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AAnd now we wait.
Thanksgiving is over, and lingering warnings from public health officials that big celebrations and travel could stifle the acceleration of an uncontrollable spread of Covid-19 have passed. But whether their warnings were heeded – and what kind of impact Americans’ decisions might have had – won’t be clear for a few weeks.
It will take a few days for those who have been infected to start feeling sick, get tested, and get their results back. It will take about two weeks before people who are sick enough to need hospital care come to the emergency room. And it could take another two weeks before those seriously ill die, and a little longer before those deaths are recorded in the official tally. That’s why experts describe parameters such as hospitalizations and deaths as lagging indicators – the results of transmission that occurred weeks before.
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Moreover, the spread could worsen in the meantime. If people contract the coronavirus on Thanksgiving, in a few days, they could pass it on to their coworkers, teammates, and others – all before they show any symptoms, and even if they never show any symptoms. symptoms.
“What that probably means is that three or four weeks after Thanksgiving we’ll see more people die than otherwise,” said Michael Mina, epidemiologist at the TH Chan School of Public Health at Harvard. “We will see more people infected during Thanksgiving. And unfortunately, it will likely be many older people who will come together with their families.
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Messages before the holidays from public health officials were direct and at times desperate. Please do not travel, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have warned. Don’t meet with people outside of your home, and if you do, keep it small, argued governors and mayors.
“The best gift we can give each other, the greatest gratitude we can express to each other, is protecting each other this Thanksgiving,” Howard University president and surgeon Wayne Frederick told his patients. “And the only way to do that is to stay separate from each other.”
Lots of people got on board. A STAT-Harris poll showed that most people were less likely this year to travel out of state to visit family and friends or catch a Thanksgiving flight, findings supported by a series of others surveys showing that most people were planning to wait until next year for their traditional turkey festivals.
But some people have definitely come together. Data from the Transportation Security Administration showed more than one million air travelers were screened on the Friday, Sunday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving – a threshold rarely reached since March, though still less than half the number of travelers checked around Thanksgiving last year.
Public health officials have blamed past holiday weekends for an increase in cases in some areas, but gatherings of family and friends are just a fire in the US epidemic. New cases have arisen among college students who socialize, children playing sports after school, and people taking exercise classes. They were fed at indoor restaurants, church services, prisons, nursing homes and other sites. Transmission is so high in many places that it is often difficult to locate those infected.
As cases increase, some states and local communities have taken an increasingly hard line against such activities, again closing indoor meals or banning after-school activities. But many others have resisted over concerns about the social and economic impact of taking such steps, especially without additional federal help for those who would be affected.
In the United States, the pandemic has reached a point of dissonance. Over the past few weeks, there have been remarkably encouraging waves of news on the vaccine front, with several candidates showing levels of efficacy that have exceeded the expectations of key public health officials. If all goes according to plan, vaccines will start reaching some people by the end of the year, with the rest of the population eligible to line up in the coming months. A Covid-19 slaughter is in sight.
At the same time, cases and hospitalizations across the country are reaching record levels, according to STAT’s Covid-19 Tracker. The country reported more than 2,000 deaths in two days last week for the first time since spring. Health experts are trying to motivate people to hang on for a few more months, take the steps that can help bypass transmission – and urge officials to implement new plans to force cases to drop.
“There is such a moment and a need for us to come together and do it smart and save lives this winter because if we stick it out it can make a huge difference,” Amber D’Souza, epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said in a briefing before the holidays. “Now is the time to get things done, because the way infectious diseases work is exponential. We will see cases continue to double every few weeks until we get the situation under control. “
Meanwhile, thousands of people are flocking to already crowded hospitals for treatment, further overwhelming health workers.
“I can’t be in four rooms at once, I can’t be at the bedside of four patients at the same time,” Consuelo Vargas, an emergency room nurse in Chicago, said during a press call organized by National Nurses United, the world’s largest organization of registered nurses. in the country, before the holidays. “We’re forced to choose who we’re going to pay attention to first, and where do you want to be on that list?” Your goal should be to not be on this list. Social distancing, wear a mask, avoid large crowds. “
Another medic, Juan Anchondo of El Paso, Texas, noted his city had received national attention for its Covid-19 outbreak, which forced the city to bring refrigerated trucks to contain the bodies. He said other communities could end up in similar straits, especially with the December vacation on the horizon.
“It all started after Labor Day, just a constant spike in Covid infections,” Anchondo said. “I’m afraid because the holidays are approaching – Thanksgiving, Christmas – I’m afraid it’s going to be worse here, and everywhere else in the United States. It’s a scary time there right now.
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