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With the CDC claiming that 26 states are reporting a “substantial increase” in the number of covid cases in recent weeks, as well as the discovery of three new covid variants, is it a reasonable reminder that covid can still make a comeback? Dr. Gregory Poland is the head of the vaccine research group at the Mayo Clinic. He appeared on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to calm any fears that we’re heading back to masking up and locking down.
“I think lockdowns are out of the question at this point,” Dr. Poland reassured Riedel and former Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, sitting in for Berman. “But we don’t tell people put on a hat, gloves, your heaviest coat and boots when it’s wintertime, and you look outside and it’s completely dry, there’s no snow… there’s nothing more really to do, unless some variant, you know, out of hell were to start circulating again.”
For people who want to play it safe, Dr. Poland talked about the new covid booster will be out soon. “It looks like it’s going to become available about mid-September… but just to put expectations in the proper place with these new variants, this is likely- notice the word I used- likely to decrease the risk of severe disease, but unlikely, I think, to be highly effective against just symptoms or asymptomatic infection. Now, that’s a prediction, not a fact, because we don’t yet have the boosters out and we don’t know what these three variants, or even a newer variant, might do in this time period.”
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