Speaker 1: It's Thursday, August nineteen. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: COVID booster shots are coming this fall. The Biden administration
Speaker 1: has called for boosters to be available for those that
Speaker 1: are fully vaccinated with Fiser or Maderna eight months after
Speaker 1: their second shot with the Delta variant. The coronavirus is
Speaker 1: still too widespread and too transmissible, and the outcome of
Speaker 1: the pandemic seems pretty certain. The virus is not going
Speaker 1: away and will be endemic. Sarah Zang, staff writer at
Speaker 1: The Atlantic, joins us for how we are going to
Speaker 1: have to live with the coronavirus. Thanks for joining us, Sarah, Hi,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. I wanted to talk about some
Speaker 1: of the latest coronavirus news. The Biden administration has called
Speaker 1: for a third COVID booster shot starting in the fall
Speaker 1: for adults who got the either the Fiser or the
Speaker 1: Maderna vaccine. So we're looking at these shots being administered
Speaker 1: eight months after you got your second dose. This is
Speaker 1: for ages eighteen and older, So they want to start
Speaker 1: this around the week of sept Member, and we've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of data showing that the effectiveness of the
Speaker 1: vaccines have kind of worn off a little bit when
Speaker 1: it comes to the delta variant. It's still protects very
Speaker 1: well against hospitalization, severe disease, and death, but the delta
Speaker 1: variant just kind of throw everything for a loop. So
Speaker 1: what are we seeing in this, Sarah? That's exactly all right,
Speaker 1: you know, as you say, the vaccines still protect really
Speaker 1: well against hospitalizations and death, but it is pretty clear
Speaker 1: that the vaccine is not effective right now against delta
Speaker 1: as it was when we're seeing the clinical trials. So
Speaker 1: the rationale is coming from the Biden administration is that
Speaker 1: we want to boost people back up to kind of
Speaker 1: a level where we feel more confident in And I
Speaker 1: think the other fear is that, you know, maybe it's
Speaker 1: still protecting really well against serious disease now, but where
Speaker 1: is this going to look Maybe another six months or
Speaker 1: eight months from now. And I think like in the US,
Speaker 1: we certainly have the shots. Of fact, we have more
Speaker 1: shots than people are willing to take them right now.
Speaker 1: But I think that's actually maybe one of the other
Speaker 1: kind of bigger pictures they're listening here, is that a
Speaker 1: third shot will undoubtedly help boostupt the community of people
Speaker 1: who take it, but the first shot for someone who
Speaker 1: has not been vaccine is going to make much much
Speaker 1: bigger of a difference. So there should we be focusing
Speaker 1: their efforts on getting first shot to more people. And
Speaker 1: I think the other big picture question is the rest
Speaker 1: of the world, so much for the role, still does
Speaker 1: not have enough access vaccines to vaccine everyone even once.
Speaker 1: So this is really in some ways reflecting how we
Speaker 1: in the US are very lucky to be a Washington vaccines.
Speaker 1: It would certainly help, but is it maybe the best
Speaker 1: use of a single disa vaccine. Probably not right exactly,
Speaker 1: And as you mentioned, just a response to delta rising
Speaker 1: cases rising hospitalizations, you know, if you are going to
Speaker 1: get this third dose, it does have to be from
Speaker 1: the same vaccine that you took before, so fiser or
Speaker 1: MODERNA people that got Johnson and Johnson will have to wait.
Speaker 1: They're still looking at the data for that to see
Speaker 1: what they want to do. But the inclination seems to
Speaker 1: be that people that got Johnson and Johnson will also
Speaker 1: need a booster shot. All of this goes to say,
Speaker 1: is kind of how we're going through this. Sarah, about
Speaker 1: a year ago, you wrote an article talking about how
Speaker 1: the coronavirus is probably never going to go away. It
Speaker 1: will become something that we call endemic, something that we
Speaker 1: end up living with. You wrote a follow up article
Speaker 1: to this kind of how everything we've gone through basically
Speaker 1: confirms it's almost to this point now things have not
Speaker 1: gotten much better, and we're still there, and we hope
Speaker 1: that through natural immunity through vaccinations, the coronavirus just kind
Speaker 1: of becomes more of a common cold thing like other
Speaker 1: coronaviruses have done in the past. Yeah, that's right. The
Speaker 1: coronavirus is still never going away, and I think that's
Speaker 1: even more clearer or clearer now than it was a
Speaker 1: year ago. So I think the reason I would say
Speaker 1: that seems, you know, even more unavoidable now is because
Speaker 1: the virus has just spread so through so much of
Speaker 1: the world, and we're also seeing how it is changing,
Speaker 1: right Like we're seeing these new variants and with delta
Speaker 1: there's like some better ability to slightly variability or reinfect
Speaker 1: which are caused breakthrough infections and people who are vaccinated,
Speaker 1: which is as we're talking about. One reason the Biden
Speaker 1: industration is pushing for boosters. I think we're going through
Speaker 1: like a very confusing period where things are very influx.
Speaker 1: I wanted to kind of think about what the long
Speaker 1: term is of like living with this virus is like.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that currently confusing period is going
Speaker 1: to last forever. At least eventually we'll kind of still
Speaker 1: dance to some sort of more stable, steady state where
Speaker 1: the virus kind of follows a more predictable pattern, very
Speaker 1: likely or possibly a seasonal pattern. To see with the
Speaker 1: way we see with the flu with other corner virus
Speaker 1: is therefore other cornerviruses cause a common cold, and we
Speaker 1: don't know if this cornavirus is going to behave exactly
Speaker 1: like the ones that already exist, but we have kind
Speaker 1: of just as like one possible benchmark for how it
Speaker 1: might look in the long term. With the common cold,
Speaker 1: coronavirus is we sort of all get them when we're
Speaker 1: a kid. We probably exposed to them like before we
Speaker 1: were two or three years old, and then we always
Speaker 1: get reinfected. Immunity to coronavirus does not last very long.
Speaker 1: But what happens is because we always get it as
Speaker 1: a kid, it's pretty mild. As we're seeing with COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: When kids get it tends to be really mildly symptomatic.
Speaker 1: So what tends to happen with other coronaviruses is that, um,
Speaker 1: we get it as a kid, we get reinfected. But
Speaker 1: that's also violent because our bodies have seen it before.
Speaker 1: Maybe the virus changes a little bit, maybe your immunity
Speaker 1: deal so waynes might get reinfected again. That kind of
Speaker 1: boost back the community back up for a while, and
Speaker 1: then maybe after some time you might get reinfected again.
Speaker 1: But each time these reinfections, you're not starting from zero,
Speaker 1: so it's going to be milder than if you saw
Speaker 1: it for the first time. And if you are vaccinated
Speaker 1: or it's happening in children, that's not as serious as
Speaker 1: what's happening now with COVID nineteen. The problem with COVID
Speaker 1: nineteam is that we're seeing novel coronavirus in adults who
Speaker 1: have never seen this virus before, and that's what is
Speaker 1: causing all the serious illness and the death. And that's
Speaker 1: the whole point. As you were mentioning, you know that
Speaker 1: pattern that we have dealt with coronavirus is before the
Speaker 1: whole point of getting the vaccines going was to help
Speaker 1: us in that not to completely eliminated or you know,
Speaker 1: stop it completely. It was basically to help us from
Speaker 1: getting severe infections, help us from dying from it. So
Speaker 1: we're kind of in that position right now. That's why
Speaker 1: we're trying to get so many people vaccinated. The other
Speaker 1: component to it, as you mentioned in the article too,
Speaker 1: is the psychological transition. You know, once this does become
Speaker 1: endemic something that we live with, we're going to have
Speaker 1: to think about it differently as a way do we
Speaker 1: live for it. You know, we've been in this inflection
Speaker 1: point right now where so many people are on so
Speaker 1: many sides. We're not in agreement on what it's going
Speaker 1: to look like later, but eventually we'll kind of get there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I think one thing that's going to just
Speaker 1: feel a little bit strange at first when we come
Speaker 1: out of this pandemic is that, you know, in this
Speaker 1: mill of this pandemic or in this emergency, we're all
Speaker 1: trying to avoid this virus. But in the long run,
Speaker 1: as this virus becomes endemic, as it can need to circulate,
Speaker 1: we've seen how transmissible it is. Now like it's very
Speaker 1: unlikely that all of us or even most of us
Speaker 1: can avoid this virus for the rest of our lives,
Speaker 1: so we should have prepared to be exposed to it
Speaker 1: at some point. And that's fine, right if you've been vaccinated,
Speaker 1: if you've had immunity to this virus, like reinfection is
Speaker 1: not going to be as bad as like an initial
Speaker 1: first infection and saying an elderly adult who's never seen
Speaker 1: the virus before, and that's just probably how it's going
Speaker 1: to be over time. Well, we hope that we do
Speaker 1: increase the vaccinations and more and more people don't get
Speaker 1: severely ill from this. As we mentioned, booster shots are coming.
Speaker 1: We'll have to deal with all of that, and it's
Speaker 1: going to be something that we're gonna have to live
Speaker 1: with for a long time. Sarah Zang, staff writer at
Speaker 1: The Atlantic, Thank you very much for joining us, Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me here. I'm Oscar Mirrors and
Speaker 1: this has been reopening America. Don't forget effort today's big
Speaker 1: news stories. You can check me out on the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, So follow us on
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast.