Canada’s Long Covid Hangover

Ignore the Twit-docs

The waves of Covid variants keep on coming — we’re on the sixth iteration now, if you’re still keeping track.

Nor are they likely to stop anytime soon, if past history is any guide. As the months and years roll on there will be more waves than you have fingers and toes.

But pandemics recede, even as infectious waves keep coming. And like all pandemics, this one will end. In many jurisdictions, including Canada, it’s already happening.

Last fall I took in an excellent seminar posted on YouTube: Covid19 Vaccination in Children: Evidence, Ethics, and Equity. At the one-hour-34-minute mark there’s an illuminating ten-minute clip featuring Dr. Rustom Antia, professor of biology at Emory University and an expert on the history of coronaviruses.

To help us understand the transition of a novel coronavirus from epidemic to endemic, Dr. Antia discussed the four coronaviruses already endemic to our species, including OC43 — which credible evidence suggests may have been the actual cause of the lethal “Russian flu” pandemic that began in 1889.

The four endemic coronaviruses, as any parent can attest, cause frequent cough/cold illnesses in small children — infections that are almost never serious, but that lay the groundwork for durable immunity that…