More and more people have been asking for a return to normal, and with omicron waning, governments are starting to act. The UK, for example, is removing its remaining public health measures, including mandatory self-isolation of Covid cases and free testing. However, the inescapable truth is that – unless the virus mutates to a milder form – the “normal” life we are returning to will be shorter and sicker on average than before.
We’ve added a new significant disease to our population. Covid is often compared to flu, as if adding a burden equivalent to flu to a population were fine (it isn’t). In fact, Covid has been and remains worse. COVID’s infection fatality rate – the proportion of people who die once they’ve caught it – was initially about ten times higher than for flu. Treatments, vaccines and prior infections have since brought the fatality rate down, but it’s still almost twice as high as for flu – and yes, this still holds for omicron.
