China’s ‘thermonuclear’ Covid hell should spell a warning for the U.S. expert says as they warn of ‘vaccine fatigue’
CHINA'S 'thermonuclear' Covid hell should be seen as a warning for the United States, an expert says as she cautioned against vaccine fatigue.
The eastern country is currently fighting a wave of rising Covid cases as concerns are growing that China may be hiding the true toll of the virus.
According to one estimate, Covid could spread rapidly until there are 800 million cases in 90 days after the Zero Covid policy of harsh lockdowns was ditched.
Dr Wafaa El Sadr, the director of ICAP and Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, warned about China's uptick of Covid cases in an exclusive interview with The U.S. Sun.
“Not only [the] US but the world overall should be quite concerned about what's happening in China," El Sadr said.
"I don't know if we know exactly what's happening in China."
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Washington is closely monitoring the rising rates of infections in China in the wake of loosening “Zero Covid” policies, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in a call with reporters on Tuesday.
"When it comes to the current outbreak in China, we want to see this addressed," State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a briefing on Monday.
"We know that anytime the virus is spreading in the wild that it has the potential to mutate and to pose a threat to people everywhere."
"The toll of the virus is of concern to the rest of the world, given the size of China's GDP," he said.
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"It's not only good for China to be in a stronger position vis-a-vis Covid, but it's good for the rest of the world as well."
While many other countries are easing the restrictions that were placed during the height of the Coronavirus outbreak, El Sadr believes this pandemic is far from over.
"We’re a long way away [from being able to say the pandemic is over]," she said.
“I believe that we’re not going to eradicate or eliminate Covid-19. It's going to be with us for a long time," added El Sadr.
El Sadr also warned that the virus could mutate, leaving people vulnerable, even with the protections we have created against Covid.
“All of this could be upended if [we] somehow get a strain that is completely different from the other variants that have been circulating and is more transmissible, and deadly, and our vaccines don’t work as well against it so it jeopardizes the tools that we have at our fingertips," she said.
“We’re seeing subvariants of existing variants, which is obviously not good but it means that some of our vaccines are quite effective and our antivirals are continued to be effective. That’s reassuring.
“Doesn’t mean a whole new variant that has no relationship to the previous variants may never arise. Hope it’s a remote possibility but no one can tell for sure,” warned El Sadr.
El Sadr reassured that we are in a “very different place from where we were in early 2020."
"So many people have had Covid-19 – protection from the previous infection, and many have been vaccinated and boosted so I think it's unlikely that we're going to be in a situation similar to what we had to go through in 2020."
She added that “the calculus is so different from 2020. I think it's unlikely that we'll have a situation where we need to go into lockdown.”
El Sadr pointed out that the circulation of Covid, RSV, and influenza is a “real concern."
“During the holidays, there’s a lot of traveling and mixing of different populations. Try to remind people [to] make sure [they're] up to date with their COVID vaccines and boosters.
“Recommend people wear a mask in large gatherings. KN95 mask. Surgical masks are not as good but can provide protection.
“We have a lot of tools in our toolbox, but we have to really highlight to people that this is the time to try and use all of the tools at our disposal.”
Images have recently been released, showing the gravity of China's Covid outbreak.
In one video, vehicles were seen queueing at a Beijing crematorium, which is reportedly overwhelmed with a 20-day backlog as the outbreak ravages China.
Other footage claims to show corpses in yellow body bags filling the floor of a funeral home.
Another clip reportedly shows bodies piled on shelves and in boxes in a hospital storage room as space ran out in the face of mounting death.
Epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding shared footage of the outbreak and said the situation was now “thermonuclear bad."
Dr Feigl-Ding, chief of the Covid Task Force at the New England Complex Systems Institute, was one of the first scientists to warn about Covid's ability to spread when he worked at Harvard.
He pointed to predictions by China’s own health officials that 60 percent of China’s 1.4 billion population could become infected.
VACCINE FATIGUE
El Sadr is “very concerned” about vaccine fatigue in the US.
However, she's optimistic that there may be an uptick in vaccinations because of the rise in cases.
El Sadr said that there is a "very small proportion of people who are vehemently anti-vaccine and they’ve always existed – even before Covid.
"Some people think 'what's the value in the vaccine,' having had it, then caught Covid."
She added: “Some people have lost confidence in the vaccines because they thought that the vaccine would protect them from getting Covid rather than prevent them from getting very sick."
El Sadr also acknowledged the “feeling that people so desperately want to get back to whatever they call normal and feel that, you know, because of all of these reasons that it's not critical to get the new booster anymore."
However, she warns of an uptick in Covid cases.
El Sadr is “expecting increasing cases – usually a week after such events."
"We don't have a good sense of the number of cases because of home testing," she said.
She said that “keeping an eye more on what's happening in hospitalizations from Covid" is important.
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"The rise in hospitalizations depends on where we see a surge.
"Thankfully because of vaccines, [we are] less likely to see an increase" and the Covid treatment drug "paxlovid is widely available," she added.
