Dr. Maureen Lyons, Medical Director of Washington University’s Care and Recovery After COVID Clinic, or (CARE), was the perfect candidate to speak about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Not only is she in the trenches and knowledgeable about most things COVID-related, but she also displayed a refreshing sense of optimism about her work.
Lyons is pleased to be the director of a clinic that treats “Long COVID” patients, those who have recovered from the virus but still have lingering symptoms. The clinic is in the unique position of being able to study why patients seem to have increased risk of developing cardiovascular complications within the first month to a year after infection. By focusing on care for a specific group of COVID survivors, the clinic also can provide valuable research and much-needed data on how the virus impacts the heart, brain, and other vital organs.
“What’s hardest for me personally is seeing the amount of suffering the pandemic causes, knowing that this is preventable.” – Dr. Maureen Lyons, Director of the Care and Recovery After COVID Clinic.
Lyons was upbeat about her practice but when asked about her personal feelings about the pandemic and its long-term impact on the world, she took on a more somber tone.
“It’s been hard but hard now in a different way,” Lyons explained. “Early on, [COVID-19] was new and scary, but we all rallied to do the best we could. But now we’re coming down from yet another surge and it’s a different landscape.”
Ironically, that “different landscape” spurred by pandemic surges was just as much a reality more than 100 years ago as it is today.
The 1918 Spanish flu lasted about two years. The first wave in February of that year was relatively mild but in the second, more lethal wave in September 1918, more Americans died from the virus than did in the First and Second World Wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined.
Some historians say there was another wave, a fourth, in the winter of 1920, but it was far less lethal than the prior three surges. Still, cities like St. Louis, Detroit, New York and Minneapolis experienced significant fourth wave deaths and “excess mortality,” according to a research paper on influenza mortality in metropolitan cities. All in all, an estimated 500 million people worldwide became infected with the Spanish Flu with at least 50 million dying from the virus. Roughly 675,000 of those deaths occurred in the United States.
There have been more than 78 million U.S. coronavirus cases and nearly 933,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
So far, with COVID-19, there has been a consistent pattern of surges. There was a large spike around the winter holidays of 2020–’21. Infection levels started to drop after the arrival of vaccines in December. Then the highly contagious Delta variant struck in July 2021 which was followed by the even more contagious Omicron variant in November.
Because the influenza virus and the coronavirus are not genetically the same, one-to-one comparisons aren’t possible. However, researchers have noted the novel coronavirus appears to mutate far faster than the 1918 influenza virus.
It’s possible that the coronavirus may transition from pandemic levels to endemic levels. That’s when a disease is not affecting an alarmingly large number of people. But, as Dr. Anthony Fauci explained at the recent World Economic Forum, “that would only be the case if we don’t get another variant that eludes the immune response.”
Experts say more infections can lead to more mutations that could generate new variants. They promote vaccinations as the best way to reach “herd immunity,” when large percentages of a population become immune to a disease and therefore are not infecting others. In America, only about 65% of Americans are fully vaccinated.
As it was in the early 1900s, conspiracy theorists resisted vaccinations while politicians pushed for relaxed safety regulations to jumpstart the economy. These moves, chided as irresponsible and premature by the medical and scientific communities, added to the influenza surges in the early 1900s. As vaccine science advanced at the turn of the 20th century, so did the anti-vaccine movement.
Many doctors today have grown weary of dealing with patients – fueled by denial and misinformation – who still refuse to be vaccinated even as COVID-19 surges continue. Some doctors must reason with irate patients who insist they be prescribed drugs like Ivermectin, a veterinary parasite drug. Other practitioners, who are well versed on vaccine development find themselves debating conspiracy-mongers who sincerely believe that microchips are embedded in vaccines that will remake their DNA or make them magnetic.
Scientists like Dr. Fauci believe the country is in the beginning of a fourth wave of the pandemic. They predict it will most likely be far less deadly than the previous three waves, while simultaneously worrying that the stubborn failure to contain the virus through vaccinations will only make it harder to get past COVID and back to some sense of normalcy.
Despite the wishes of many, the pandemic is not over and there’s still a threat of emerging variants. For Lyons, it’s difficult to see a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. Especially, she said, when there’s still so much resistance to vaccinations.
“What’s hardest for me personally,” Lyons said, “is seeing the amount of suffering the pandemic causes, knowing that this is preventable.”
Sylvester Brown Jr. is The St. Louis American’s inaugural Deaconess Fellow.
Sources: The 1918 flu didn’t end in 1918. Here’s what its third year can teach us. History of 1918 Flu Pandemic
