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Covid-19 Is Just One Big, Sloshy Wave
The coronavirus will go where it hasn’t been yet and back to where it has
Forget the idea of a second wave of Covid-19 in America. Think instead of a wave that went into a pool and now it’s sloshing around, suggests Roger Shapiro, MD, an associate professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. SARS-CoV-2 is likely to slosh into every untouched corner of the country and flow back into places it’s already been, pushing the number of daily new infections back up near the highs seen during summer, possibly higher.
“The places where it hasn’t been, it will go,” Shapiro told a group of reporters on October 7. “The places where it has already been, it can go back.”
Nobody can predict exactly where the coronavirus will go next or what communities will be hardest hit, but no state, city, or community is immune, Shapiro says. What happens will depend largely on prevention efforts at the state and local level.
“Places that don’t have mask orders are going to be hit worse,” Shapiro says. “Places that are opening up bars and restaurants are going to be hit worse.”
Already there are “disturbing trends throughout the country,” Shapiro says, with the upper Midwest being hit hard and new infections ticking back up even in New York City.
“These surges are stubbornly radiating across America, spurred on by a troublesome connection between our own behavior and the virus’s biology.”
‘We must prepare’
Shapiro expects the number of daily new Covid-19 infections to reach 50,000 to 60,000 by mid-November “if we take no measures to stop this trend or reverse it.” The numbers are impossible to predict with accuracy, especially given all the political and behavioral factors at play. But it could get even worse.
“We must prepare for a surge this fall that will almost certainly surpass the April peak we experienced under stay-at-home orders and that may equal or eclipse our summer surge when we let go of the reins,” says Mark Cameron, PhD, an immunologist and medical researcher in the…
