A possible end to the pandemic phase – Health care in pre-historic times – Evening statistics
It’s taken a while, but it appears that we are finally approaching a phase in which the pandemic is officially at an end. Dr. Ashish Jha , the White House COVID-19 coordinator, said that the latest vaccine rollout may be the first of what will become an annual shot for Americans, just like the flu shot. “We are moving to a point where a single annual COVID shot should provide a high degree of protection against serious illness all year.” In other words, our position with respect to COVID will be similar to that which we have with respect to flu: it will still take an annual toll of deaths every year, but it will be containable.
The main test will come during the approaching winter. The past two winters have seen significant spikes in the number of COVID-related deaths. There will almost certainly be a spike of some sort during the next several months, but it may be only a small one and the virus mutations may prove to be relatively mild, as the latest ones have been. The virus may “take the track of other coronaviruses” and continue to become less severe but more transmissible over time, according to 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. Over the next few years, Bell said, COVID-19 “will become much more of a nuisance rather than something that’s a potential death sentence in a small percentage of people.”
Experts agree that even now the virus is still circulating at levels that are too high and unpredictable for COVID-19 to be considered over as a pandemic. However, differences from conditions as they were a year ago are readily apparent. Hospitals are no longer overwhelmed with COVID patients. Very few are on ventilators.
While we are on the subject of health care, evidence has come to light to show that it is an older profession than is generally supposed. Researchers exploring a cave in Borneo, in a rainforest region known for having some of the earliest rock art in the world, came across the grave of a young adult whose skeleton was intact except for the left foot and part of the left leg, the result, it appears of an amputation, since the cut in the bone was clean and at a consistent angle. An accident or an animal bite (such as a crocodile’s) would cause some fracturing, and none was found here. This discovery raises many questions: how, for example, was such an operation accomplished without a fatal blood loss or infection? Those who completed the operation seem to have had some idea about the need for sterilization, staunching the blood flow, and so on. But one fact is indisputable: the subject of this operation must have received some sort of care afterwards, since the amputee lived about six to nine years after the operation was performed and could not have gotten about the rugged terrain of the area without assistance.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 611,756,076; # of deaths worldwide: 6,508,705; # of cases U.S.: 96,810,306; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,073,887.