Africa may have reached the pandemic's holy grail

[Jilly_in_VA]

When the results of his study came in, Kondwani Jambo was stunned.

He's an immunologist in Malawi. And last year he had set out to determine just how many people in his country had been infected with the coronavirus since the pandemic began.

Jambo, who works for the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme, knew the total number of cases was going to be higher than the official numbers. But his study revealed that the scale of spread was beyond anything he had anticipated — with a huge majority of Malawians infected long before the omicron variant emerged. "I was very shocked," he says.

Most important, he says, the finding suggests that it has now been months since Malawi entered something akin to what many countries still struggling with massive omicron waves consider the holy grail: the endemic stage of the pandemic, in which the coronavirus becomes a more predictable seasonal bug like the flu or common cold.

In fact, top scientists in Africa say Malawi is just one of many countries on the continent that appear to have already reached — if not quite endemicity — at least a substantially less threatening stage, as evidenced by both studies of the population's prior exposure to the coronavirus and its experience with the omicron variant.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/01/28/1072591923/africa-may-have-reached-the-pandemics-holy-grail

[brush]

1. The last paragraph is not clear. Is it saying herd immunity has been reached?

Is endemicity the same as herd immunity?

[Jilly_in_VA]

4. No

Endemicity means that it has settled down, much like the flu. There will be outbreaks, but they will be manageable, if a major portion of the most vulnerable population is vaccinated.

In the field of epidemiology, pandemic and endemic are two interrelated terms which are fundamentally different from each other.

A pandemic is a spread of disease over a large region that covers entire nations or even continents affecting a substantial part of the population.

An infection is termed as an endemic when it is maintained in a population at a baseline level of the geographic area without the help of any external sources.

https://byjus.com/free-ias-prep/difference-between-pandemic-and-endemic/

[brush]

6. Endemicity is a term rarely heard by most of us so thanks...

for explaining it. Is reaching it a breakthrough of sorts, I mean reaching a cold/flu-like status that can be handled?

BTW, most of us, going on three years of covid, know the difference between a pandemic and epidemic.

[ShazamIam]

2. Africa does not equal Malawi except if you are RW npr and want to support the antivaxers.

[Coventina]

3. Just because COVID becomes endemic doesn't mean it becomes "safe."

NPR

[unblock]

7. Agreed, just because the flu is endemic doesn't mean all endemic diseases are as mild

Broadly, endemic means cases are resolved at generally the same rate as they emerge; although there may be seasonal or other outbreaks, it always returns to a familiar level.

It does not distinguish between cases being resolved by people dying or recovering without long term effects or whether the illness is mild or severe.


Smallpox and polio were endemic before they were effectively or nearly eradicated.

[Wingus Dingus]

8. Young, mostly healthy and active, not obese/diabetic/high BP like the US.

Makes sense that they could withstand wave after wave of virus with relatively few fatalities.

[applegrove]

12. With a different history of infections than anywhere else. But mosty

young and skinny people.

[Jilly_in_VA]

9. Some of you

aren't getting the point at all. I didn't imply, nor does the article, that endemicity means that Covid is "safe". Hell, flu isn't safe, if you want to get into that. I've taken care of people who have died of influenza complications. Endemicity means, basically, that a disease has reached manageable proportions. And stop jumping on NPR. I don't know where you think we'd be without it....

[Tommymac]

10. NPR has been RW funded since 2010 or so. It is no longer objective. It sucks!

[electric_blue68]

13. Gotta partly disagree w you...

I'm almost positive I've heard things on NPR that
No RW station would say.

If you turn into the local WNYC (Brian Lerher), and their local programs that are syndicated to NPR, and other programs from say PRI you'll hear tons of stuff on the attempted coup, the lies of TFG including the Georgia attempt, Repuglican manuevings in Red States etc. All the info you'd never hear on RW platforms.

I'm serious! 👍

[Tetrachloride]

11. NPR headline writer should retract "holy grail "

Culturally misleading.