Long COVID – How will the pandemic end? – Southern Shenandoah National Park – Evening statistics
COVID has been with us for two years, and now the effects of long COVID are becoming more apparent. About 6% of those affected by COVID will never recover their sense of smell and taste. About 13.3% of COVID patients will take a month or longer for their symptoms to resolve. It is difficult to predict recovery times because COVID affects so many different organs: nerves, lungs, and heart in particular. The CDC says that 2.5% of COVID patients are predicted to have lingering side-effects, including but not limited to difficulty breathing, muscle pain, and trouble concentrating, for three months or more. Other, more troubling symptoms have emerged in some cases as well: amnesia, apraxia (inability to perform familiar movements), bowel incontinence, erectile dysfunction, hallucinations, and limb-swelling.
“I would never have expected, you know, in the middle of summer in a heatwave, we would have a surge in cases two and a half years into this pandemic,” said Dr. Scott Roberts, associate professor and associate medical director for infection prevention at Yale School of Medicine. It’s becoming clear that the pandemic will not “end” in the sense of the virus no longer affecting a large number of people. The virus will continue to mutate and new variants will continue to emerge: probably, if the recent trend continues to hold, in cycles of two months or so. Rather than the pandemic ending upon a specific calendar date, the most likely scenario is the gradual shift to “more of this endemic response,” according to Neysa Ernst, nurse manager for the Johns Hopkins Biocontainment Unit. Already COVID is no longer overwhelming hospitals or interfering to any great extent with travel plans. Dr. Taison Bell, assistant professor of medicine in the divisions of infectious diseases and international health and pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Virginia, said that over time COVID “will become much more of a nuisance rather than something that’s a potential death sentence in a small percentage of people.” It is difficult to predict when such a state of affairs will occur; Bell’s estimate is that it will take two-to-four years “to get to the long-term steady state.” According to Roberts, we probably will not reach true endemicity until 2024.
In the meantime one does what one can to stave illness off by staying as active as possible – at any rate, I do. Today I was in the southern region of Shenandoah National Park, hiking in the Turk Mountain area, a lovely location that I don’t often have the opportunity to see through my hiking clubs. The drive is a rather longer than most people are willing to undertake, and indeed it was tiring to drive back for more than two hours after having hiked a dozen miles. I may have to arrange to stay overnight in Waynesboro or Staunton if I wish to explore the area further. The views in the southern part of SNP are somewhat different than those further north: the summits are a bit lower but they contain several rock outcroppings whose bare surfaces contrast vividly with the green forest foliage. The southern area of the park also tends to be less crowded than the northern and central sections, since it is not as easy to reach from the greater DC metro area. Even though the elevation was lower than that of, for example, the Hawksbill area, it was high enough for the temperatures to remain in the 70s for the entire day – very refreshing after the torrid temperatures earlier this week, especially in the lowlands.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 594,549,458; # of deaths worldwide: 6,453,284; # of cases U.S.: 94,678,926; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,062,333.