britain is taking that idea to the extreme. the british people must learn to live with covid and “reconcile ourselves, sadly, to more deaths,” their prime minister, boris johnson, said as he scrapped most of england’s laws mandating face coverings, social distancing and work-from-home orders. “i don’t want people to get demob-happy,” johnson, said, a cautionary note that didn’t stop jubilant club-goers from going “berserk” and pouring into nightclubs, sans masks. but with summer and vaccines and school holidays, if not now, then when, the prime minister mused.
“we have to be honest with people about the fact that we cannot eliminate covid,” johnson’s double-vaxxed health secretary sajid javid wrote in an op-ed published by the daily mail two weeks before
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javid tested positive for covid, forcing a reluctant johnson and other close contacts into a 10-day quarantine . “we are going to have to learn to accept the existence of covid and find ways to cope with it — just as we already do with flu,” javid wrote.
israel, for its part, is said to be shifting to a “soft suppression” strategy. only high amounts of severe disease, not daily case tallies, will lead to more closures. “forget about who catches covid-19, the serious cases matter,” ran a headline on an analysis piece in the jerusalem post.
weeks ago singapore announced a similar approach. “you need to tell people; we’re going to get a lot of cases,” dale fisher, head of the national infection prevention and control committee of singapore’s health ministry told the new york times. “and that’s part of the plan — we have to let it go.” that was the plan, until a karaoke cluster sent singapore back into phase 2 (“heightened alert”) thursday. dining in at food and beverage establishments suspended until mid-august. social gatherings capped to two.
some have said talk of “learning to live” with covid is reckless and premature, that the u.k.’s game plan will lead to hundreds of thousands of new infections. others say it’s not clear what “living with covid” even means — we have been living with covid. still, the new rhetoric, the shift from “crushing” and “planking” covid to learning to co-exist reflects the transition period canada now finds itself in, the slow shift from life-halting pandemic, to an endemic situation. “we are slowly transitioning to a better place,” said university of ottawa virologist marc-andré langlois.
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confirmed cases are rebounding in the u.s.; israel, with 61 per cent of its population fully vaccinated, is also seeing an increase, though the seven-day average and weekly hospitalizations are a fraction of their january peak . so far, canada is holding its own with delta. even when people move back indoors in the fall, it won’t take lockdowns to keep things under control, mcgeer predicted. yes to masking for indoor public gatherings, restrictions on really high volumes and high-risk activities when necessary, contact tracing and control of workplace outbreaks — “there is a bunch of things we can do, without being nearly as disruptive as we were in lockdowns, that i think we can hope will be enough,” she said.
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a study published this week in the new england journal of medicine found only “modest differences” in vaccine effectiveness against delta compared to alpha, the once-dominant “u.k.” strain. two doses of pfizer provided 88 per cent protection against symptomatic disease with delta, while two shots of astrazeneca provided 67 per cent protection.
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“all sorts of people are saying, ‘oh, it’s going to get less pathogenic.’ some people are saying more, or it’s going to be resistant to all the vaccines. we don’t know that. we absolutely don’t know,” langlois said. delta potentially still has room to evolve. but so far immunity from the authorized vaccines looks good, he said. “and we know that vaccine-induced immunity is several-fold more important than natural exposure.” in severe cases, covid can damage internal organs — the liver, kidneys and brain. “what we might see in five to seven years is a large percentage of those individuals that got naturally infected develop these morbidities that you only see in elderly individuals,” langlois said. ultimately, “you don’t want to catch this virus without being doubly vaccinated.”
delta will become the dominant strain in canada by fall, and then it will be a question of who can act as vectors for transmission . the virus can circulate in those who have declined the vaccine, as well as children under 12 who aren’t eligible for the shots. pfizer and moderna are testing their vaccines in children down to six-month-old babies. the results are expected some time this fall. decisions will then have to be made about immunizing kids , who can also be a reservoir of infection.
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