How We Can Return to Normal Life in the COVID-19 Era
I was asked recently when life might return to normal. The question is simple but the answer is complex, with many knowns, lots of known unknowns, and some unknown unknowns. But I'll give it my best shot.
To get the fatality rate down to flu-like levels would require that we cut Covid-19 fatalities down by a factor of 5.
Since I'm human (and thus want my life back), I might be biased toward optimism.
Here's one way to think about it: Is there another infection that causes sickness and death at levels that we tolerate? The answer, of course, is 'yes': influenza.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, from 2010 to 2019, an average of 30 million Americans had the flu each year, leading to an annual average of 37,000 deaths. This works out to an infection-fatality rate, or IFR, of 0.12 percent. We've tolerated that level of illness death from influenza for a century.
Before going on, let's get one thing out of the way: Back in March, Covid-19 wasn't, as some maintained, "like the flu," and it still isn't. Since then, the U.S. has had 3.9 million confirmed Covid-19 cases and 140,000 deaths, for an IFR of 3.6 percent. Taking all the cases — including asymptomatic patients and those with minimal symptoms who were never tested for Covid-19 — into account, the real IFR is probably 0.6 percent, or roughly 5 times that of the flu.
Nonetheless, even a partly effective vaccine, combined with moderately effective medications, could bring Covid-19 numbers down to a tolerable, flu-like, threshold. It's a goal that seems within our reach.
Chronic mask-wearing and physical distancing are not my idea of normal, nor, I would venture to guess, would most other Americans consider these desirable states in which to live. We need both now to achieve some semblance of normalcy, but they're decidedly not normal life. My notion of normal: daily life with no or minimal mask wearing, open restaurants and bars, ballparks with fans, and theaters with audiences.
My projection for when we might get there: perhaps a year from now.
To get the fatality rate down to flu-like levels would require that we cut Covid-19 fatalities down by a factor of 5, via some combination of fewer symptomatic cases and a lower chance that a symptomatic patient will go on to die. How might that happen?
First, we have to make some impact on young people – getting them to follow the public health directives at higher rates than they are currently. The main reason we need to push younger people to stay safe is that they can spread Covid-19 to vulnerable people (those who are older, with underlying health problems). But, once the most vulnerable are protected (through the deployment of some combination of effective medications and a vaccine), the fact that some young people aren't acting safely – or maybe won't take a vaccine themselves – wouldn't cause so much concern. The key is whether the people at highest risk for bad outcomes are protected.
Then there's the vaccine. The first principle: We don't need a 100 percent-effective vaccine injected into 320 million deltoid muscles (in the U.S. alone). Thank God, since it's fanciful to believe that we can have a vaccine that's 100 percent effective, universally available by next summer, and that each and every American agrees to be vaccinated.
How are we doing in our vaccine journey? We've been having some banner days lately, with recent optimistic reports from several of the vaccine companies. In one report, the leading candidate vaccine, the one effort being led by Oxford University, led to both antibodies and a cellular immune response, a very helpful belt-and-suspenders approach that increases the probability of long-lasting immunity. This good news comes on the heels of the positive news regarding the American vaccine being made by Moderna earlier in July.
While every article about vaccines sounds the obligatory cautionary notes, to date we've checked every box on the path to a safe and effective vaccine. We might not get there, but most experts are now predicting an FDA-approvable vaccine (more than 50 percent effective with no show-stopping side effects) by early 2021.
It is true that we don't know how long immunity will last, but that can be a problem to solve later. In this area, time is our friend. If we can get to an effective vaccine that lasts for a year or two, over time we should be able to discover strategies (more vaccine boosters, new and better medications) to address the possibility of waning immunity.
All things considered, I'm going to put my nickel down on the following optimistic scenario: we'll have one, and likely several, vaccines that have been proven to be more than 50 percent effective and safe by January, 2021.
If only that were the finish line.
Once we vaccinate a large fraction of high-risk patients, having a moderate number of unvaccinated people running around won't pose as much threat.
The investments in manufacturing and distribution should pay off, but it's still inconceivable that we'll be able to get vaccines to 300 million people in three to six months. For the 2009 Swine Flu, we managed to vaccinate about 1 in 4 Americans over six months.
So we'll need to prioritize. First in line will likely be the 55 million Americans over 65, and the six to eight million patient-facing healthcare workers. (How to sort priorities among people under 65 with "chronic diseases" will be a toughie.) Vaccinating 80-100 million vulnerable people, plus clinicians, might be achievable by mid-21.
If we can protect vulnerable people with an effective vaccine (with the less vulnerable waiting their turn over a subsequent 6-12 month period), that may be enough to do the trick. (Of course, vulnerable people may also be least likely to develop immunity in response to a vaccine. That could be an Achilles' heel – time will tell.)
Why might that be enough? Once we vaccinate a large fraction of high-risk patients, having a moderate number of unvaccinated people running around won't pose as much threat. Since they're at lower risk, they have a lower chance of getting sick and dying than those who received the vaccine first.
We're likely to have better meds by then, too. Since March, we've discovered two moderately effective medications for Covid-19 — remdesivir and dexamethasone. It seems likely that we'll find others by next summer, perhaps even a treatment that prevents patients from getting ill in the first place. There are many such therapies, ranging from zinc to convalescent plasma, currently being studied.
Moreover, we know that hospitals that are not overrun with Covid-19 have lower mortality rates. If we've gotten a fairly effective vaccine into most high-risk people, the hospitals are unlikely to be overwhelmed – another factor that may help lower the mortality rate to flu-like levels.
All of these factors – vaccination of most vulnerable people, one or two additional effective medications, hospitals and ICU's that aren't overwhelmed – could easily combine to bring the toll of Covid-19 down to something that resembles that of the flu. Then, we should be able to return to normal life.
Whatever the reason, if enough people refuse the vaccine, all bets are off.
What do I worry about? There's the growing anti-vaxxer movement, for one. On top of that, it seems that many Americans worry that a vaccine discovered in record speed won't be safe, or that the FDA approval process will have been corrupted by political influences. Whatever the reason, if enough people refuse the vaccine, all bets are off.
Assuming only high-risk people do get vaccinated, there will still be cases of Covid-19, maybe even mini-outbreaks, well into 2021 and likely 2022. Obviously, that's not ideal, and we should hope for a vaccine that results in the complete eradication of Covid-19. But the point is that, even with flu-like levels of illness and death, we should still be able to achieve "normal."
Hope is not a strategy, as the saying goes. But it is hope, which is more than we've had for a while.
When doctors couldn’t stop her daughter’s seizures, this mom earned a PhD and found a treatment herself.
Twenty-eight years ago, Tracy Dixon-Salazaar woke to the sound of her daughter, two-year-old Savannah, in the midst of a medical emergency.
“I entered [Savannah’s room] to see her tiny little body jerking about violently in her bed,” Tracy said in an interview. “I thought she was choking.” When she and her husband frantically called 911, the paramedic told them it was likely that Savannah had had a seizure—a term neither Tracy nor her husband had ever heard before.
Over the next several years, Savannah’s seizures continued and worsened. By age five Savannah was having seizures dozens of times each day, and her parents noticed significant developmental delays. Savannah was unable to use the restroom and functioned more like a toddler than a five-year-old.
Doctors were mystified: Tracy and her husband had no family history of seizures, and there was no event—such as an injury or infection—that could have caused them. Doctors were also confused as to why Savannah’s seizures were happening so frequently despite trying different seizure medications.
Doctors eventually diagnosed Savannah with Lennox-Gaustaut Syndrome, or LGS, an epilepsy disorder with no cure and a poor prognosis. People with LGS are often resistant to several kinds of anti-seizure medications, and often suffer from developmental delays and behavioral problems. People with LGS also have a higher chance of injury as well as a higher chance of sudden unexpected death (SUDEP) due to the frequent seizures. In about 70 percent of cases, LGS has an identifiable cause such as a brain injury or genetic syndrome. In about 30 percent of cases, however, the cause is unknown.
Watching her daughter struggle through repeated seizures was devastating to Tracy and the rest of the family.
“This disease, it comes into your life. It’s uninvited. It’s unannounced and it takes over every aspect of your daily life,” said Tracy in an interview with Today.com. “Plus it’s attacking the thing that is most precious to you—your kid.”
Desperate to find some answers, Tracy began combing the medical literature for information about epilepsy and LGS. She enrolled in college courses to better understand the papers she was reading.
“Ironically, I thought I needed to go to college to take English classes to understand these papers—but soon learned it wasn’t English classes I needed, It was science,” Tracy said. When she took her first college science course, Tracy says, she “fell in love with the subject.”
Tracy was now a caregiver to Savannah, who continued to have hundreds of seizures a month, as well as a full-time student, studying late into the night and while her kids were at school, using classwork as “an outlet for the pain.”
“I couldn’t help my daughter,” Tracy said. “Studying was something I could do.”
Twelve years later, Tracy had earned a PhD in neurobiology.
After her post-doctoral training, Tracy started working at a lab that explored the genetics of epilepsy. Savannah’s doctors hadn’t found a genetic cause for her seizures, so Tracy decided to sequence her genome again to check for other abnormalities—and what she found was life-changing.
Tracy discovered that Savannah had a calcium channel mutation, meaning that too much calcium was passing through Savannah’s neural pathways, leading to seizures. The information made sense to Tracy: Anti-seizure medications often leech calcium from a person’s bones. When doctors had prescribed Savannah calcium supplements in the past to counteract these effects, her seizures had gotten worse every time she took the medication. Tracy took her discovery to Savannah’s doctor, who agreed to prescribe her a calcium blocker.
The change in Savannah was almost immediate.
Within two weeks, Savannah’s seizures had decreased by 95 percent. Once on a daily seven-drug regimen, she was soon weaned to just four, and then three. Amazingly, Tracy started to notice changes in Savannah’s personality and development, too.
“She just exploded in her personality and her talking and her walking and her potty training and oh my gosh she is just so sassy,” Tracy said in an interview.
Since starting the calcium blocker eleven years ago, Savannah has continued to make enormous strides. Though still unable to read or write, Savannah enjoys puzzles and social media. She’s “obsessed” with boys, says Tracy. And while Tracy suspects she’ll never be able to live independently, she and her daughter can now share more “normal” moments—something she never anticipated at the start of Savannah’s journey with LGS. While preparing for an event, Savannah helped Tracy get ready.
“We picked out a dress and it was the first time in our lives that we did something normal as a mother and a daughter,” she said. “It was pretty cool.”
A sleek, four-foot tall white robot glides across a cafe storefront in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi district, holding a two-tiered serving tray full of tea sandwiches and pastries. The cafe’s patrons smile and say thanks as they take the tray—but it’s not the robot they’re thanking. Instead, the patrons are talking to the person controlling the robot—a restaurant employee who operates the avatar from the comfort of their home.
It’s a typical scene at DAWN, short for Diverse Avatar Working Network—a cafe that launched in Tokyo six years ago as an experimental pop-up and quickly became an overnight success. Today, the cafe is a permanent fixture in Nihonbashi, staffing roughly 60 remote workers who control the robots remotely and communicate to customers via a built-in microphone.
More than just a creative idea, however, DAWN is being hailed as a life-changing opportunity. The workers who control the robots remotely (known as “pilots”) all have disabilities that limit their ability to move around freely and travel outside their homes. Worldwide, an estimated 16 percent of the global population lives with a significant disability—and according to the World Health Organization, these disabilities give rise to other problems, such as exclusion from education, unemployment, and poverty.
These are all problems that Kentaro Yoshifuji, founder and CEO of Ory Laboratory, which supplies the robot servers at DAWN, is looking to correct. Yoshifuji, who was bedridden for several years in high school due to an undisclosed health problem, launched the company to help enable people who are house-bound or bedridden to more fully participate in society, as well as end the loneliness, isolation, and feelings of worthlessness that can sometimes go hand-in-hand with being disabled.
“It’s heartbreaking to think that [people with disabilities] feel they are a burden to society, or that they fear their families suffer by caring for them,” said Yoshifuji in an interview in 2020. “We are dedicating ourselves to providing workable, technology-based solutions. That is our purpose.”
Shota Kuwahara, a DAWN employee with muscular dystrophy. Ory Labs, Inc.
Wanting to connect with others and feel useful is a common sentiment that’s shared by the workers at DAWN. Marianne, a mother of two who lives near Mt. Fuji, Japan, is functionally disabled due to chronic pain and fatigue. Working at DAWN has allowed Marianne to provide for her family as well as help alleviate her loneliness and grief.Shota, Kuwahara, a DAWN employee with muscular dystrophy, agrees. "There are many difficulties in my daily life, but I believe my life has a purpose and is not being wasted," he says. "Being useful, able to help other people, even feeling needed by others, is so motivational."