“Milder” Does Not Mean “Mild”

 

While the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant is significantly more contagious than the versions of coronavirus that came before it, there is a persistent misunderstanding that getting sick with the virus results in mild symptoms. Omicron appears to cause milder disease in unvaccinated and vaccinated people who get sick with it, but the symptoms are far from what many doctors consider mild, at least according to most people I speak to who have recently battled and survived the infection, and say they never want to get sick with it again.

The massive surge of people testing positive for the Omicron variant has subsided in many parts of the country over the last several days, which is very good news for everyone wishing to discard their N95 and KN95 face masks and return to “normalcy”. Over the last 2 weeks, positive COVID tests dropped nationally from their peak of over 805,000 new cases per day on January 15 to 537,784 on January 29. Pressure on health care systems, hospitals, and clinics has been relieved as well in recent days, though some hospital and ICU beds remain filled to capacity in some areas of the country.

Despite the good news, deaths from this current Omicron surge continue to rise. On average, 2,572 Americans lost their lives each day over the past 2 weeks. Carla K. Johnson says the daily death toll is higher now than last fall’s surge from the Delta variant, “with deaths likely to keep rising for days or even weeks.”

Now omicron is estimated to account for nearly all the virus circulating in the nation. And even though it causes less severe disease for most people, the fact that it is more transmissible means more people are falling ill and dying.

“Omicron will push us over a million deaths,” said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine. “That will cause a lot of soul searching. There will be a lot of discussion about what we could have done differently, how many of the deaths were preventable.”

The average daily death toll is now at the same level as last February, when the country was slowly coming off its all-time high of 3,300 a day.

 

So milder? Perhaps. But mild? Hardly.

Pauline Anderson reminds us that “COVID brain fog” can seriously impair cognitive function long after COVID-19 infections resolve, even in people who experience “mild” COVID symptoms:

“We’re seeing changes to the [cerebrospinal fluid] in the brain of most people who report cognitive changes,” Joanna Hellmuth, MD, assistant professor of neurology, Memory and Aging Center, University of California, San Francisco, told Medscape Medical News.

“We’re just in the beginning stages, but I hope this study will provide some legitimacy to this being a true neurologic condition.”

 

Avoiding persistent cognitive changes due to “brain fog” is one of the best reasons to avoid getting infected with coronavirus, irrespective of the variant that is dominating the COVID landscape at the moment. No one wants their airline pilot, bus driver, or doctor caring for them to have brain fog!

That’s why it’s crucially important to be fully vaccinated and boosted to protect yourself and others around you. It’s why we need to get all of our germ dispensing kids immunized and not transmitting the virus to their friends, teachers, parents and grandparents. And until transmission rates drop to safer levels, it’s why we still need to wear our face masks  in crowded indoor spaces, especially if the vaccination status and health conditions of those who are near you are unknown. Only then will we have a chance to get back to normal … at least until the next variant comes around.

 

(Google Images)

 

source http://www.thepediablog.com/2022/01/31/milder-does-not-mean-mild/