They just can’t let go of the Fear Porn, eh?
Is Europe’s new COVID surge coming to America next?
While many Americans have decided the pandemic is “over” as it pertains to their own lives — a full 37 percent, according to the latest Yahoo News/YouGov poll — those who’ve been paying close attention to the latest COVID-19 developments overseas are now asking themselves two troublesome questions.
What the heck is happening in Europe? And is it about to happen in the U.S. too?
Over the last two weeks, COVID cases have shot up more than 25% across the European Union. In several European countries, the curve is even steeper: The United Kingdom (120%), Finland (88%) Switzerland (83%), Belgium (62%), Austria (59%), Germany (53%), Italy (49%), the Netherlands (45%) and France (27%). Hospitalizations are starting to rise as well.
And it’s not just this new trajectory that’s alarming; it’s the fact that it’s coming so quickly on the heels of Europe’s previous wave of infection — an Omicron surge that was even larger, and peaked even later, than the one in the United States. (snip)
So does this mean the United States is about to experience yet another huge surge at precisely the moment when our last modest safety measures — namely, indoor mask requirements in public places and schools — have been lifted?
The answer is … complicated.
Because masks totally stopped the rise of Delta and Omicron…..oh, wait
The issue, then, is probably less about whether U.S. COVID cases will rise in the coming weeks and more about how much. The BA.2 subvariant of Omicron — which is almost certainly aggravating the situation in Europe due to the fact that it’s at least 30 percent more transmissible than its sister lineage — is now gaining steam in the U.S. as well, accounting for 30% of new cases. U.S. wastewater surveillance also shows sharp increases in coronavirus RNA levels in sewage at 53 of the 419 sites where it was conducted between Feb. 24 and March 10.
That could be a leading indicator of a big new wave, but it’s not a guarantee. As Topol noted, the Alpha variant — which was 50 percent more transmissible than the original version of the virus — decimated the U.K. last winter, prompting fears of a spring surge in the United States. Yet while the proportion of U.S. Alpha cases kept going up, the total number of COVID cases kept going down. Ultimately, Michigan was the only state where Alpha really caught fire. The rest of the country was largely spared.
After seeing so much fearmongering over the past 2 years, it’s hard to determine if this is simply proper information meant to make sure people have what they need, or, stoking fear to increase government control over people’s lives (and make a profit off of it). The news outlets in the UK aren’t too concerned with it, thinking that the surge will end before the end of March. Even the far left BBC barely mentions the surge, same with the UK Guardian.
And
NEW: Fauci warns it may be "necessary" to "re-institute" restrictions, such as forced masking pic.twitter.com/IeeA0iayGn
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 17, 2022
Read: COVID Forever: Media Trying To Stoke Fear Over Latest Breakout In Europe »