The dreaded “winter wave” looks different this year.
The twinkling of lit trees and festive displays in store windows have come to mean two things. The holiday season is approaching, and the coronavirus pandemic is approaching. Since the start of the pandemic, the week between Christmas and New Year’s has coincided with the dreaded “winter wave.” In that dark age, case have surely There was a sudden increase After rising through the fall. The 2020 and 2021 holiday seasons saw two of the largest coronavirus peaks ever, with significant spikes in infections, hospitalizations, and deaths.
But something strange is happening this year. From September to November, virus level Concentrations in wastewater, one of the most reliable indicators now that cases are no longer being tracked, were unusually low. At various points during that period, hospitalization and Deaths (number) is also close to an all-time low.
But that doesn’t mean we’ll have a coronavirus-free Christmas. CDC data released over the past two weeks: Rapid increase in virus activity in wastewater. It’s still unclear whether this is the beginning of a winter wave, but even if it is, the timing is completely off. Last year, the winter wave was approaching its Christmas peak. This time, if there is a wave, it is only just beginning. America is facing the most unpredictable coronavirus holiday season yet.
Michael Holger, a Tulane University professor who runs the Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative, a coronavirus forecasting dashboard, said the rise in sewage levels reflects an outbreak that occurred over the Thanksgiving holiday and is unlikely to subside soon. He said he has an optimistic view of being deaf. This is possible because the CDC publishes wastewater data about a week after it is collected. The latest data represents the two weeks after the holidays, which means it can take some time for people infected during the holidays to show symptoms. The worst-case scenario is that low transmissibility throughout the fall was simply a matter of luck, and the virus quickly catches up in the coming weeks. Professor Holger said infections could rise steadily in the coming weeks and peak around January 7, but a significant increase or decline was still “plausible”. Even if a wave approaches, “it’s likely to be nowhere near the peak we saw during the pandemic,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.
The confusion about how the virus behaves during the holidays reflects the larger coronavirus uncertainty. Even after four consecutive winter waves, experts are wondering whether they should continue to hope for it. Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, said it would be “very unusual” even if there was no wave, given that the virus generally follows a reliable pattern of peaking in the summer and winter. told me. But Osterholm rejects the idea that the virus follows a predictable pattern. There have been nine peaks since the coronavirus outbreak, which he told me was “absolutely not expected seasonally.” Winter waves have little to do with it. winterOsterholm said it has more to do with the emergence of new and unpredictable variants on top of weakened immunity.
The idea that the coronavirus doesn’t follow a seasonal pattern and its recent track record of ruining holidays won’t be easy. Part of the confusion stems from expectations that the virus should behave like other respiratory seasonal insects. Vaccinations are given in the fall because influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections typically surge in the winter. But as my colleague Katherine J. Wu writes, even with the latest coronavirus vaccines being recommended ahead of the winter virus season, SARS-CoV-2 It’s not a season virus. As expected, influenza and RSV It is currently on the rise. The strange timing of this year’s coronavirus outbreak is in some ways a coincidence, meaning “peak season is likely to be out of sync with the flu,” reversing the burden on hospitals. he said.
After living with this virus for nearly five years, you might expect it to be easy to predict its behavior. But five years is not a long time, scientifically speaking. COVID-19 infections may spike every winter, but it’s too early to tell. “The only reason this virus is seasonal is that it occurs in all seasons,” Osterholm said. Patterns that emerged during that period may become obsolete as more data is collected. The ebbs and flows, which have been interpreted as trends, may eventually turn out to be irregularities with a completely different pattern, or “funky” ones, with two small waves and one large wave each year. Holger said.
No matter how hard you try, predicting the coronavirus is a guessing game at best. As the holiday season approaches, current realities offer both warning and reason for hope. It is possible that another wave will wash over us, but it seems unlikely that things will unfold in the same way as they have in past years. This comes at a time when the virus is spiking at what is supposed to be the most festive time of the year. It won’t be a coronavirus-free Christmas this year, but we should still be grateful.
