Speaking to a gathering of journalists and academics organized by the Health Coverage Fellowship, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky warned that she can't predict when the COVID pandemic will end - if it ever does - because it largely depends on human behavior, which is, of course, impossible to predict.
Keep in mind, Walensky first gained public notoriety for her tearful outburst back in March, just as COVID deaths in the US were bottoming out.
Now, with cases, deaths and hospitalizations on the decline once again (although you wouldn't know it from the media coverage, which fixates on Alaska and a few other sparsely populated areas where healthcare resources are scarce) Dr. Walensky is setting the stage for the Biden Administration to continue with its heavy-handed vaccination mandates, even as more scientists speak up to question whether these vaccine supplies might be put to better use in the emerging world.
As more scientists argue that we may be in the midst of the last major COVID wave (before it morphs into a flu-like endemic seasonal virus), Dr. Walensky laments that "we have a lot of the science right now; we have vaccines...what we can't really predict is human behavior. And human behavior in this pandemic hasn't served us very well."
Perhaps Dr. Walensky would prefer the US government simply coerce every citizen to accept the vaccine like China has?
She went on to complain that with only 55% of the US adult population vaccinated, there isn't enough immunity to fend off the next harmful variant that emerges (though notably all of the most dangerous variants so far have emerged outside of the US, including delta).
Dr. Walensky went on to discuss how "dangerous" the delta variant is, citing its "R-naught". For those who are unfamiliar with the term, the "R-naught" or "Ro" is a measure of the infectiousness of a given virus. The higher the number, the more infectious. In theory, it represents the number of people that every new patient infected with a virus goes on to spread the virus to. Walensky puts the number for delta at as high as 8 or 9.
No comments:
Post a Comment