CDC Director Says Covid Pandemic End Date Depends on Human Behavior

CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky can’t predict when the pandemic will end, saying it largely depends on human behavior – and that could be a problem.

As the Covid-19 pandemic stretches into its 20th month, cases in the United States have started to decline after a wave of delta infections peaked at more than 172,000 per day in mid-September. Some medical experts predict that we could be in the last major wave of the virus, but when it ends, no one can guess.

“We have a lot of scientific data right now; we have vaccines,” Walensky told reporters Thursday during a session hosted by the Health Coverage Fellowship, a health journalism program. “What we can’t really predict is human behavior. And human behavior in this pandemic hasn’t served us very well.”

With only about 55% of the U.S. population fully vaccinated and additional protection among those recently infected, there isn’t enough immunity to fight the more contagious delta variant, the infectious disease expert warned.

“With the delta variant, the R-naught is 8 or 9,” ​​Walensky said. R-naught, or the basic reproduction number, means the average number of people to whom an infected person will transmit the virus. “It means we need a lot of protection in the community so that we don’t get sick.”

And the problem, she continued, is that some communities have high vaccination rates and are very well protected, but “there are pockets of places that have very little protection.”

“And the virus isn’t stupid – it’s going to go,” Walensky said. “So what your question really depends on is how well we come together as a humanity and a community to do the things that we need to do in these communities to protect ourselves.”

But so far, “we are fighting against each other and not with the common enemy, which is the virus itself,” Walensky said.