{"id":117288,"date":"2021-12-20T13:40:49","date_gmt":"2021-12-20T18:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=117288"},"modified":"2024-01-04T14:43:21","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T19:43:21","slug":"boonshoft-faculty-quoted-in-ddn-pandemic-predictions-artcile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2021\/12\/20\/boonshoft-faculty-quoted-in-ddn-pandemic-predictions-artcile\/","title":{"rendered":"Boonshoft School of Medicine faculty quoted in Dayton Daily News pandemic predictions article"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excerpt<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"

Sara Paton, Ph.D., associate professor, Population and Public Health<\/p><\/div>\n

When the pandemic ends \u2014 and if that will be in 2022 \u2014 is largely up to us.<\/p>\n

As long as nearly half of area residents remain unvaccinated, the COVID-19 pandemic will get worse before it gets better, area health leaders warn. Cases and\u00a0hospitalizations will continue to climb.\u00a0More people will die.<\/p>\n

But despite foreseeing a painful beginning to 2022, Dayton-area public health experts are cautiously optimistic the COVID-19 pandemic\u2019s severity might decrease next year.<\/p>\n

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Sara Paton, an epidemiology professor at Wright State University, explained the pandemic will end when enough people have immunity from the virus through infection or vaccination, meaning much fewer cases of severe illness and death. Then COVID\u201119 will be endemic, still present but more manageable, similar to the flu or common colds.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe know pandemics end, it\u2019s just a matter of time,\u201d Paton said. \u201cI would guess it would be in 2022, maybe later in the year, but I can\u2019t say for sure. It could be 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Paton hedged her forecast, saying many unknowns could improve or worsen the pandemic, including vaccination rates, new variants and people\u2019s behavior.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
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Twenty-two months after the coronavirus pandemic arrived in Ohio and heading into the third calendar year dealing with the virus, health officials are loath to make predictions. The Dayton Daily News asked area health experts what factors would influence the course of the pandemic and what reaching the end might look like.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe will continue to see waves of COVID-19 infections throughout 2022 until our vaccination rates really catch up and people … stay on top of getting their booster shots,\u201d said Sarah Hackenbracht, president and CEO of the Greater Dayton Area Hospital Association.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Tim Crawford, Ph.D., assistant professor of family medicine and population and public health sciences<\/p><\/div>\n

Timothy N. Crawford, an epidemiology and biostatistics professor at Wright State University, said the pandemic does not have to get worse.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cGetting vaccinated, boosted for those who are fully vaccinated, and masking indoors are ways that we can curtail the potential surge,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we continue to ignore these strategies, then yes, it will get worse before it gets better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why were initial predictions wrong?<\/b><\/p>\n

At the beginning of this pandemic, experts looked back at historical pandemics for signs of how long this one would last, but they took into account our modern advancements.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were predicting that it would be two to three years, and it would go in cycles,\u201d Clark County Health Commissioner Charles Patterson said. \u201cFor some reason, we thought with all of our technology, with all of the might of the world being brought to this, we could bring this to its knees much quicker. That was before the politics, that was before the vaccine hesitancy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though safe and effective coronavirus vaccines were developed in record time, getting shots into arms has not proved seamless, both in the U.S. where vaccines are plentiful but many don\u2019t want them and parts of the world that haven\u2019t received enough doses yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe weren\u2019t successful in mitigating this when we actually had the tools to do so,\u201d Patterson said. \u201cWe\u2019re still going to go through those multiple waves.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does endemic mean?<\/b><\/p>\n

The world will likely never get rid of COVID-19, or at least not anytime soon. Only one disease (smallpox) has ever been eradicated and that took nearly 200 years after a vaccine was developed.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the onset, when people said we\u2019re going to try to eradicate this, that was a misnomer,\u201d Darke County Health Commissioner Terrence Holman said. \u201cIn today\u2019s society, there\u2019s no way you\u2019re going to eradicate a disease like this that can spread rapidly. And you can only hope to control it through vaccinations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early on in the pandemic, health leaders talked about how we could reach herd immunity after we got a vaccine.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vaccines tend to get rid of the more severe disease and death, but you can still get the disease and spread it,\u201d Paton said. \u201cSo we\u2019re not going to eradicate this disease. And because we\u2019re still transmitting it, it\u2019s just going to be part of our world.\u201d<\/p>\n

So that dashes hopes of eliminating the disease, but the world can still mitigate COVID-19, turning the disease into one that\u2019s endemic instead of a pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn endemic illness is one that is relatively low severity that is constantly circulating throughout a community or the world,\u201d Paton said. \u201cMaybe there will be surges here and there in different areas, just like we see with other diseases like the flu.\u201d<\/p>\n

What factors could make the course of the pandemic better or worse?<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of caveats, which makes it hard to predict what\u2019s going to happen,\u201d Paton said.<\/p>\n

How many people get vaccinated locally and around the world is a big factor, she said. Crawford expressed hope that vaccination rates could be aided somewhat in 2022 by the approval of a coronavirus vaccine for the last ineligible age group, children under 5 years old.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Pfizer announced that its vaccine trials in 2- to 4-year-olds produced a weaker immune response than anticipated, possibly delaying authorization. Nanette Cocero, global president of Pfizer Vaccines, said during an investor call Friday that she expects COVID will transition to an endemic state by 2024.<\/p>\n

As long as populations with low vaccination rates persist, the coronavirus will have room to mutate into a new variant. Global vaccine distribution has been uneven, Paton pointed out. For example, less than 10% of Africans are vaccinated against COVID-19.<\/p>\n

New variants could be bad or good for the course of the pandemic, Paton said. For example, early studies indicate the latest variant, Omicron, may be more transmissible, possibly even causing more reinfections (that\u2019s a negative); but it also might cause less severe illness (that\u2019s a positive) when compared to previous variants. A variant could also appear that vaccines don\u2019t work as well against.<\/p>\n

Public health officials expressed hope that the development and approval of\u00a0new treatments\u00a0could also give us new tools to fight COVID-19.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore and better treatments will be arriving next year to help us avoid serious illness and death from COVID-19 infections,\u201d Montgomery County Health Commissioner Jennifer Wentzel said.<\/p>\n

Improving access to testing\u00a0in America, including the Dayton-area, such as by providing home test kits, could also slow the spread of COVID-19, Crawford said.<\/p>\n

Lastly, people\u2019s behavior and how well they follow precautions like masking and distancing has a big influence on the spread of the disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the U.S. and Ohio, there are conflicting public health and social measures. They\u2019re different in different places, they change all the time, and we can\u2019t predict when and if they\u2019re going to change for the better or for the worse,\u201d Paton said. \u201cAnd we also have more\u00a0pandemic fatigue\u00a0so people are more tired of changing their habits back and forth, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

How the pandemic ends is up to us.<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like everybody should just get (COVID-19). We build up these antibodies and then we can move on,\u201d said Lindsey Martin. The 30-year-old Daytonian was skeptical of the coronavirus vaccine, but she ended up getting it earlier this month in order to see family at Christmas.<\/p>\n

This point of view is one that health leaders vehemently disagree with. The large number of hospitalizations and deaths that path out of the pandemic would incur is not an attractive option, Crawford said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no guarantee that when an individual is exposed to the virus that the disease would be mild,\u201d he said. \u201cThis strategy would lead to more COVID-related deaths and\u00a0overwhelm the hospital system. As hospital beds are being taken by those with COVID, individuals who need care for reasons unrelated to COVID may not get the care needed because of no space available. This could lead to even more deaths.\u201d<\/p>\n

We have the tools \u2014 vaccines, masks and other precautions \u2014 to end the pandemic, Crawford said, and we should use them.<\/p>\n

Paton predicts that after COVID-19 is downgraded from a pandemic to an endemic illness, it will follow a seasonal pattern with occasional surges or outbreaks, similar to the flu.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we will be able to use our public health or social measures to help in those situations,\u201d she said. \u201cI think there will be some people that will adopt mask wearing as a normal part of preventing seasonal disease. I am pretty sure I\u2019m going to be wearing masks in future winters and during surges.\u201d<\/p>\n

View the original story at daytondailynews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sara Paton, an epidemiology professor at Wright State University, explained the pandemic will end when enough people have immunity from the virus through infection or vaccination, meaning much fewer cases of severe illness and death. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":110733,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[730],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wright-state-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117288"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145228,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117288\/revisions\/145228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}