Our covid cases have peaked. Endemic?

I was reading more about the "Spanish Flu" pandemic, and it was noted that a less deadly strain was still going around in the later 1950's. It had just been folded in with the regular flu strains.

I am really hoping that the end is in sight!

I have also heard something very similar, but not with a timeline (just eventually it would become this way).

ETA: my friend who works in bio-health (I can't remember his exact field) in a lab made this comment. 

I think we're heading in that direction too, towards endemic rather than pandemic.

BBC

"We're almost there, it is now the beginning of the end, at least in the UK," Prof Julian Hiscox, chairman in infection and global health at the University of Liverpool, tells me. "I think life in 2022 will be almost back to before the pandemic."

"What's changing is our immunity. The new coronavirus first emerged two years ago in Wuhan, China, and we were vulnerable. It was a completely new virus that our immune systems had not experienced before and we had no drugs or vaccines to help.
The result was like taking a flamethrower into a fireworks factory. Covid spread explosively around the world - but that fire cannot burn at such high intensity forever.
There were two options - either we would extinguish Covid, as we did with Ebola in West Africa, or it would die down but be with us for the long term. It would join the swarm of endemic diseases - such as common colds, HIV, measles, malaria and tuberculosis - that are always there."



Inevitably not everyone agrees that you're past the worst yet in the USA unfortunately. This report I read this morning gets to talking about when the worst will be over towards the end of this piece

BBC

"Dr Larsen added that "it's incredibly frustrating" to hear Americans downplay the ongoing threat of Omicron and believe that, like South Africa, the US may soon emerge from the current surge.
"The seasonality is also different," he said. "Omicron's surge through South Africa was during their summer, and it's hitting us in winter when we know more people gather indoors and there's more transmission…it's going to be bad."

In the US, both Dr Cameron and Dr Gandhi suggested that they believe hospital admissions may peak in February or March.

I think that's probably where we'll end up, but not for a while. It can take years, and that's if no new variant that's more deadly/damaging emerges. We're not there yet.

This is a GREAT interview with an infectious disease specialist from University of Chicago (on one of my fave podcasts). Not super long, realistic, honest.

www.wbez.org/stories/what-to-expect-when-youre-expecting-omicron/2f47392b-bd09-435d-964e-ce9767ea0bf6

The reality.

we are seeing this right now also. Positive cases are up by 30-40%, BUT hospitalization is down, or holding steady. We don't have anyone in our ICU on a vent, but we have some COVID cases.

 
It looks like the World Health Organisation does not agree with it being classed as endemic at this point in time.

 www.reuters.com/world/europe/omicron-infect-more-than-half-europes-population-6-8-weeks-who-2022-01-11/

That would imply treating the virus as an endemic illness, rather than a pandemic, without recording every case and without testing all people presenting symptoms.

But that is "a way off", WHO's senior emergency officer for Europe, Catherine Smallwood, said at the briefing, adding that endemicity requires a stable and predictable transmission.

"We still have a huge amount of uncertainty and a virus that is evolving quite quickly, imposing new challenges. We are certainly not at the point where we are able to call it endemic," Smallwood said.

"It may become endemic in due course, but pinning that down to 2022 is a little bit difficult at this stage."

Not necessarily. If it were so viruses like the cold and flu viruses would eventually disappear.  The "spanish flu" was the original H1NI.  The original virus still exists in the wild. Some years we get a mild variant, some years like 1972 and 2009 we get very severe outbreaks mutated variants.  While none have been AS deadly world wide at the original pandemic it is still killing people world wide today.

The top virologists here have been talking about this during the week, and they are saying it is probably too soon to declare covid as endemic. Yes, there is a glimmer of hope with how omicron is behaving, but there is nothing to suggest there won't be another, more severe, variant just yet. 
We still haven't hit our peak, I don't think. School was back Monday, and with it came the expected increase in cases - all students were required to have at least a rapid test before attending, so naturally they picked up quite a few cases. It will probably be a few weeks until numbers settle down a bit.

I agree with you 100%.

Our school district (Portland, OR) has decided that they are no longer considering an exposure an exposure as long as the kids are masked.  Meaning no more quarantine or testing if you are sitting at a table group with someone who tests positive.  I absolutely agree that people are sick and tired of covid and are just going ostrich and ignoring it.   

My state has suspended all elective surgeries because the hospitals are strained to the breaking point, local schools have gone remote due to staff shortages, and I think oregon is calling National Guard to assist in their hospitals.  We are not getting better around here.  

I pray that you are right, OP. But I’ll believe it when I see it. We had what, 2 months before cases started creeping up again? We never stopped masking here in Belgium.

I have some sinus crud right now. I’m 95% sure that it’s just because 3 fields around our house were harvested on Thursday. But I’m playing that “what if” mind game. I haven’t been around anyone to be considered as an exposure who is sick, which is why I’m pretty sure it’s just from all the harvesting. We will see what tomorrow brings.

Probably because WHO has to consider the entire world, and not just one highly vaxxed country.