Are we post-COVID yet? Are we really post-COVID?
Not really. We may be past the major epidemic of COVID-19, but COVID is still with us. I’ve known personally or heard of several people in the past several months (late 2023 and into 2024) who have contracted COVID. The virus still circulates in the US, and is still an important source of morbidity (i.e., disease), if not mortality (death). We don’t hear much about it in the news anymore, perhaps because the disease is not as severe as it once was because the virus has mutated toward less virulent strains that spread more easily yet don’t cause as severe an infection, and because the number of deaths is low enough that it doesn’t rise to a level that the news media feels a need cover it. (Remember when emergency rooms and intensive care units were overflowing with COVID patients, and hospitals had to bring in refrigerated trucks to hold all the dead? And primary care workers were working double shifts and getting burned out in the intensity of the care for all those patients?) But all this change in spread and infectivity is a part of the virus’s general strategy. It’s to the virus’s benefit to be able to cause an infection more easily by mutating to a point where fewer virus particles are required to initiate an infection, yet at the same time by producing a disease that isn’t as likely to cause the death of the infected person. That way, an infected person will spread the virus—by sneezing, talking, coughing, or just normal breathing—to more people. To more people than if that person had gotten a more severe disease and died earlier.
I don’t mean to imply that COVID is something we can ignore. We forced the virus to make those changes by the massive vaccination campaign we started in 2020, and it’s imperative we continue to vaccinate. COVID will come roaring back if we don’t. COVID is going to be with us probably forever, like influenza, colds, measles, and many other diseases too numerous to mention here. I’ve heard news reports recently that measles cases are rising in some states because of low vaccination rates. It will take constant vigilance and continued vaccination to keep it and COVID under control. In the meantime, it isn’t unrealistic to wear a mask if you feel it necessary, and to refrain from shaking hands like we did during the height of the pandemic. Use your own judgement, but be on guard.