![]() In countries where people were getting back to a version of normal and the virus was circulating, all those accumulating natural antibodies were doing their thing. More transmissible than older variants but less severe, Omicron drove record cases in late 2021 and early 2022-and spawned subvariants such as BA.2, BA.5 and BQ.1 that drove their own, smaller surges in cases throughout the year.īut the overall trend in 2022 was toward fewer and fewer hospitalizations and deaths. ![]() At the same time, many countries were lifting the last major restrictions on businesses, schools and travel. By the end of 2021, billions of jabs were wearing off and boosters had just become available to most people. Vaccines eased the pain, of course, but vaccine-induced antibodies don’t last forever. The world, minus China, earned its natural immunity the hard way-by catching COVID. If 2023 is the first year in four years that most of the world can breathe easy despite SARS-CoV-2 being everywhere all the time, it could also be the year China gets really sick for the first time. The problem, for 1.4 billion Chinese, is that catching up means a lot of people getting infected with COVID without the strong protection that natural immunity affords. “The waves though will get shallower and shallower and further apart like ripples in a pond,” Jeffrey Klausner, a University of Southern California epidemiologist, told The Daily Beast. And fresh infections will seed fresh antibodies that will then prolong the population’s natural immunity through the next wave of cases. But owing to their natural immunity, they probably won’t get very sick. Yes, people will get sick when some new form of the virus becomes dominant. ![]() “I see the United States and most of the world gradually exiting from the acute phase of the pandemic,” Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University global-health expert, told The Daily Beast. Successive waves of infections from Omicron and its subvariants, starting in late 2021, have produced so much natural immunity across the human population that most countries are now in a good position to weather new subvariants. Ironically, we’ll have the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to thank for it. 2023 could be the year the world finally figures out how to live with COVID.
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