Short Wave - Our Pandemic Future

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

It's been about a year since the coronavirus pandemic started to take hold in the United States. Recently, NPR science correspondent Rob Stein has been talking to infectious disease experts, epidemiologists, public health officials, medical historians and for the first time, many are cautiously offering hope. They say the worst may be finally over — but factors like vaccination rates, changes to public health policy and variant resistance to vaccines could upend that recovery.Reach the show by emailing [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Maddie Safai here with NPR health correspondent Rob Stein. Hi, Rob. Hey there, Maddie. Rob, can I just say, I, you know, I am so incredibly tired. I mean, we are, we are, both of us are so lucky to be able to work from home. And it is still such a huge mental and emotional toll. Yeah.

And it seems like every time things start to look up, you know, we have a surge happen. and the cases creep back down. And it's not long before, you know, we're alarmingly higher than normal for coronavirus cases. It's been a lot. Yeah, 100%. I mean, you know, like right now, coronavirus cases look like they're still dropping in the U.S. But what they're dropping, too, is still much higher than some of my worst fears for when we were at the height of the pandemic in this country, the surge in New York back in March of last year. But I spent the last few weeks talking to infectious disease.

experts, epidemiologists, public health officials, and even, you know, medical historians to try to get a sense of when might the real end finally come. And honestly, Maddie, I was surprised with what I heard. So today, with the help of many experts, we try to understand where we are headed. And for the first time, many leading experts are telling me that the worst of the pandemic could finally be over for the United States. And the end could be in sight. So Rob, right before the break, you said some dramatic words that I'm honestly having a hard time comprehending. You said the end could be in sight. I mean, Rob, is that really a possibility? Well, you know, Maddie, you know, like millions of other Americans, I've been hiding in my house for a year now. So, you know, it is almost hard to even imagine that this awful global nightmare could finally be starting to end. But I checked in with more than 20 leading experts I've been talking with throughout the pandemic. and it's been striking. Most are cautiously optimistic.

Here's one example, Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown School of Public Health. I'm optimistic that the worst may in fact be behind us. And so to be able to say, I think cautiously optimistic that the worst may be behind us, boy, that does feel really good. I mean, I appreciate, as she's saying that, it's actually comforting, but there's a ton of caveats to this, right? No, it's not clear-cut. Absolutely. You know, that comes with three big caveats. Number one, if everyone doesn't let down their guard too fast, number two, if those

dangerous variants don't mess things up again before enough people can get vaccinated. And number three, if the vaccination campaign doesn't stumble badly. But some infectious disease experts are less optimistic, like Michael Ulsterholm at the University of Minnesota. He worries about variants circulating. combining with not enough people masking, too many people gathering, and spring break on the horizon. I'm worried. I'm worried. And if you wanted to put all the viral ingredients in one big mixing bowl to cause them to transmit in ways that would be very, very damaged into us, do what we're doing

right now. That's what we're doing. You know, but, Mattie, that said, you know, everyone agrees that combination of factors is the big sort of Damocles hanging over our heads right now, but most are more hopeful that the country could avoid another big surge. Okay. That makes some sense to me, but Rob, I know you're optimistic, and I'm willing to go with you. I'm willing to go with you, Rob. But tell me why some of those folks that you talk to are hopeful specifically. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is the reason. The vaccination campaign is finally ramping up. A chunk of the country already has some immunity, plus enough people have hopefully finally gotten the message about wearing those masks and being careful.

And the weather is getting warmer, which makes it more fun and easier to gather outdoors, keeping a safe distance from each other. You know, so folks like Jeffrey Schaman, an infectious disease researcher at Columbia, are hopeful if there is yet another wave. It'll be more like a, you know, or like a ripple than another major surge like we had this past winter. There are nightmare scenarios that we can paint out, and I can't say that those are, you know, such remote possibilities that I would dismiss them. However, I think that this was probably the worst and it's going to continue to go down. Folks like Ashish John, Jeffrey Schaman,

know everyone's just sick and tired and, you know, ready to get back to normal, but they feel like we're almost there so close. If we can just, you know, stay the course for a little bit longer and keep being safe to allow enough time for enough people to get vaccinated, we could get there. And, you know, it doesn't mean that we can't do anything, right? It means we just keep reducing that risk, keep wearing masks, keep physically distancing. You know what I mean? It's not, we're not in lockdown anymore. So, yeah, I really like that message. Okay. So tangibly, what does this look like, Rob, over the next few months? Yeah. Well, it means the number of people getting infected, sick and dying would slowly, but hopefully pretty steadily continue dropping from here on out. You know, I mean, I mean, the people I've talked to say is getting safe enough for more people to do things like head back to stores, restaurants, even small groups of fully vaccinated people getting together for dinner parties indoors without masks. You know, remember that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was just talking to our colleague Alison Aubrey last week about the CDC guidelines saying that vaccinated people can get together in that way. I know, I know. You know, they could even get together that way with people who aren't vaccinated if they're at low risk and they don't necessarily have to quarantine anymore after getting experienced.

opposed to the virus. So things could steadily improve through the spring. What's the outlook for the summer, Rob? You know, the summer's looking like it could be, you know, pretty good. You know, it won't be like the summer of 2019, but hopefully it'll be way better than the summer of 2020. Life will get better, for sure. We will see more grandparents visiting and hugging their grandchildren. More restaurant will open. We would see sport events, weddings, church and religious events. That's Ali Mokdad. He helps run a well-known pandemic modeling group at the University of Washington.

He sees all sorts of good things coming as long as people do it carefully. You know, wear masks, do random testing, limit the numbers, keep the windows open. We will have summer camp for kids, even like kids are staying in the same bunk. Now, hotspots could flare up because of people getting careless and that sort of thing. Okay, then there's the fall, Rob. I mean, what about schools? Vaccines aren't approved for kids younger than 16 yet. So, you know, are they going to serve as vectors in their classrooms?

Is that environment going to be somewhat safe? Well, yeah, Maddie, their teachers hopefully will be vaccinated, protecting them and, you know, those around them. So if the virus is down, schools should be pretty safe for the most part. You know, probably we're still wearing masks, maybe keeping distance, lots of hand-washing. but kids seem far less likely to get sick. So hopefully no more slogging through school on laptops at the kitchen table for most kids most of the time. Jennifer Nuzzo is a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. I talked to her about this.

She's got a seven-year-old son herself. I am counting on it, and I'm thrilled. Seven-year-olds aren't meant to spend their entire days on the computer, and it's really hard to cover the subjects that they're supposed to cover on a Google hangout. Okay, so we've got lots of kids back in school in the fall, Perhaps maybe some remote work goes back into the office. But that's a lot of people hanging out again. And so this might be stretching it.

But do these experts have any thoughts about next winter? Well, Maddie, it is stretching it a bit. But even still, you know, Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes of Health. I've heard of him. Yeah. Some people call him, Tony. He's hopeful that life could still continue getting better and better as long as the infections keep slowing. people keep being careful, enough people are getting vaccinated, and the variants don't mess things up again.

It is conceivable and probably likely by the time we get to the fall, late fall, early winter by the end of this year, that we will have a gradual but very noticeable and important return to some form of normality. Maybe almost exactly like we were before. Take it easy, Tony, you know? Take it easy. Yeah, I know. Well, you know, to be clear, Maddie, the virus could surge again in the late fall and winter if the coronavirus follows the seasons, you know, like the flu does. But it hopefully won't be anything like the horrific winter we just went through. Right. And let's talk about those variants, Rob, because those are big part of the equation.

Yeah, absolutely. The variants are really what's scaring people a lot right now. You know, like Ali Mokdad at the University of Washington, he's worried that the variance first spotted in Brazil and South Africa. could take over. And those variants are the ones that may be better at evading the vaccines. And by winter, we assume that these two will become the dominant one, unless we have new ones that will show. And they will cause more infections and more mortality. And so to try to head that off, experts say we may need new versions of the vaccines for the variants. You know, we may need booster shots. It's also unclear how long the immunity from vaccination will last. And the U.S. needs to help other countries vaccinate as fast as they can because, you know, this is a global pandemic.

Right. And if this pandemic isn't under control everywhere, it'll never really end. Absolutely. So, Rob, before I let you go, I want to do a little big picture with you, you know, thinking about how the coronavirus will reverberate into the future. And there's so much to think about there, Rob. Yeah, so much, you know, but it's clear the pandemic is, you know, affecting everything. even the tiniest things I never used to even think about. You know, like, will the elbow bump replace the handshake for good? Just like TB helped banish the spatoon.

Remember that? Here's Keith Waylou. He's a medical historian at Princeton. I talked to about this. There's a whole realm of everyday interpersonal practices that are going to be very, very hard to revisit and redevelop easily, like handshaking and kissing and hugging or even walking next close to each other with your friends or, you know, laughing together. All of these things, you know, right now carry the stigma of disease transmission.

Let's remember the Black Death led to the Renaissance, the 1918-19-flu pandemic health give away to the roaring 20s. Right. And, you know, I'm hoping that one of the big shifts that comes to, out of this pandemic is addressing the systemic inequities that have led to communities that have been marginalized being hit extremely hard by this pandemic. Yeah, completely. The pandemics made even more apparent some really deep systemic problems in how society discriminates against the elderly, poor people, people of color, just to name a few. I mean, here's what Alan Brandt at Harvard told me.

He's another historian. Pandemics create an environment, what some people have called a kind of stress test for all of the weaknesses and vulnerabilities and fault lines of societies. And I think that's been especially true in COVID-19. So the question is, will we as a society finally try to solve some of these longstanding failures or continue to let them fester even deepen? Okay, Rob Stein, thank you so much for taking the time and talking with us today. I'll say you got me feeling a little optimistic, Rob. I'll give it to you. I'll give it to you. Yeah, I can hear a little pep in your voice. I hope it stays there.

This episode was produced by Rebecca Ramirez, edited by Giselle Grayson, and fact-checked by Rasha Reedy. The audio engineer for this episode was Stacey Abbott. I'm Maddie Safaya, signing off and wishing you well from us at Shortwave, the Daily Science Podcast from NPR.