Here is Week 130 of BCM President Paul Klotman’s COVID updates. The COVID pandemic seems to have arrived at a steady state, for now; we are losing only 400-500 Americans to COVID each day. That’s better than thousands, but it is still a lot of folks. The new BA.4.6 Omicron subvariant now accounts for ~10% of new cases. As long as there are unvaccinated hosts for SARS-CoV-2 to infect, we can expect to see more variants – here and in the rest of the world. Alas.
The Monkeypox situation seems to be improving. I think the fact that MSMs have seen their cohort die by the millions as a result of HIV, gives that group a respect for public health messaging that the MAGAts do not share. So, while America’s handling of COVID has been abysmal failure because a politicized message that went out to everyone including non-clinical influencers peddling ideology and misinformation, the Monkeypox messaging has been targeted to a more select group who have changed their behaviors in an evidence-based way. Kudos to gay America!
The Polio situation is difficult to read. The virus is clearly circulating through the population of NY (mostly the unvaccinated population). Since this strain of polio is a vaccine-related, attenuated virus, perhaps we won’t see thousands of folks developing paralytic polio. Maybe we will see a form of natural immunity arising from mild infections. I hope so.
There is also an Enterovirus story emerging, but it is not addressed in Dr. Klotman’s presentation today. That’s a topic for another time, I think. Cheers!