• Jessica Colarossi

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    Jessica Colarossi is a science writer for The Brink. She graduated with a BS in journalism from Emerson College in 2016, with focuses on environmental studies and publishing. While a student, she interned at ThinkProgress in Washington, D.C., where she wrote over 30 stories, most of them relating to climate change, coral reefs, and women’s health. Profile

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There are 19 comments on Is COVID-19 Still a Pandemic?

  1. I’d like to offer a correction: vaccination does not “prevent long covid” but it may decrease the chances of long covid. The only way to absolutely prevent long covid – is not to catch covid.

    1. Agree with L Pederson. It is misleading to say vaccination prevents long Covid, when in fact, it only reduces the risk. Reinfection greatly increases the risk of long Covid, underscoring the vascular, endothelial disrupting, immune dysregulating nature of this airborne BSL3 pathogen. There is no robust or durable “population immunity” to a virus that continually mutates, outpacing vaccines and treatments. Evusheld and ALL monoclonal antibody treatments are no longer authorized for this reason. Of the three commentors, Professor Murray makes the most comprehensive sense. Bottom line: it’s airborne. To stop transmission, don’t share air: always wear a well-fitted respirator mask indoors with others or in close proximity outdoors. improve ventilation, stay home when sick until asymptomatic AND testing negative at least twice, at least 24 hours apart, take Paxlovid if you can get it, and keep up with vaccinations. In. That. Order.

  2. “If you know you are sick but not highly symptomatic, distance and masking are polite and helpful. If you know you are going to be around strongly immunocompromised people, being extra careful is a kind thing to do.”

    This has nothing to do with being kind or polite and completely ignores asymptomatic transmission.
    As expressed by both Prof. Assoumou and Prof. Murray, the amount of COVID deaths and Long COVID should not just be accepted as the new normal.

    This means that we need to try to limit the spread of COVID. And this is done by wearing well-fitted high-quality masks and turning on the air filters in BU classrooms for example (and not turning them off again, as some professors do..).

    If you know you are sick you shouldn’t expose others to your pathogens. This should not be controversial.

    It is truly remarkable that the simple concepts of asymptomatic transmission and transmission chains seem to still not be understood by some people after four pandemic years. For example, if you feel fine (asymptomatic) and you are among people that you think are not immunocompromised, then you can still give a pathogen to these “lucky people”. These lucky people, who might still develop Long COVID can then in turn infect an immunocompromised person (asymptomatically), whose potential more serious outcome could have been prevented.

  3. Where is the self-reflection and detailed analysis of what worked and what didn’t? I hope the public will never again trust the so-called experts and media, who are more interested in dogma and self-promotion than in serving the public interest.

    1. Thank you for your comment. In fact there has been incredibly deep scientific study around the world of what worked and what did not work. It’s all publicly available. When you say, “never again trust the experts,” I am curious about one thing: Were the 1.2 million people who died from COVID merely a mirage, “self promotion” in your words of something nefarious? And those people actually did not die from COVID? — The editors

      1. Thank you, Doug,
        To quote me correctly, I used the term “so-called experts.”
        There are real experts and those who believe they are or want to be experts.
        There are objective media and propaganda tubes.
        Yes, there are studies from multiple countries covering different angles of COVID response; you did not quote any, so below is one of them:

        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10399217/

        “In conclusion, Sweden experienced relatively fewer deaths per population unit than most other high-income countries that implemented stricter lockdown measures. It is concerning that some scientists who advocated for stringent measures seem to disregard real-world data and cling to their version of reality. The ability to learn from mistakes and acknowledge that hypotheses may be wrong is essential for future pandemic preparedness. This, coupled with careful analysis, is crucial for developing effective strategies in the face of future outbreaks.”

        Do people believe that the media, including BU Today, served the public well during the Pandemic?
        I would love to see the current opinion survey on that subject.

        1. Yes. Sweden’s story is well documented. It also was not perfect–by a long shot. Essentially they sacrificed old people for young people: “In late 2020, the Corona Commission, an independent committee appointed by the government to evaluate the Swedish pandemic response, found leaders had largely failed in their ambition to protect the elderly, noted Frans at The Conversation. At that time, almost 90% of those who had died with Covid in Sweden were 70 or older.” So my point is that it’s very easy now to play Monday Morning Quarterback and say, everything should have been handled differently and blame “so-called experts.” But reality is that in the moment, when an actual, deadly, airborne disease was circulating and scientists were frantically trying to learn more about it, a more cautious and protective approach was taken. And yet still 1.2 million people died. So you are saying it was far too strict and draconian. Perhaps. And do I wish schools had remained open? Absolutely. But that’s easy to say now. Just to be clear, you are saying that you would have been fine then if 2 or 3 million people died instead. There is a reason hindsight is 20-20.

          1. Old people are over represented EVERYWHERE in covid deaths. Taking away freedoms and destroying the economy were always terrible ideas and they didn’t protect the elderly. In 2020 everyone was hating on Sweden, in 2024 everyone is doing what Sweden is doing. Not taking freedoms away does not mean 2-3 million people would’ve died. Florida didn’t do any worse than say California. It was all a lie, covid was never going to be “beat”. The vaccine was never going to save us from it, just help protect the vulnerable. What we learned was that we should’ve treated it like the flu. There was no science being done.

  4. In the article, it said that WHO estimates about 10,000 died in December, 2023 throughout the World. Annualizing that gives us 120,000 worldwide. In a typical flu season between 40,000-50,000 Americans die per year. In a bad season, the number can be twice that. It sure sounds like the risk is much less than the flu.

  5. I think maintaining a balance between personal responsibility, vaccination, and considering others’ safety is crucial as we continue navigating through this uncertain terrain. And hey, if wearing a mask in certain situations can help protect those around me, I’m all for it.

  6. Covid never went away it’s still here and affecting lives.
    Unfortunately, due to the misinformation received during the pandemic, no one wanted to believe they could get sick from others or that the air could be catageious.
    The real issue is the negativity surrounding the nation from states who refused to adjust to the mandates for selfish reasons and media that did not offer legitimate covid information.

    1. Imagine being this week minded lmao. What misinformation? The USA locked down, and SEGREGATED citizens. Canada did it even worse, and we didn’t defeat covid. The REAL misinformation came from people like you who told the lie that we could ever defeat this virus at all. Or that the vaccine would prevent transmission.

  7. I just left the hospital with covid. Doctors would not give me paxlovid because the new variant is milder and the mortality rate is much lower. As of April 2024, the mortality rate is 3 per 100,000. At it’s peak, the mortality rate was 297 per 100,000.

  8. I think the situation is very complex from here. The virus is still around and spreading. Herd immunity to COVID-19 has been proven nearly impossible. It has also been proven that people can get COVID-19 more than once. Vaccines do not sterilize the virus but reduce the severity of virus symptoms.

    On the other hand, the public appears to be done on a large scale with masks, social distancing, business closures, school closures, lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, and long quarantines on travel. So as the result, we have reached the “social ending”phase of the pandemic, where the public decided to move on with their lives even though the virus is still out there.

    The sad part is that people is that people are still getting sick of the virus and dying of it everyday. It is a lesser amount than at the beginning, partially due to the fact that we have developed vaccines and therapeutics for treating it. But the sad part is the viruses characteristics make it very difficult to eradicate. Unlike Measles and Chicken Pox where most people get once and have long term immunity to, COVID-19 only provides a few months of immunity after infection, and it mutates its spike protein which makes it hard to eradicate with vaccines long term.

    Adding more fuel to the COVID-19 fire, the virus has animal reservoirs in over 32 other species and some of these animals such as deer, big cats, hyenas, and otters are wild, not captive. Even worse, they have found old variants such as Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Gamma still present in Deer.

    So it is possible to eradicate COVID-19 and declare the pandemic over or has COVID-19 became hyper endemic and will be a virus that like colds and flu we will be living with going forward? It is difficult to predict the future, but the evidence is pointing to the sad fact that COVID-19 will be hyper endemic.

    I would not rule out the potential of a medial ending (eradication) with better vaccines and therapeutics or going back to quarantine, masks, and social distancing of he entire population but achieving a medical ending seems unlikely. Some of the public health restrictions were fought with lobbying, defiance, protests, lawsuits, legislation, and others. After a year and a half of public health measures and quarantines, the public choose to move on and gave up on the restrictions and resumed their lives, accepting the risk of COVID-19. Eventually schools, offices, stadiums, performing arts theaters, restaurants, bars, zoos, amusement parks, and the like were reopened. The same with quarantine free international travel. The public did seem to share a uniform goal of trying to eliminate the virus with behavior change, giving up their social lives, homeschoooling, working from home, and isolating as much as possible. The sad part is this implicates the immunocompromised and makes some of their ordinary day to day actions high risk. I think going back to lockdowns for COVID-19 would be a political nightmare and may be impossible due to court decisions and legislation that was passed outlawing restrictions in some areas.

    In reality, Humanity must accept an imperfect outcome.

  9. So.. why is the Biden administration allowing tens of millions of unvaccinated illegal immigrants into the US with essentially zero border process? Especially when all of the liberal states just locked down everything for years because of the supposed “risk” of getting a minor flu (covid). Liberals are so inconsistent it’s obscene.

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