COVID cases in the United States have topped 68 million. According to Johns Hopkins University of School of Medicine, there have been 68,508,181 COVID-19 cases resulting in 857,672 deaths representing a mortality rate of 1.3%. Meanwhile, COVID hospitalizations remain in excess of 150,000.
In a virtual speaking appearance before the World Economic Forum's Davos Agenda on Monday, Dr. Fauci indicated we are still in the first stage of the pandemic and that it is too soon to determine if Omicron will accelerate the end of the pandemic. The four other phases which follow a pandemic are Deceleration, Control, Elimination and Eradication. As long as the United States is recording a million new cases every day or every other day we will not get to the deceleration phase anytime soon. There was some hope when it took nearly two months to add a million new COVID cases between May and July 2021. It seems unimaginable that it took 58 days for the U.S. to go from 33 to 34 million cases and now the total number of cases has doubled in 6 months thanks to Delta and now especially Omicron. Other more communicable variants (even if mild) could soon follow.
But a deceleration will have to happen if we ever want to get COVID under Control. By Control, Fauci means that COVID no longer disrupts society be it through having to wear a mask or showing proof of a negative COVID test or vaccination card. At that point, the pandemic would become an endemic. There might be some regions of the world where COVID could be potentially be eliminated, but with the exception of smallpox no other viral infection has been entirely eradicated.
Naturally, there is a critical mass of the population for whom not only is COVID over but don't really give a damn about it. Yet it is precisely these attitudes which have kept not only the United States but pretty much the rest of the world in the first phase of a pandemic which has entered its third year.
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