SvennoJ said:
It needs to be effective long enough to get the virus to die out by keeping the rate of transmission under 1.0
Atm we need (temporary) lock downs next to transmission rate reducing measures like masks and social distancing. At first the vaccines can remove the need for lock downs and closures, then maybe relax social distancing while keeping masks the longest. (Keeping masks and extra cleaning is not a bad idea for during flu season)
Although immunization for covid-19 will probably become a long term thing, required for travel to countries where it could still be around in rural areas for years to come. The world is so big, there will be plenty places with the right population density / age distribution for the virus to hang around Rt 1.0, not escalating prompting special measures, but not disappearing either.
Treatment will get better as well, hopefully this is the last really deadly period of Covid-19 and death rates should never get close to 100K per week again. |
Even if the rate of transmission remains around 1, if the need for hospitalization falls from, say, 4% to 0.4%, that's still a win in my book. It would make Covid-19 less than half a flu.
Since we have some nasty but completely vaccinable things like yellow fever still running amok with much higher fatality rates in certain places, I think Sars-Cov-2 eradication is a step too far. Once it gets everyone and/or is vaccinated, I think it'll either hang around in the background like a seasonal cold or become a much less transmisible but still somewhat dangerous pathogen like hRSV.
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