Coronavirus wave this fall could infect 100 million, administration warns
Source: Washington Post
The projection, made Friday by a senior administration official during a background briefing as the nation approaches a covid death toll of 1 million, is part of a broader push to boost the nation’s readiness and persuade lawmakers to appropriate billions of dollars to purchase a new tranche of vaccines, tests and therapeutics.
In forecasting 100 million potential infections during a cold-weather wave later this year and early next, the official did not present new data or make a formal projection. Instead, he described the fall and winter wave as a scenario based on a range of outside models of the pandemic. Those projections assume that omicron and its subvariants will continue to dominate community spread, and there will not be a dramatically different strain of the virus, the official said, acknowledging the pandemic’s course could be altered by many factors.
Several experts agreed that a major wave this fall and winter is possible given waning immunity from vaccines and infections, loosened restrictions and the rise of variants better able to escape immune protections.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/05/06/fall-winter-coronavirus-wave/
If the Administration is going to resist the "return to normal" mood, they need to show real leadership, develop a strategy and (however unpopular) pressure Democratic leaders to implement it, not just issue warnings.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I don't know where the notion comes from where ONLY an annual shot is needed.
COVID-19 in MN: Caseload rise may be leveling off; ICU needs low, stable, by Craig Helmstetter, 5/6/22
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2022/05/06/covid19-in-mn-rising-caseloads-may-be-leveling-hospital-needs-stable
On the other hand, unvaccinated Minnesotans remain at least twice as likely to either get hospitalized or die from COVID-19 than is the case among those who are vaccinated. ((but these ratios are shrinking fast -Progree))
Unvaxxed relative to the vaxxed (my read of the graphs, approximate):
Cases: 1X, Hospitalization: 2X Deaths: 2.5X
these have all been in a generally falling pattern over the past year.
Last May: it was about 12X for cases and 20X for both hospital and deaths
I presume the "vaccinated" population includes those with and without boosters, but it doesn't say anything about that.
But this is just Minnesota (5.7 million pop) -- we're not even fly-over country, we're too far north for that, unless someone is flying to Anchorage or Tokyo, starting from the east coast south of Raleigh, then we see a few contrails.
We are definitely not there "yet". But based on the mechanism of how the mRNA vaccines work, and based on an interesting publication from researches looking at what is causing the inflammation reactions - in some, minimally but to others, it is to the level of triggering a severe response.
I had posted in other threads about this publication - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04702-4
The virus was found to not only land on cells that have ACE2 receptors, but was able to weakly attach to cells that are part of the immune response, and actually destroys them. I know they had earlier suspected this last year, but now some found what is actually happening and how to quantify it. I.e., the virus will alter those cells to self-destruct and spew substances that can cause high levels of inflammation when theyy die.
Study reveals how COVID-19 triggers severe immune response
By NANCY FLIESLER | Boston Children’s April 6, 2022 Research
Illustration of a macrophage battling bacteria. Image: urfingus/iStock/Getty Images Plus
This article is part of Harvard Medical School’s continuing coverage of COVID-19.
A study led by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital explains for the first time why COVID-19 causes severe inflammation in some people, leading to acute respiratory distress and multi-organ damage. Surprisingly, the study also finds that antibodies that people develop when they contract COVID-19 sometimes lead to more inflammation, while antibodies generated by mRNA COVID-19 vaccines seem not to. Findings were published April 6 in Nature. The team was led by Judy Lieberman, HMS professor of pediatrics at Boston Children’s; Caroline Junqueira, HMS research associate in pediatrics at Boston Children’s; and Michael Filbin, HMS assistant professor of emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“We wanted to understand what distinguishes patients with mild versus severe COVID-19,” said Lieberman. “We know that many inflammatory markers are elevated in people with severe disease, and that inflammation is at the root of disease severity, but we hadn’t known what triggers the inflammation.”
Fiery death of immune cells
The investigators analyzed fresh blood samples from patients with COVID-19 coming to the emergency department at Mass General. They compared these with samples from healthy people and from patients with other respiratory conditions. They also looked at lung autopsy tissue from people who had died from COVID-19. They found that SARS-CoV-2 can infect monocytes—immune cells in the blood that act as sentinels or early responders to infection—as well as macrophages, similar immune cells in the lungs. Once infected, the team found, both types of cells die a fiery death called pyroptosis that releases an explosion of powerful inflammatory alarm signals. “In the infected patients, about 6 percent of blood monocytes were dying an inflammatory death,” said Lieberman. “That’s a large number to find, because dying cells are rapidly eliminated from the body.”
Examining the lung tissue from people who died from COVID-19, they found that about a quarter of the macrophages in the tissue were dying. When the researchers studied the cells for signs of SARS-CoV-2, they found that about 10 percent of monocytes and 8 percent of lung macrophages were infected. The fact that monocytes and macrophages can be infected with SARS-CoV-2 was a surprise, since monocytes don’t carry ACE2 receptors, the classic entry portal for the virus, and macrophages have low amounts of ACE2. Lieberman thinks SARS-CoV-2 infection of monocytes might have previously been missed in part because researchers often study frozen blood samples, in which dead cells do not show up.
More: https://hms.harvard.edu/news/inflammatory-insights
And per this, what they have found is that the antibodies that the virus triggers (so called "natural immunity" ) are of a configuration that are booby-trappable whereas the ones generated by the vaccine have not been.
There have also been some evaluations about why you might have a family all living in the same household where all but one contract it and why (published this past January - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27674-x) -
Why do some people get Covid when others don’t? Here’s what we know so far
Published Thu, Feb 3 20224:55 AM ESTUpdated Sat, Feb 5 202210:20 PM EST
Holly Ellyatt
One of the great mysteries that has emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic — and one that’s still being investigated by infectious disease specialists — is why some people catch Covid and others don’t, even when they’re equally exposed to the virus.
Many of us know entire households who caught Covid and had to isolate over the pandemic, but there are also multiple anecdotes of couples, families and colleagues where some people caught the virus — but not everyone. Indeed, Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, told CNBC that studies indicate the likelihood of becoming infected within a household once one case is positive is “not as high as you’d imagine.”
‘Never Covid’ people
An increasing amount of research is being devoted to the reasons why some people never seem to get Covid — a so-called never Covid cohort. Last month, new research was published by Imperial College London suggesting that people with higher levels of T cells (a type of cell in the immune system) from common cold coronaviruses were less likely to become infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
Dr. Rhia Kundu, first author of the study from Imperial’s National Heart and Lung Institute, said that “being exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus doesn’t always result in infection, and we’ve been keen to understand why.” “We found that high levels of pre-existing T cells, created by the body when infected with other human coronaviruses like the common cold, can protect against Covid-19 infection,” she said.
(snip)
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/03/why-do-some-people-get-covid-while-others-dont.html
So if they can find that apparent (previously/currently) circulating "benign" coronavirus that is the one (or one of the ones) that these "Never COVID" individuals had possibly contracted in the past, then a vaccine could be tailored to expand the body's ability to mount a more sustained immune response that doesn't need multiple boosters a year.
Based on your post, there was a WaPo article a few weeks ago that went into that increasing incidence of approaching parity between the vaccinated and unvaccinated - https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/04/29/covid-deaths-unvaccinated-boosters/ that was posted in this OP - https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216640544
I posted some of the charts and graphs from that piece -
And also this -
Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida College of Public Health, said the deaths of vaccinated people are among the consequences of a pandemic response that emphasizes individuals protecting themselves.
“When we are not taking this collective effort to curb community spread of the virus, the virus has proven time and time again it’s really good at finding that subset of vulnerable people,” Salemi said.
(snip)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/04/29/covid-deaths-unvaccinated-boosters/
difficulty... in the Minnesota graph the death graph is quite noisy, but the hospitalization rate is quite a bit smoother. Anyway, the notion that one is virtually immune from severe illness, if one is vaxxed and boosted -- long a claim of the Covid Bubbly Optimists Brigade -- doesn't seem to be true anymore, if unvaxxed hospitalization is 1/2 the rate of the vaxxed (presumably including both boosted and non-boosted vax, darn, I wish they had been specific about that).
And some would say that the ICU graph would be more benign than the overall hospitalization, but it would presumably be somewhat similar to but a lower multiple than the death graph.
Maybe we can redefine severe illness to exclude non-ICU hospitalizations, and just call those "mild" too. 
I understand that coverage for the uninsured Covid victims is gone, maybe they will just fade away.
Here in PA, after 2 years, someone made a decision sometime at the beginning of the month, that after having done daily updates of the data (either 5 or 6 days a week), they have stopped doing them daily, just as we are going into a new wave, and are now doing them "once a week on Wednesdays". The city has now done the same after being absolutely savaged by the local and national media when following the very guidelines they demanded that we develop. 
We had a halting start of wave #7 that briefly slowed with the announcement of the mask mandate, and has now started increasing again with the unmasking. I had created an annotated chart showing the pandemic "decisions" up through the peak of Omicron -
And also noted that moderate to severe illnesses from breakthroughs were not universally "rare" (from here - https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=16617987) -
Having a booster helped in that case -
So Omicron caused a surge of "breakthroughs" - just due to how the virus mutated. This doesn't mean the vaccines are useless but again is reflecting "raw numbers". The debate that suddenly had metrics shift to hospitalizations was due to a concern that many who were in the hospital during that last wave for other illnesses ended up testing positive for COVID. But the critical thing in this case would be for reported data to differentiate the "hospitalization caused by COVID" vs "hospitalization caused by something else but exacerbated by COVID".
There are at least 4 variants of Omicron, one after another, circulating -
I have been keeping a pile of them including when Omicron came barreling in to replace Delta -
And before that, when Delta came in to replace what was mostly Alpha, with a hodgepodge of a few others like Gamma and Iota -
You can see among the variants, the "survival of the fittest" ones that ended up prevailing, at least over some period of time before being overwhelmed by the latest and greatest.
If anything, the variant situation has been simplified down to just one or two predominant ones, I suppose due to the vaccine and whatever immunity has been afforded to those who contracted it, however fleeting it is/was.
Yup, highly transmissible variant, plus no restrictions anywhere, plus waning immunity, means lots of infections.
I'm not eligible for a second booster yet but still hoping for an Omicron specific one to come out.
The administration is reluctant to implement unpopular restrictions during an election year. We may have fewer conservative voters. 
Seriously … two of my friends decided to go to outdoor concerts without a mask and they got Covid for their trouble. You could not pay me enough to go to a crowded venue of any kind, indoor or out.
I got my 2nd booster (all 4 Pfizer) yesterday and would have gotten it sooner if I could have. The nurse who gave me my jab said that if people could see what she’s seen, there’d be a very long line for vaccinations and everyone would be wearing masks. This one has been very easy… a little soreness in my arm and some mild fatigue that actually could be attributed to the shitty weather we’re having and missing some sleep last night because of my restless cat. In any case, I’ll take a slightly sore and lethargic day over Covid.
Meanwhile. My husband and I are the ONLY people masking anywhere we go, except for the nurse yesterday. So, yeah, most people seem to think it’s all over with. If they haven’t gotten it yet, they won’t get it, etc. If they have gotten it, they’re immune for life.
We’ve been wearing masks for so long that I would feel extremely vulnerable without one.
the current vaccines and technology can keep up. One variant that vaccines or immunity doesn't "respond" to is a lot of death. People are acting like it's all over. They are fools. And you can't fix that, at this point.
I spoke to another friend tonight who claimed to have had it, but said it only lasted three days. I guess it affects everyone differently, my friend who I know was both vaccinated and boosted as well, like you, seems to have been hit the hardest. And she also received the pills which are supposed to mitigate the symptoms. She said this is also available via injection, which might have been more effective, but she chose the pills because she felt bad enough that she didn't want to leave the house.
I'm in Northeastern New York and we currently appear to be hit the hardest in the country right now. I read that the mask mandate really should be reinstated in these parts, but they rescinded it, then reinstated it, then rescinded it again - and I guess that they don't dare reinstate it a second time. If only they'd left it in place when people were used to it for so long, but I'm sure there would be a rebellion if they reinstated it again now.
I rally hope you feel better soon. I'm just getting over the flu which I've had for a month - was diagnosed with flu "Type A" on April 9th - and I also got a flu shot. 
