LA Times: Opinion: The U.S. is facing the biggest COVID wave since Omicron. Why are we still playing make-believe?

[ahimsa]

From the Los Angeles Times, by Eric Topol:

Opinion: The U.S. is facing the biggest COVID wave since Omicron. Why are we still playing make-believe?

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-01-04/covid-2024-flu-virus-vaccine

Now in its fifth year, SARS-CoV-2 has once again proved to be highly resilient, capable of reinventing itself to infect us. Yet we continue to make-believe that the pandemic is over, that infections have been transformed to common cold status by prior exposure(s), and that life has returned to normal. Sadly, none of this is true.

The massive number of infections in the current wave will undoubtedly lead to more people suffering from long COVID. For a high proportion of people, especially those of advanced age, immunocompromised or with coexisting conditions, getting COVID is nothing close to a straightforward respiratory infection.
...

It’s crickets from the White House on COVID now, with no messaging on getting the updated booster or masking. The Biden administration has done far too little to accelerate research on effective treatments for long COVID.

This passivity reinforces the illusion that the pandemic is behind us when it’s actually raging. And this season will be followed by a more quiescent period, which will, once again, lull us into thinking the pandemic is over. But there is no getting over it until we recognize reality and double down on the research that will allow us to block infections and virus spread, and achieve lasting, variant-proof immunity.

In case anyone hits a paywall here's an image of the article that Eric Topol posted. (I saw it on Mastodon, but he probably posted it on his other social media accounts)