I didn’t do so well last year in terms of posting regularly around this time onwards, and it was because thinking about Covid overwhelmed me. I’ve studiously tried to avoid writing about it since then as much as possible, but this post is an exception to that self-imposed rule.
First, about the “second” wave in India. We’ve been here before, about a century ago. I’d written down notes from Laura Spinney’s excellent book, The Pale Rider in March of last year, and there was this bullet point:
The flu struck in three waves, and the second wave was by far the deadliest.
https://econforeverybodyblog.wordpress.com/2020/03/18/notes-from-pale-rider-by-laura-spinney/
There are many possible reasons for why the second wave is likely to be much worse than the first, and I do not know enough to be able to even speculate which one is the most likely. But both a century ago and now, the second wave was by far and away the worst:
Please, read the whole thread.
And here we are, a century down the road. Via the excellent, indefatigable Timothy Taylor, this little book. And from that little book, this not-so-little excerpt:
Manaus, a city on the Amazon River of more than 2 million, illustrates the dangers of complacency. During the first wave of the pandemic, Manaus was one of the worst-hit locations in the world. Tests in spring 2020 showed that
https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/documents/piieb21-2.pdf
over 60 percent of the population carried antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. Some policymakers speculated that “herd immunity”—the theory that infection rates fall after large population shares have been infected— had been attained.
That belief was a mirage. A resurgence flared less than eight months later, flooding hospitals suffering from shortages of oxygen and other medical supplies. The pandemic’s second wave left more dead than the first.
Scientists discovered a novel variant in this second wave that went beyond the mutations identified in the United Kingdom and South Africa. This new variant, denominated P.1, has since turned up in the United States, Japan, and
Germany. Scientists speculate that a high prevalence of antibodies in the first wave may have helped a more aggressive variant to propagate. The hopes for widespread herd immunity may be dashed by the emergence of more infectious
virus variants.
Since the outbreak in Manaus in January 2021, P.1 has now spread throughout Brazil. The variant is much more transmissible than those that had been circulating previously in the country. High transmissibility and the absence of
measures and behaviors to stem the dissemination of the virus have led to the worst health system collapse in Brazilian history. The country has been on the front pages of major news outlets around the world not only due to the dramatic
situation that is currently unfolding but also because of the global threat posed by a major country with an uncontrolled epidemic.
The point is not to read more about the P1 variant. That is a worthy exercise, and you can see this, this and this for starters. But the point that I want to make is this – well, the points I want to make are these:
- The one other instance we have of a global pandemic tells us that the second wave was deadlier.
- That seems to be the case this time around as well, because the same virus has mutated into a variety of different forms over the past year in different parts of the world.
- Each of these so-called “variants-of-concern” will have different impacts, both in their countries of “origin” and (inevitably) elsewhere.
- How variant x affects individual y in region z is down to a long list of potential factors.
- And therefore 2021 already is, and will continue to be, worse in many ways compared to 2020.
And again, not just because of the P1 variant. That is simply one (worrisome, to be sure) variant – there are many more, and there will be more still to come.
Bottomline: we’re just getting started with the second wave. It isn’t the beginning of the end – it is the end of the beginning.
EconForEverybody 