Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[curl-6]

haxxiy said:

curl-6 said:

Well, pandemic viruses do tend to become milder over time and eventually become an endemic illness; the viral subtypes responsible for all three flu pandemics of the 20th century, Spanish Flu, (H1N1) Hong Kong Flu, (H3N2) and Asian Flu (H2N2) all still circulate today.

On the other hand, hopefully COVID-19 will be more like smallpox or polio where vaccination can eliminate it.

To completely eliminate it would be ideal, since even now betacoronaviruses do cause ARS in some people and are suspected as a factor in certain nervous and conjunctive tissue diseases. But we've succeeded to do so only once in history, with a far worse and more visible disease. And before the anti-vaxxers too...

If immunity from a vaccine or the disease itself isn't permanent but allows a milder but still contagious reinfection one or two years down the road (as it goes for the other coronaviruses), that's another path to making it endemic too, even if all current outbreaks are suppressed.

We've succeeded twice technically, though the second, Rinderpest, was an animal disease. We're on the brink of eradication with Polio and Guinea Worm as well, though the pandemic will probably delay those campaigns by a few years unfortunately.

There have always been "anti-vaxxers", even in the early days of the first ever vaccine it was viewed by many with fear and rejection. During the smallpox campaign it was common for people not to cooperate with vaccination teams. A strategy the teams often used was to ask kids rather than adults if they had been or heard of any cases as the kids were more likely to say.

It's true that due to being less visible COVID-19 would be more difficult to eliminate than smallpox even with an effective vaccine, but it wouldn't be impossible.