time. The flu virus changes every year, and about every 11 years changes in a real radical way and we get a brand-new flu virus that causes a widespread epidemic. Whether COVID will do the same is less clear, but I expect it will continue to change and new vaccines will have to be made, probably on a yearly basis*.
What is most puzzling for me as a virologist is how the SARS-CoV19 virus manages to mutate so easily so often. It’s a member of the coronavirus group, a group of viruses which we’ve known about for a long time, far longer than the pandemic. But they were never known to be able to change so easily and rapidly like SARS-CoV19 does. I don’t know if this means the COVID virus is different somehow from other coronaviruses in its physical construction, or is just more susceptible to change. Time and research will tell. In any event, get your vaccine.
*A partial list of variants of COVID since the widely ridiculed Omicron includes, HV.1, EG.5, FL.1.5.1, XBB.1.5, XBB.1.16, XBB.1.9.2, and BA.2.86. Sounds like gibberish, but they’re real. The latest is termed JN.1, and who knows what will come after.