https://archive.md/kqnHs
"West Aussies should expect to be hit by COVID up to three times a year if
governments fail to treat the virus seriously, a leading epidemiologist has
warned.
Amid a surge in local cases and concern over the availability of vaccinations
for children under five, University of WA epidemiologist Dr Zoe Hyde said
unless governments decided to do more about COVID, the “living-with-the-virus”
model meant multiple diagnoses each year.
WA cases have steadily risen from 212 in mid-October to 466 in the first week
of November. The seven-day average for hospital admissions has also jumped 14
per cent.
More than 6500 new cases were reported in Australia in the last week of
October.
“Everyone realistically is going to get this thing two to three times a year.
That’s what living with COVID means,” Dr Hyde said.
“It’s something we need to expect, but it’s something we shouldn’t accept.
“The virus is here, we can’t eradicate it anymore. There will always be people
getting sick with COVID, but that doesn’t mean we do nothing.”
Importantly, Dr Hyde said, governments could not “spin their way our of COVID”
and needed to ensure messaging was clear.
“We’ve been a bit of a victim of our own success in that we did a tremendous
job keeping it out until everybody was vaccinated, and then I think people may
have thought well, so we’ve got vaccinated, we’ve opened up,” she said."
What worries me is that repeated COVID infections may lead to other potentially
serious illnesses (for example, Parkinson’s disease) many years later, by which
time it’ll be much too late to do anything.
Via Violet Blue’s
Pandemic Roundup: November 16, 2023
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
