Will COVID-19 Make A Return In The Fall?

It shouldn’t surprise anyone, but President Trump and Dr. Fauci are contradicting each other, again. Dr. Fauci warned that he’s “convinced” we’ll see another wave of the COVID-19 coronavirus in the fall, while standing a few feet away from Trump’s unhappy glare. Dr. Fauci tried to soften his stance by hedging that “whether or not it’s big or small, it’s going to depend on our response.” CDC Director Robert Redfield also echoed this possibility by saying that the CDC is preparing for another wave arriving in late fall or early winter. He hoped that people would embrace the social distancing measures that have proven effective in many urban clusters around the country.

Trump of course tried to completely dismiss that warning by assuring the public that “It’s also possible it doesn’t come back at all.” Yes, and it’s also possible I’m Batman (just don’t tell anyone). 

Experts agree it’s likely we’ll see another wave

Sadly, the general feeling among healthcare professionals is that it’s very likely we’ll see another wave of COVID-19 in the fall or winter. Another lingering question that complicates the entire situation is “Are people who’ve been infected immune from getting infected again?” And if so, for how long? Because this coronavirus is new, we don’t yet know how it’ll behave in the future. Generally speaking, people who contract different types of these coronaviruses become immune for at least a certain period of time. For SARS, for example, the immune response lasts about 1 year after getting infected, before the effectiveness begins to decline. Will COVID-19 behave the same way?

The only way to know the answers to these questions is through consistent and widespread testing. However, Trump has repeatedly tried to shift blame to everyone from the WHO to governors or specific states. He even suggested that we don’t actually need testing to reopen the economy: 

We can learn from the Spanish Flu

Well this is where things get a little crazy, if not downright bleak. According to historians, the second wave of the “Spanish Flu” (which wasn’t actually from Spain, btw) was much deadlier than the first wave. This is because the virus not only mutated into a deadlier strain, the people who spread it later were more likely to carry the deadlier version.

Apparently what happened was a classic case of natural selection. The sickest people infected during the first wave had to move into crowded buses and trains to then go into crowded hospitals, while those with milder symptoms could stay where they were, and isolate themselves better. That meant that people with a deadlier version of the virus were spreading it more widely than people with milder versions. 

This is similar to how people today who have mild-to-no symptoms of COVID-19 are encouraged to stay home instead of going to the hospital. The second wave of COVID-19 might be a deadlier version that is currently being spread by people who are either very ill or not practicing social distancing.

How can we prepare for another wave?

Obviously we all hope that we’ll be much better prepared if a second wave does come. Again, the entire strategy rests on testing widely and aggressively. We can anticipate the need for things like medical equipment and capacity, and we can do it much better than before. Assuming we can get some vital supply chains moving, it’ll be hard to fumble the response for a second time. But, we ARE talking about the Trump administration, which often struggles to successfully find its way out of a paper bag.

So for the time being, any future response will remain as unpredictable as the virus itself.