
Italy had raised alarm bells in my head on 2/28/20. I went back and read what I wrote and am honestly surprised at just how accurate it turned out to be. We also didn’t seem to pay attention to warnings like this:
We are getting another warning from Italy now. BA.5 is more likely to cause more severe acute disease like we saw in waves prior to omicron.
We are on the threshold of a big tipping point from which I suspect the healthcare system will not recover. This substrain appears to evade immunity, and in combination with more severe disease, means much higher inpatient and ICU bed demands.
It almost seems poetic that we have the worst superspreader event happening right now since the start of the pandemic. People aren’t wearing masks and are travelling all over the country over Independence Day weekend. People flexing their independence and not taking into account their impact on others around them is going to deal a very painful blow.
We are in for a world of hurt. Just read the paper by Rosemary Boynton in Science on immune escape and Immune imprinting. Very difficult to see a good ending to this story anytime soon.
Meanwhile, the US is partying like it’s 1984 or on cruise ship party for the end of the world. I feel like I am in a dystopian movie with no end in sight.