A report published by a group which, as far as I can determine (and I looked), doesn't have a name, set out a roadmap for the new world. The formal title of the report is "Getting to and Sustaining the Next Normal: A Roadmap to Living with Covid" and it's written by (according to the report) "more than two dozen of the world’s best epidemiologists, pharmacologists, virologists, immunologists, and policy experts." The full report can be found here.
The Washington Post Magazine summarized the report, and here's the crucial paragraph:
The report plots a course to what its authors call the “next normal” — living with the SARS-CoV-2 virus as a continuing threat that needs to be managed. Doing so will require improvements on a number of fronts, from better surveillance for Covid and other pathogens to keeping tabs on how taxed hospitals are; and from efforts to address the air quality in buildings to continued investment in antiviral drugs and better vaccines. The authors also call for offering people sick with respiratory symptoms easy access to testing and, if they are positive for Covid or influenza, a quick prescription for the relevant antiviral drug.
The report goes on to propose three possible scenarios: optimistic, pessimistic, and one midway between. I think when you have these kinds of prognostications, it means that nobody really knows. However, parameters are provided for annual deaths, with 15,000-30,000 a year in the optimistic scenario, and up to ten times that if we're being pessimistic.
The group suggests the country should aim to keep the annual death toll from respiratory infections like Covid, flu, and respiratory syncytial virus to about 60,000 a year — roughly the number of deaths that influenza causes in a bad flu season.
It sounds like, post-pandemic, we will be able to fold COVID deaths into the "normal" flu deaths and not increase the total. But remember - this is a "go-for," not a prediction:
"...improvements the group is calling for — things like better indoor air quality — will help to reduce the toll of influenza and other flu-like illnesses as well as Covid."
It turns out - unsurprisingly - that the improvements noted above will result in better treatment and outcomes for most respiratory diseases, and lives will actually be saved as a result of our pandemic wake-up call.
If we actually do them. Once the pandemic becomes the endemic, we will be strongly tempted to put the terrible years behind us and move on to the new crisis. History is clear about this - it's our preferred process, for all sorts of reasons.
We'll see.
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