Our First ‘Nonemergency’ COVID Season
One thing we crave after our collective pandemic experience is certainty. If a potentially powerful new variant is out there, we need some answers about it: How fast is its evolution? Will it spread as quickly and widely as Omicron? And will the vaccine be effective against it?
In this episode, I talk with Atlantic science writers Katie Wu and Sarah Zhang. They know a lot, and they are very honest about all the things they don’t know. A few scenarios are possible, from Omicron replay to somewhat bad to shrug. They give us their best educated guesses, based on years of deep reporting on COVID. If we face another pandemic, will we be better prepared this time? The answer to that one, I’m afraid, is probably not. What we do have more of, though, are excellent metaphors. Sarah put it to me this way:
I think my favorite metaphor is a dog chasing a rabbit. You can think of the virus as a rabbit. It’s just running around all over the place. The virus is constantly evolving; it’s always becoming a little bit different. And our immunity’s playing a little bit of catch-up.
People keep saying, “When is the virus going to stop evolving?” Well, the rabbit can just kind of keep running forever, even if it’s just running in circles. So the virus is never going to stop evolving, and our immune system is always going to be playing catch-up. And that’s basically what happens with flu every year. And I think that’s probably where COVID is going to settle.
Listen to the conversation here:
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The following is a transcript of the episode.
Hanna Rosin: I’m Hanna Rosin, and this is Radio Atlantic. There’s something that happens to me when I see the word COVID in a headline. My brain freezes. It’s like a tiny background panic that stops me from doing what I want to do, which is click on the headline, read the story by a smart science writer, find out what’s going on with COVID so I can know how to live my life.
I know a lot of people in this situation. So today’s conversation is our attempt to slow down and understand some things—some basic things—like this new COVID variant that experts seem concerned about, the updated vaccine that’s about to come out, when and where to mask or not mask
But I also want us to get a broader perspective. Because humans and viruses have lived together for hundreds and thousands of years. And we’ve only had COVID for a few. So I’m talking to two Atlantic science writers, Katie Wu and Sarah Zhang. Hi, Katie.
Katie Wu: Hi. Good to be here.
Rosin: Hi, Sarah.
Sarah Zhang: Hello.
Hi. So just this morning,
