On March 1, 2024 the US CDC released new guidance for “pandemic virus” that causes COVID-19 with recommendations now aligned with other respiratory viral illness effectively downgrading the disease to the common flu, the same low IFR as antibody test suggested in April 2020. Infected persons no longer requiring isolation for 5 days, as it is now less severe than previously claimed. [2, 3]
“COVID-19 remains an important public health threat, but it is no longer the emergency that it once was, and its health impacts increasingly resemble those of other respiratory viral illnesses… far fewer people are getting seriously ill from COVID-19, [and] clinically COVID-19 has become similar to, or even less severe in hospitalized people, than influenza and RSV.” [1]
The CDC still claim: “Due to the effectiveness of protective tools and high degree of population immunity, there are now fewer hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19.” They state “98% of the U.S. population now has some degree of protective immunity against COVID-19 from vaccination, prior infection or both”, protection is from symptoms not the pathogen, they do not stop infection or transmission.
At this time only 13.1% for children and 22.2% over 18 years have taken the “updated 2023-24 COVID-19 vaccine” booster, and of the over 65 high risk group, only 41.5% of those. [4]
On April 23, 2020 Del Bigtree on The Highwire, through looking at the early antibody testing revealed that more people had already been infected with virus and mounted an immune response, much higher than expected. The data suggested the fatality rate of COVID-19 was in line with common seasonal flu, now 4 years later the CDC come to the same conclusion, with the same SARS-CoV-2 virus.