Word of the week – Endemicity

Jeff Green | Jan 26, 2022

During a COVID-19 briefing last week, Dr. Piotr Oglaza said that he expects the coming 'endemicity' will change the way we all deal with the virus. For a second or two, I did not catch the meaning of the word. I could not remember ever hearing it before and I thought maybe I should look it up. But then the definition sorted itself out in my, admittedly thick, head (more on that a bit later).

Growing endemicity is about COVID-19 becoming endemic, a permanent feature in our lives, just like other coronavirus strains.

This is not a new idea, and it is what we have been waiting for.

Even before the first lockdown in March of 2020, the idea that the COVID-19 virus would become endemic was the logical end to the pandemic.

Dr. Oglza said last week that he did not know, and it will be hard to ever know, if  the prediction he made, 6 weeks ago, that everyone in the region, who was not vaccinated, would contract COVID-19 by “the end of January”.

Since then, we have stopped tracking cases, because there are too many, and stopped testing the general public for COVID, when they get sick, but do not require hospitalisation. But we know there have been thousands of cases in the region, and millions in the province, since then. And, based on hospitalisation rates, we can assume that the caseload is finally receding in our region.

As of Monday, there were 16 people in hospital in KFL&A, the same number as a week ago and two weeks ago. There are 6 people in ICU and 4 on ventilators, which are both the lowest numbers we've seen since early December. Part of the reason those numbers have dropped is tragic, since the death total in the region is now up to 28. There have been 22 COVID-19 deaths in KFL&A over the last two months.

And there are still 657 so-called “Active High Risk” cases in the region, 143 having been confirmed over the weekend. We are not done with the OMICRON wave yet, but it is ebbing here, and barring a new variant (which is a big caveat), we may be headed towards 'endemicity', which means not only the loosening of gathering restrictions but the end of them, and the end of mandatory masking, the return to normal.

An expert in the US made this pronouncement last week, saying it would all be done by April, and although she was more cautious, Dr. Theresa Tam did not discount the idea.

Before I say anything further, I might as well point out that I wrote in October that it appeared our region had been spared the Delta wave and that in spite of a few ups and downs, we were headed for a relatively gentle COVID winter.

But assuming that this is true and that another variant is not on our doorstep, we need to refocus a bit.

There has been a very negative impact on us all from the people who did not get a COVID vaccine, even though it was made available to them. In KFL&A,  6.4% of those over 12 have not had at least one dose of vaccine, about 12,000 people or so.

Most of them have now been exposed to the Omicron variant, and some of them have likely ended up in hospital, contributing to the stress our healthcare system is still enduring, and the backlog in treatments for other life threatening diseases and conditions.

These people have been encouraged by public health officials to get a vaccine, they have been condemned by politicians, they have been refused entry in some places on occasion, mostly for the public good but also as an incentive for them to get vaccinated.

None of this has worked. The battle lines are now drawn between the pro vax government, and the hardcore anti-vax group and a larger group who have joined with them in response to a federal government many of them never liked in the first place.

This is a battle over the past.

In a matter of weeks, a few months at the most, it won't matter, and it probably does not matter already, because we are hopefully entering a period of endemicity.

It mattered that people did not get vaccinated, up until the very recent past. It probably does not matter so much now, and it won't matter at all pretty soon. It's time to get over it.

We live with sugar, we live with tobacco, we live with processed foods. It costs us dearly in healthcare costs, but that is the price we pay for a free society.

For most unvaccinated people, their decision to remain unvaccinated is often counter to their own, and our collective interest.

(Note – After the print edition of the Frontenac News was published last week, I made the decision to post an unsigned letter on Frontenacnews.ca about the expansion of a gravel quarry that is being proposed off of Road 38 just south of Sharbot Lake. The public comment period for the quarry was set to expire last Saturday, on January 22. The letter expressed concerns of the potential truck traffic that will result from the expansion, and its potential impact on residents and tourists in the vicinity. The post on Facebook that accompanied the publication of the letter quickly spread locally, causing some controversy. While there is nothing wrong with any of that, it was a mistake on my part to publish the letter without insisting that it be attributed. The writer made this request, on the grounds that they did not want to be singled out by the owner of the quarry or those who support the quarry. I understood this concern, but it was not compelling enough for me to have agreed to it, and it was a mistake to do so. For the record, the Frontenac News does not take any position regarding the quarry application, for or against. JG)