Covid is low risk now, due to less lethal variants and immunity. It still kills people, typically unvaccinated, elderly and unwell. However, so does seasonal flu and bacterial pneumonia and yet, prior to covid, the hospital never required a negative flu or bacterial pneumonia test, generally didn't wear masks, allowed visitors and would see you in person rather than just a phone appointment.
It still remains to be seen how many people Covid will kill annually over the long term, but currently most of the people dying from Covid are the same people who would usually die of flu or other usually minor illnesses. Flu deaths have been significantly lower than typical, and until recently, we had negative excess deaths. It's now positive again, but as the article says, the current view is that's due to the medical backlog and not deaths from covid.
> because they're still dealing with COVID-19.
They're not really. My partner is an ICU nurse, and the nurses and doctors themselves largely don't think about it much now unless they're treating it, which isn't that common. Covid used to be something they'd be talking to me about every day, now I'm not sure they've mentioned it in the last month. Doctors and nurses are having work parties with none of them wearing masks. Only about 10 patients a day are admitted to the ICU due to covid across the whole country, and most of them are for reasons other than covid. Again, those are usually the patients who would be very ill from flu. Think 85 year olds with comorbidities.
They are still dealing with it in the sense that any time a patient tests positive for covid, they still send a bunch of the staff who had contact with them away for two weeks. Sometimes some of them end up very slightly ill with covid, and a few others test positive without symptoms. Which, again, nobody ever did for flu, despite it killing more than ten thousand people a year. Many of the staff think this is silly, but given the pressure they're working under due to staff shortages, few complain about two weeks off.
> We can do much better than this. Something like 80% of the population has been vaccinated, which is far lower than it could be,
Rising up to about 95% in vulnerable populations. It could always be theoretically better, but if the remaining people are unwilling to take the vaccine, then that's where it's going to stay. The covid vaccine uptake is approximately the same as the seasonal flu vaccine uptake overall, and by demographic, is higher. Overall uptake has wildly exceeded expectations.
If you just look at antibodies instead, 96% of people have detectable antibodies and 70% (likely more) have actually had covid already.
> we aren't giving regular booster doses like we do with the flu.
We don't give everyone the annual flu booster. Most healthy people of working age don't get the flu booster each year. So far, everyone has been offered the vaccination and one or two boosters.
We also currently have a new autumn booster programme being prepared for the Omicron variant.
That means that by the end of this year, Covid will have been around for three years, and vulnerable people who would be eligible for the annual flu vaccine would have been offered five Covid vaccinations.
Between how widespread it is, how easily it transmits and how likely it is to seriously mess you up, it's not really low risk. Even if it was low risk, it would still mean that the underlying risk of infectious diseases in our society has gone up. Returning to our previous practices would require our risk tolerance to have gone up, not down.
> [We don't do that with the flu.]
I do think we've historically been too blasé about the flu. We ought to be treating it more seriously than we do -- a lot of those things you say we don't do with the flu are things we perhaps should be doing.
> We also currently have a new autumn booster programme being prepared for the Omicron variant.
It's only available for above-50s. We can do better than this.
It still remains to be seen how many people Covid will kill annually over the long term, but currently most of the people dying from Covid are the same people who would usually die of flu or other usually minor illnesses. Flu deaths have been significantly lower than typical, and until recently, we had negative excess deaths. It's now positive again, but as the article says, the current view is that's due to the medical backlog and not deaths from covid.
> because they're still dealing with COVID-19.
They're not really. My partner is an ICU nurse, and the nurses and doctors themselves largely don't think about it much now unless they're treating it, which isn't that common. Covid used to be something they'd be talking to me about every day, now I'm not sure they've mentioned it in the last month. Doctors and nurses are having work parties with none of them wearing masks. Only about 10 patients a day are admitted to the ICU due to covid across the whole country, and most of them are for reasons other than covid. Again, those are usually the patients who would be very ill from flu. Think 85 year olds with comorbidities.
They are still dealing with it in the sense that any time a patient tests positive for covid, they still send a bunch of the staff who had contact with them away for two weeks. Sometimes some of them end up very slightly ill with covid, and a few others test positive without symptoms. Which, again, nobody ever did for flu, despite it killing more than ten thousand people a year. Many of the staff think this is silly, but given the pressure they're working under due to staff shortages, few complain about two weeks off.
> We can do much better than this. Something like 80% of the population has been vaccinated, which is far lower than it could be,
Rising up to about 95% in vulnerable populations. It could always be theoretically better, but if the remaining people are unwilling to take the vaccine, then that's where it's going to stay. The covid vaccine uptake is approximately the same as the seasonal flu vaccine uptake overall, and by demographic, is higher. Overall uptake has wildly exceeded expectations.
If you just look at antibodies instead, 96% of people have detectable antibodies and 70% (likely more) have actually had covid already.
> we aren't giving regular booster doses like we do with the flu.
We don't give everyone the annual flu booster. Most healthy people of working age don't get the flu booster each year. So far, everyone has been offered the vaccination and one or two boosters.
We also currently have a new autumn booster programme being prepared for the Omicron variant.
That means that by the end of this year, Covid will have been around for three years, and vulnerable people who would be eligible for the annual flu vaccine would have been offered five Covid vaccinations.
I haven't had covid and don't want to get it.