It's the Worst Time Possible to Lose Interest in the Pandemic
You can imagine, as the editor of TIME’s health and science coverage, how steeped I’ve been in COVID-19 for the last six months. I have no choice but to be hyper-attuned to not only what’s happening out in the world, but to what our readers appear to want and need when it comes to news and information about the pandemic. Over the past two months, I’ve keenly felt how much interest in coronavirus news has declined since early summer—despite the fact that in that same time frame, the U.S. outbreak reached new peaks, and the global pandemic worsens and worsens by the day. A report published late last week bore out my gut feelings: Using data from the social media analytics organization NewsWhip, Axios found that social media interactions have fallen 88% since March.
It’s not hard to understand why. This is exhausting. There’s been plenty of scientific progress (new treatments discovered, the vaccine development process moving ahead with admirable speed and agility), but that stuff feels distant, and the only things an individual can do about the pandemic in September are basically what they were in April: stay at home unless necessary, wear face coverings and maintain social distancing when in public, and get tested whenever you have symptoms or think you might have been exposed. Nobody wants to hear that; even in April, we were worrying about “caution fatigue ,” and without a doubt, lassitude about the virus has only become more widespread and acutely felt. But it’s dangerous to lose that vigilance.
When the U.S. started to feel like things were improving in late May after the initial spring spike, we let our guard down, reopening businesses and easing social distancing guidelines. That led to the massive summer spike, dwarfing the first and peaking in mid-July. Since then, daily confirmed cases have been falling, and it’s started to appear that the U.S. has started to get the outbreak under control again … only, there’s been yet another spike in the past few days:
It’s too early to say whether this is a blip or a full reversal of the trend, but the U.S. failed once by declaring a premature victory over the virus, and it would be beyond foolish to make the same mistake again, especially with winter coming, and many experts expecting the season to bring with it increased risk of coronavirus spread. Your area might be doing okay at the moment, but for context, five states—North Dakota, West Virginia, South Carolina, and Wisconsin—have set their single-day case records in the past four days.
Perhaps even more troubling is that while the U.S. as a whole has been trending downward in daily cases, the same has not really been true of daily deaths. Consider the chart below, which shows average confirmed COVID-19-related deaths from June 1 to Sept. 12:
I’ll explain: while average daily cases have fallen nearly 50% since the July peak, average daily deaths fell only 30%, and that’s for the nadir, a brief blip in early September. And, as with cases, the last week suggests an upward trajectory—but with an even steeper skyward curve.
All that is in the context of the U.S. rapidly approaching 200,000 confirmed coronavirus-related deaths; as of this morning, the count was just about 193,700. (And many believe this is a dramatic undercount.) As you probably know by now if you read this newsletter regularly, this week’s cover story of the TIME print magazine, which I wrote along with my colleague Alex Fitzpatrick, was structured around this abhorrent milestone, with the accompanying cover image framed in black for the first time since 9/11.
Illustration by John Mavroudis for TIME
The U.S. will hit 200,000; there’s no doubt. But we can’t let that become yet another sense-dulling moment, especially with signs that this pandemic is far from over. In our story, Alex and I assessed how and why the U.S. failed its pandemic response not once but twice: at the outset in early spring, and then again in early summer. If we finally learn our lesson, perhaps we can avoid doing the same again in early fall.
AstraZeneca Restarted Its Late-Stage Vaccine Trial
Last week, the U.K.-based pharmaceutical company halted a Phase 3 trial of one of the world’s most promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates after one of the study participants developed what the company’s CEO described as a “potentially unexplained illness.” AstraZeneca has not publicly stated what exactly the problem was, but STAT News reported the company’s CEO described it on a private call as “neurological symptoms consistent with a rare but serious spinal inflammatory disorder called transverse myelitis.”
Yesterday, AstraZeneca announced the study would resume, but only in the U.K. so far. The country’s Medicines Health Regulatory Authority had reviewed the case and determined that trials were safe to continue. AstraZeneca has been planning to expand their study to include some 500,000 people in the U.S., U.K., Brazil and South Africa; it’s not yet clear how this will affect the company’s work in other countries.
Though this might sound like a terrible roadblock for the global effort to deliver a safe and effective vaccine, it’s more like a speedbump. In fact, it is quite literally a speed bump: the drug development process is designed to pause whenever something like this happens, to make sure safety remains the primary concern. So such a pause is routine, "just part of a normal process," Dr. Paul Duprex, director of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Vaccine Research, told my colleague Jamie Ducharme last week. If we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic, "we would not be on the phone talking about this," he pointed out.
Earlier today, the CEO of Pfizer appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and said that the drug maker expects to have key data for its current combined Phase 2 and 3 trial ready for regulatory review by the end of October. Yesterday, Pfizer submitted a proposal to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to expand those studies from 30,000 to 44,000 participants. The company’s CEO says it has already manufactured “hundreds of thousands of doses” in case it does get FDA approval, and is prepared to distribute the vaccine by the end of the year.
The speed at which the vaccine development process is proceeding is formidable. In the past, developing a vaccine and bringing it to Phase 3 trials has typically taken well over a year at best; for COVID-19, the process took less than six months. It remains unlikely that there will be an approved vaccine before Election Day in the U.S., the target President Donald Trump appears to be pushing for, but even normally circumspect experts think the end of the year is feasible.
Last week, my colleague Alice Park, TIME’s resident expert on the frontiers of medicine, published a deep and lucid dive into the unprecedented scramble to immunize the world against COVID-19. I highly recommend it for anyone looking to wrap their brains around where we are in the process, when we’re likely to actually get a vaccine, and how we’re going to decide who will be vaccinated first.
Central Europe largely avoided the initial wave of COVID-19 in the spring and early summer. But in the last few days, a number of countries in the region have seen worrying spikes in reported cases. The Czech Republic, for example, previously peaked at around 3 cases per capita (that is, per 100,000 residents) in late March; over the last week, it has been setting new records every day, reaching over 14 cases per capita yesterday. For comparison, the U.S. is currently averaging about 12 cases per capita daily.
The Czech Republic is the most striking, but other countries nearby are also seeing worrying trends. Hungary was recording negligible numbers of cases through the summer; in the past few weeks, it has spiked up to an average of 6.5 new cases per capita:
Austria, which did have a rough March, is now back to levels last seen in early spring:
Slovenia not only returned to springtime levels, but has nearly doubled the highs from then:
As has Slovakia:
It’s not clear exactly why the pandemic is now hitting the region, though the loosened travel restrictions through the European Union in July may have something to do with it. After resurgences in western Europe, many countries began re-tightening travel guidelines; now some central European countries are doing the same. Hungary, for example, closed its borders to everyone but citizens and permanent residents for the month of September, the Guardian reports. Social distancing measures are also being reinstated; in the Czech Republic, mandatory mask-wearing in taxis, public transport, shops and malls was enacted on Thursday, and bars and restaurants must now be shut between 12 p.m. and 6 a.m.
The U.S. West Coast Continued to Face a Dual Threat
I’d be remiss not to mention the wildfires currently devastating the west coast states. It’s not yet clear if and how the climate change-induced catastrophe will impact the pandemic response of California, Oregon and Washington. However, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes, “wildfire smoke can irritate your lungs, cause inflammation, affect your immune system, and make you more prone to lung infections, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.” So, to our west coast readers, please stay extra safe.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com.
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