COVID Futurecasting

Planning and practice never make perfect, but they do make improvement. Considering the wide range of “what ifs” and planning for as many contingencies as possible is the only way to prepare for what comes next with the unremitting COVID-19 pandemic.

So, here’s my 2-cent futurecast:?

Eventually, COVID will become yet another endemic disease that continues to mutate and causes variously sized outbreaks in certain pockets of our population. Some years will be bad with lots of infections and an above average number of fatalities; others won’t be so bad, just like we annually experience with influenza. A baseline will be established that identifies an average number of infections and fatalities that typically occur year after year. Epidemiology will develop a distribution of cases over specific periods of time (Epi curve) that provide a sense of an outbreak’s magnitude, along with outliers that don’t follow the typical pattern. Pharmaceutical companies will continue developing vaccines and treatments. Some vaccines will be new, and others will be modified versions of existing vaccines. Some people will get vaccinated each year, or as often as required, and some people won’t. Our healthcare system will respond to patients needing treatment. In some years that will be a heavy lift, with hospitals and urgent care facilities overflowing with ill patients. Other years will be duck soup and the system won’t be so heavily stressed. (Yes, I found that phrase in my thesaurus and had to figure out how to fit it in here lol.)

Does all this sound familiar? It should. It’s what happens every year in every part of our country with every vaccine preventable disease. Some people weigh the risks and decide to take appropriate precautions to protect themselves and their families. Others weigh the same risks and make different choices. (Anyone wanting to debate existentialist philosophy please give me a buzz.)

Understanding that Americans will always exercise their free will, and also understanding that COVID-19 has now become the third leading cause of death in the USA as of 2020 (surpassed only by heart disease at #1 and cancer at #2), how are you preparing for the COVID-endemic era when COVID is a routine communicable disease? What systems, processes, and social norms do you foresee as being de rigueur in the future? What will be the nature of our working environments? What social norms will be replaced by something new? What should we prepare and plan for now?

#COVID-19 #Endemic #Planning