NPR: Is COVID Endemic Yet? Yep, Says CDC. Here's What That Means (Others Not So Sure)

[appalachiablue]

NPR, Aug. 8, 2024. Edit.

Four years after SARS-CoV2 sparked a devastating global pandemic, U.S. health officials now consider COVID-19 an endemic disease. "At this point, COVID-19 can be described as endemic throughout the world," Aron Hall, the deputy director for science at the CDC's coronavirus and other respiratory viruses division, told NPR in an interview.

That means, essentially, that COVID is here to stay in predictable ways.

The classification doesn't change any official recommendations or guidelines for how people should respond to the virus. But the categorization does acknowledge that the SARS-CoV2 virus that causes COVID will continue to circulate and cause illness indefinitely, underscoring the importance of people getting vaccinated and taking other steps to reduce their risk for the foreseeable future.

It is still a very significant problem, but one that can now be managed against the backdrop of many public health threats and not as sort of a singular pandemic threat,” Hall says. “And so how we approach COVID-19 is very similar to how we approach other endemic diseases." A fuzzy definition. Ever since the coronavirus exploded around the globe, officials have been referring to COVID as a “pandemic,” which occurs when a dangerous new disease is spreading widely in different countries.

The definition of “endemic” is fuzzier, but generally refers to a disease that’s become entrenched in places, like malaria is in many parts of Central and South America and sub-Saharan Africa, forcing people to learn how to live with it. And even though COVID is still spreading widely, daily life has returned to normal for most people, even during this summer's wave of infections.. COVID seems to be becoming a normal part of life. So NPR reached out to the CDC and other experts to find out if they think the time had come to start referring to COVID as endemic.. But not everyone agrees...
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/08/09/nx-s1-5060398/covid-endemic-cdc-summer-surge

[bullimiami]

1. That from the " no shit" dept?

Of course it is and it’s been going around and around.
Unfortunately doesn’t appear to be seasonal like the flu but persistent like colds.

[Traildogbob]

2. Yep,

Gonna be some other States like NC that outlawed wearing masks in public gonna get fucked.
My daughter and half her Trauma Unit at her hospital sent home yesterday, not only positive testing, but sick as hell. I went to get her meds at the Grocery store today and also at Wally World, fully Masked. And if a single MAGA looking asshole, and they are thick here, would have said a word, I would have missed the Soccer Gold match, unless it was shown in a jail cell.
Oh, my Mask, I got from Stephanie Miller Show. White mask with red lettering. Say’s “Shut the F**K Up Donnie”.
Outlaw wearing Mask, Fuck those fools, and they dare to scream Freedom all the time.

[appalachiablue]

3. Crazy, killers. Hope your daughter and staff are ok. Great mask, good for you!

[Traildogbob]

4. 🤜🤛

[Warpy]

5. What it means is that the virus is here to stay

It's less lethal than it was in 2020. It might continue to attenuate or it might not. It still packs enough of a punch to kill the chronically ill and the elderly. There will continue to be outbreaks.

Vaccines will cut the death rate considerably, but they will most likely need boosters periodically as the virus mutates.

Colds are endemic. Influnza is endemic. This should not be scary.