Will We Ever Get A Break From Covid?

Hi folks, it’s Kristen logging on from Brooklyn. With Covid cases on the rise in much of the world, in the Q&A this week one frustrated reader wonders when it will all finally end. But first...

When will this surge end? And if transmission is this high now, during the summer when transmission has often been at its lowest, what does that mean for this fall and winter? Will we ever get a break? — Stephanie, New York City

“Will we ever get a break?” I can’t tell you how many times I have asked myself this over the past year. Sometimes I think back to March 2020, when we all went into lockdown and groaned at the idea of having to stay in our houses for what we then thought would be just a few weeks, and am forced to laugh. It was impossible to imagine this would all still be going on years later.

At this point — in our third year of the pandemic — it’s clear that the only reliable constant is that Covid is entirely unpredictable.

Bertha Hidalgo, a University of Alabama epidemiologist, was faked out by a variant that never truly got off the launchpad.