Podcast: Here’s the case for optimism even as COVID infection rates soar

On average, the U.S. is tallying nearly 500,000 new COVID cases a day. [January 3], the U.S. hit yet another record high for infections – 1,082,549. So it is something of an act of courage to find glimmers of hope in those numbers, but our next guest says he wants to try.

Dr. Bob Wachter is chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

[Wachter:] I think the likeliest outcome for February and March is that we’ll be in pretty good shape. This virus being so transmissible but now, as we understand it, being milder than the prior variants could turn out to be very good news after a very awful January.

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But very importantly, for the people that chose not to be vaccinated – I think a very terrible choice – but who made that choice, there’s a pretty good chance they’re going to get a case of omicron, which will give them some immunity.

And it’s those two things combined – the fact that the average case is going to be milder and more and more people are going to be immune to this virus – that gets us out of this pickle, I think, in February.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here.