Dear Boomers, before we wrap ourselves in a bundle of good news, I have a question for you. Where do you sit on the COVID knowledge spectrum? This is not a question about how much you know about COVID, but how this knowledge makes you feel.

Over a long liquid lunch last week, a friend and I were bemoaning the fact that at times we felt like we were awash with information about COVID and what the future may hold and yet at other times, the feeling was more like being in a knowledge free wasteland, where we were clueless about what was looming on the horizon. Hence the concept of the COVID knowledge spectrum was born. We both felt like we were spinning from one end of the spectrum to the other and feeling no better for it and none the wiser, but on other days, feeling like we have got this thing beat. This article is more about the latter

Expecting the unexpected.

At one end of the spectrum, we live in constant surprise and often horror about what COVID does next. This is the world of ‘never say never’ and ‘expect the unexpected,’ because we are on the white-knuckle ride of our lives, with no end in sight. The sudden arrival of Omicron is an example of this as is the recent arrival of its offspring, Omicron BA.2. (For a review of this new sub-variant that soothes the nerves, read: Omicron BA.2: What we know about the Covid sub-variant).

In, After another COVID summer, it's only January 29 and I've never felt so tired, Virginia Trioli, presenter on Mornings on ABC Radio Melbourne, and the former co-host of ABC News Breakfast, said that: “I only wish our political and medical leaders had taken their cue from the scientists and treating doctors and managed to co-ordinate a meaningful and reassuring message about this path out before Omicron hit what was supposed to be our long, hot-vax summer. Because I reckon that a great deal of the exhaustion, we are experiencing is borne out of the anxiety of living in information overload but a public health message deficit.”

Our sense of unease is fuelled by twin realities. Omicron is often described as more infectious but less deadly. At the same time, in Australia, more people have died from COVID in the first four weeks of this year than in all of last year. And while we understand that a more infectious variant means more people being infected and hence more deaths, this knowledge is not particularly reassuring.

The horror stories about the impact of lockdowns, staff shortages and deaths in aged care is distressing for everyone - residents and their families and friends, staff, and onlookers. The only exception seems to be Senator, Richard Colbeck, Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services (And Minister for Sport!) who spent three days at the cricket when it was clear there was another emergency unfolding in aged care. What does it say about the values and priorities of a Prime Minister who thinks it is a smart idea to combine the portfolios of aged care and sport? It is beyond words!

Our science has learned so much!

At the other end of the spectrum, our knowledge about COVID is mind boggling extraordinary. Our science has learned so much and in a tiny space of two years. Not only has the world developed vaccines but has managed to shoot up more than half the global population. A spectacular achievement, although the low rates of vaccinations in disadvantaged and socially excluded communities in middle- and high-income countries, and in the vast majority of countries in Africa, is a shameful failure. Gordon Brown, former prime minster of the UK, describes the failure to distribute vaccines to poorer countries as a: "stain on our global soul". At the same time, countries such as Cambodia, which until a few years ago was one of the poorest countries in the world, has managed to achieve a higher vaccination rate than 90 per cent of high-income countries, including the UK and USA.

A shared belief across the spectrum.

No matter where we sit on the spectrum there is one shared belief. It is that there will be other COVID variants after Omicron. They may already be with us (e.g., Omicron BA.2). And what we also know is that we have no idea if they will be more or less deadly. But putting aside for a moment this unsettling reality, the news about the future is really incredibly good.

The end of the pandemic is in sight?

On I January, I shared an opinion piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald: Welcome to 2022, the year this pandemic ends, by Dr Nick Coatsworth, a strategic health leader, infectious diseases expert and former federal deputy chief medical officer.  His prediction (some say based on dodgy science) was: “In 2022, the COVID-19 pandemic will end. Driven by the inexorable, inevitable spread of the Omicron variant and the use of vaccines, the global population will generate immunity to this virus.”

Given my liking for upbeat stories about the end of the pandemic, here is another one, this time published in The Lancet: COVID-19 will continue but the end of the pandemic is near. The authors argue that by the end on March this year, a high proportion of the world’s population will have been infected with the omicron variant: “With continued increases in COVID-19 vaccination, the use in many countries of a third vaccine dose, and elevated levels of infection-acquired immunity, for some time global levels of SARS-CoV-2 immunity should be at an all-time high. For some weeks or months, the world should expect low levels of virus transmission. The era of extraordinary measures by government and societies to control SARS-CoV-2 transmission will be over. After the omicron wave, COVID-19 will return but the pandemic will not”.

Back to Virginia: “We may be in the middle of the biggest, and most widespread wave of infection that we've seen, but COVID-19 right now is now a disease that for the vast majority will be treated at home with fluids and analgesics. Stop and think about that: what an incredible change in two years.”

If a quick end to the pandemic in its current destructive form seems too much to hope for, we may just have to settle for a cessation in hostilities according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Europe entering Covid pandemic 'ceasefire', says WHO. Dr Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, reckons that: "This period of higher protection should be seen as a 'ceasefire' that could bring us enduring peace."

Yes, while an end to the pandemic, for all people in all countries, is what we desire, a ceasefire for now will do just fine.

P.s This Boomers Life is now on Facebook. It is a private group so send me a message if you would like to join: facebook.com/groups/thisboomerslife. Obviously, the posts are shorter but are still in keeping with the overall goal which is to provide a space for fellow baby boomers, and our admirers, about this wonderful and crazy life, queerdom, aging (dis)gracefully, politics and trying to stay on the left side of the culture wars. I hope to see you there.

For my fellow Boomers who have never been enticed into joining fb, I shall continue to post here but probably not as often.