A Third Pandemic Spring: How This One Will Be Different
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 15 March 2022
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
NPR's Tovia Smith reports on workers heading back to the office — where employers are figuring out how to give them new flexibility.
NPR's Will Stone reports on a recent change to the way the CDC talks about COVID risk. More on that story here.
NPR's Allison Aubrey has more on the battle over new COVID spending in Congress.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In the dark days of January, when the US was averaging more than half a million COVID cases a day, |
| 0:06.8 | it was hard to be optimistic, but Dr. Bob Wachter was. |
| 0:11.9 | I think the lightliest outcome for February and March is that we'll be in pretty good shape. |
| 0:17.6 | This virus being milder than the prior variants could turn out to be very good news. |
| 0:22.8 | That is what Wachter, who chairs the Department of Medicine at UC San Francisco, |
| 0:27.1 | what he told me at the start of January. Well, we played that back for him eight weeks later. |
| 0:33.6 | Usually when people play a clip, it's usually something you got wrong, so that was kind of nice. |
| 0:39.2 | Wachter's prediction, based on how Omicron had moved through South Africa, was right. |
| 0:44.7 | Now, in the US, on the cusp of spring, new cases and rates of hospital admissions have plunged |
| 0:51.7 | to lows not seen since last summer at Wachter's own hospital in San Francisco. |
| 0:57.1 | Four to six weeks ago, we had about 125 COVID patients in the hospital. |
| 1:01.7 | Today, we have about 20. So what happened? |
| 1:05.2 | Well, Omicron moved really fast. Thousands of people did die each day in January and February, |
| 1:12.3 | but that rate has fallen dramatically. And many people remain protected. |
| 1:17.4 | Wachter says by vaccination, prior infection, or both. |
| 1:21.9 | And obviously, the mother of all curve balls is the possibility of a variant that's better at its |
| 1:27.2 | job than Omicron. But I think the next several months are going to be fine. Lower case loads, |
| 1:33.2 | relatively little stress on our healthcare system, nowhere near what we were seeing a couple of months |
| 1:38.1 | ago. Consider this. In the US, this third pandemic spring will be different. We'll explain |
| 1:46.0 | new thinking about risk from the CDC, a new emphasis on flexibility as more workers return to |
| 1:52.5 | the office, and new concerns about an outbreak in China. From NPR, I'm Mary the Wieskele. It is |
| 2:00.3 | Tuesday, March 15th. It's considered this from NPR, the headlines out of China. This week are a |
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