Sufficient Control

Anthony Fauci and White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients, laying out their maps of the new world, says much the same as Aris Katzourakis did yesterday, but somehow making it sound like a hazy, bureaucratic place that could be benign if you only squinted your eyes just right.  Of course, when Fauci and Zients speak, it is US policy, and, therefore, inherently political.  But enough of that; decide for yourself:

• "We continue to move toward a time when Covid won't disrupt our daily lives. A time when Covid is no longer a crisis, but rather something we protect against and treat,"
• Fauci said there is still a "way to go" before cases and hospitalizations decline to what he described as an "acceptable situation."
• Fauci did not offer specific metrics on what that would look like.
• Fauci said the aim is to get to a place "sufficient control," which he explained was not "eradication" like with smallpox or "elimination" like with the polio epidemic and measles, but rather, "a level of control that does not disrupt us in society, does not dominate our lives, not prevent us to do the things that we generally do under normal existence."
• "That would be a level of infection, but more importantly, concentrating on the severity of disease, hospitalizations, and deaths that fall within the category of what we generally accept. We don't like it, but we accept it with other respiratory viruses: RSV, paraflu, and even influenza," Fauci said.
• Fauci said vaccines, boosters and infection will "hopefully, get us to the point where we have antivirals to be able to treat people who are at high risk that we no longer are in a situation of threat -- threat to our equanimity, threat to our economy, the threat to allow us to live a normal life."

To me, it sounds a lot like what we here at The New World have been talking about for some time.  This vision of the future, laid out by Administration spokesmen, in a political setting, at a time when people are dying and hospitals are full, must surely downplay the deaths and hospitalizations that we can see in the subtexts. But make no mistake:  there will be deaths and hospitalizations, and they will be in addition to, not somehow subsumed into, the deaths and hospitalizations caused by "RSV, paraflu, and even influenza," that we endure on an annual basis.  So thousands more will die, every year, than have ever died before.  That's the new world.

The endemic diseases that kill millions of us each year have never really broken the surface, and come to our attention, in any meaningful or consistent manner.  Perhaps, after years of a pandemic that has reached every corner of the world, and every nook and cranny of our attention, we might decide it's time to do something about this war - The Endemic War - and maybe even start with adequate health care for all Americans, including proactive engagement and preventive medicine.

Is it being hyperbolic to call it a "War"?  You can look up the numbers.  Flu and pneumonia kill more Americans each year than died in the Vietnam War.  Diabetes, a largely preventable disease, kills even more of us.  And so forth.  Haven't we gotten to the point where we have the resources to address this kind of thing?  

Well.  This post sure got out of hand.  Sorry.  See you next time.