Maybe when we've suppressed it as we have with measles. Otherwise, as we have seen with Alpha, Beta, Delta and now Omicron, new variants will keep arising and keep making people very sick.
Smallpox used to be endemic, Polio used to be endemic, measles used to be endemic. That is not where we want to end up at.
How do we stop this? The same way we did with the others - comprehensive vaccination, mandated if necessary. Lockdowns on any outbreaks.
Vaccines make me doubtful as we don't yet have sterilising solution. And long term effectiveness is still questioned. What we now have with our inter-connected globalized world make it really hard to get rid off...
Indeed - they do seem to wane, for symptomatic infection anyway, and we see what happens regarding hospitalisations. Hopefully boosters will provide longer protection. Definitely a learning process.
Covid us closer to the flu than smallpox. It is never going away. Even with 100% vaccination, people will still get sick. As peer comment noted, there is not a sterilization vaccine. This is the same with the flu.
Covid will most likely evolve into a more transmissible, less lethal variant as time goes on.
We already have 4 other Corona Viril endemic in the human population. They probably all started out super deadly in a pandemic. This one will be endemic soon, too (1-2 years I assume).
We have zero evidence that the common cold coronas were previously any more deadly than they are now. Zero evidence.
Unfortunately the idea that Covid becomes just another common cold virus can be no more than wishful thinking at this point.
Without vaccines and public health interventions, likely SARS-COV-2 would continue washing through the population, with waning immunity and variants causing endless sickness and death, much as smallpox, polio, measles etc used to before we got a handle on them.
>Unfortunately the idea that Covid becomes just another common cold virus can be no more than wishful thinking at this point.
It is not wishful thinking that in the future, child exposure and adult immunity will be the norm.
Covid is already just another common cold for the young.
Covid infection fatality rate for children is on the order of 1/100,000, similar to influenza or varicella (chicken pox), but much more dangerous for the elderly without immunity (like influenza or varicella).
This is drastically different than something like smallpox, which had a 30% fatality rate.
I stand corrected. I should have said the common flu (not cold) in my original post. I believe that the cold is less dangerous than everything else mentioned.
The Pediatric mortality Influenza, covid, and chicken pox are all about the same order of magnitude as each other. diseases like smallpox are perhaps 5 orders of magnitude more deadly.
Just going by your IFR figures for Covid, without even considering hospitalisations and long term effects, it is certainly not just another common cold for the young.
Furthermore, we don't know what if any protection childhood infection would give later in life - certainly reinfection in adults is common, with no guarantee that symptoms are less severe.
To take any approach that allows the widespread circulation of Covid is reckless at best at this moment, particularly when we do have the tools available to us to control it (mandatory vaccination and targeted lockdowns).
>Just going by your IFR figures for Covid, without even considering hospitalizations and long term effects, it is certainly not just another common cold for the young.
This is exactly what the numbers support. both diseases have deaths on the order of 1/100,000 inflections for young children.
>Furthermore, we don't know what if any protection childhood infection would give later in life - certainly reinfection in adults is common, with no guarantee that symptoms are less severe.
All of the covid data we have suggests that infection symptoms are less severe if people have immunity from vaccine or prior illness.
>To take any approach that allows the widespread circulation of Covid is reckless at best at this moment, particularly when we do have the tools available to us to control it (mandatory vaccination and targeted lockdowns).
Vaccines and lockdowns can help control the spread, but will never be enough to prevent it from being endemic. Vaccinated individuals can spread the disease and it is in animal populations around the world.
They also hide numbers, lie about stats not counting non-symptomatic positives in case totals and literally ignore human rights of being able to go and eat or walk.
Kill peoples animals after forcing them out of their home. The list goes on. They still hide the origin and any information to this day and politically attack any country that pushes to open any investigation into it.
>Please can you provide some sources for the childhood IFR of the common cold? I can't find anything myself. I suspect your numbers are very wrong.
Please also provide sources for subsequent reinfection (as opposed to vaccination) being less severe.
I agree that it is hard to find IFR/CFR for the common cold. You can use total influenza death to get a sense for a lower bound.
This paper[1] puts total H1N1 Mortality at 6/100,00ok per year for <18 year olds and CFR at ~20/100,000K
This paper[2] puts the total population mortality for flu at ~0.15/100K for <18 year olds
this paper [3] also puts CFR for flu like symptoms in single digits x/100K for <18 year olds.
>Please also provide sources for subsequent reinfection (as opposed to vaccination) being less severe.
There are many sources available for this one. This Israeli analysis [4] of 2.5 million individuals found that breakthrough infections were 7.13-fold higher in Vaccinated individuals than covid recovered individuals. Hospitalizations were 6.7-fold higher in vaccinated individuals than recovered.
Of course it is better to get vaccinated than get covid the first time, but this demonstrates that natural infection immunity is very robust.
>Lockdowns have certainly worked in China (20% of the world's population), so it is possible, if we choose it.
Lockdowns and vaccination have helped control covid in china. They have not eradicated covid in China. This supports my point that covid will be endemic.
"Zero evidence", "Wishful thinking". No Sir. Just common sense.
They 4 other CoV have been studied extensively and there are also theories about their origins. You are taking very different types of virii and compare them with a Corona Virus, which makes no sense at all.
The question you need to answer: Why should this CoV be so different than the 4 others we know?
Btw: Common colds can be very deadly if your immune system is weak or not familiar with them. Just go and ask some native Americans back in the 1640s.
Why should it be the same? Why shouldn't it be like its nearest relatives, SARS-1 and MERS? (10% and 50% CFR).
As for the common cold and native Americans, you will need to ask them yourself - my understanding is that the common cold viruses have always been globally widespread. Please correct me if I'm wrong!
Because there is a reason they have been given the same name. They belong to the same family of virii. There are studies showing that exposure to one CoV induces immunity to the other.
So you are saying that I should not be afraid of a tiger, because they belong to the same family as the nice pussy cats I see everyday? After all, there is a reason they've been given the same name.
No :) I think that's actually what YOU are saying. You are comparing two virii that we could not observe for long in the wild (The Tigers) with some cat (Sars2). I think we have good evidence after 2 years that Sars2 is much more similar Sars1 and MERS - just from a KPI perspective.
Yes, because the longer Covid hangs around, the faster virus fighting tech is going to improve.
Even better.
The combination of today's fast advancing technical knowledge, paired with the deadliness and globalness of Covid, relationships to HIV in terms of amplified risk, and the common cold and flu, has triggered a highly funded and increasingly organized war, waged with new weapons increasingly generalizable across viruses.
This war started with an unusual bang of many "small" battles won surprisingly quickly, which will maintain commitment and momentum needed for the war. Which given the world's inequalities will not be short.
Like the world entering the Holocene, our immune systems are entering into the era of routinely engineered support. Watchful preparedness, with engineering and distribution systems for resistance, mitigation and cures.
Eventually we will get to routine rapid detection, isolation and extinction. Perhaps even going so far as to eliminate threatening viruses in wildlife. Although that is far off.
Will we completely eradicate SARS-CoV-2 and its various mutations... no.
Will we reach a point where SARS-CoV-2, and its various mutations, are no longer a significant public health concern and we can return to "life as usual"... yes.
What exactly makes you think that? If covid disease gets a refresh every couple years like the flu does, it's not impossible that we never, ever get rid of it. It could just become a disease you just expect to get once you're older, unless humans as a species grow immune to it (read that as: lots of us die and only people with resistance to the virus get to breed for a generation or two).
Yep... it will continue to mutate and we will always have some SARS-CoV-2, as is the case with the flu.
SARS-CoV-2 will probably mutate over time to become less virulent but more transmissible. Vaccines and immune system adaptation will allow most of us to not worry about COVID too much until our later years in life, much like the flu.
COVID will continue to cause some deaths, but at a much lower level which is generally acceptable, as is the case with the flu.
The flu mutates at a way faster rate, though. If the current pandemic was caused by an influenza virus, you'd have a whole lot more strains to worry about.
We're only seeing 'this many' Covid variants, because right now it has so many hosts to work with. Whether through vaccination or infection, that will change over time however.
It's about much more than money. Society transformation with covid passes, which will become citizen passes.
Later the history books will mention covid as the catalyst for world transformation and it won't say a peep about the money that was made, because it doesn't matter.
44 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 77.9 ms ] threadSmallpox used to be endemic, Polio used to be endemic, measles used to be endemic. That is not where we want to end up at.
How do we stop this? The same way we did with the others - comprehensive vaccination, mandated if necessary. Lockdowns on any outbreaks.
Covid will most likely evolve into a more transmissible, less lethal variant as time goes on.
We already have 4 other Corona Viril endemic in the human population. They probably all started out super deadly in a pandemic. This one will be endemic soon, too (1-2 years I assume).
But, "no", we will never get rid of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus).
Unfortunately the idea that Covid becomes just another common cold virus can be no more than wishful thinking at this point.
Without vaccines and public health interventions, likely SARS-COV-2 would continue washing through the population, with waning immunity and variants causing endless sickness and death, much as smallpox, polio, measles etc used to before we got a handle on them.
It is not wishful thinking that in the future, child exposure and adult immunity will be the norm. Covid is already just another common cold for the young.
Covid infection fatality rate for children is on the order of 1/100,000, similar to influenza or varicella (chicken pox), but much more dangerous for the elderly without immunity (like influenza or varicella).
This is drastically different than something like smallpox, which had a 30% fatality rate.
> Covid infection fatality rate for children is on the order of 1/100,000, similar to influenza or varicella (chicken pox)
Aren't flu and chicken pox an order of magnitude or two (or three?) more deadly than the common cold in children?
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/varicella.html
If you look it up, you can let me know.
> Covid is already just another common cold for the young.
The Pediatric mortality Influenza, covid, and chicken pox are all about the same order of magnitude as each other. diseases like smallpox are perhaps 5 orders of magnitude more deadly.
Furthermore, we don't know what if any protection childhood infection would give later in life - certainly reinfection in adults is common, with no guarantee that symptoms are less severe.
To take any approach that allows the widespread circulation of Covid is reckless at best at this moment, particularly when we do have the tools available to us to control it (mandatory vaccination and targeted lockdowns).
This is exactly what the numbers support. both diseases have deaths on the order of 1/100,000 inflections for young children.
>Furthermore, we don't know what if any protection childhood infection would give later in life - certainly reinfection in adults is common, with no guarantee that symptoms are less severe.
All of the covid data we have suggests that infection symptoms are less severe if people have immunity from vaccine or prior illness.
>To take any approach that allows the widespread circulation of Covid is reckless at best at this moment, particularly when we do have the tools available to us to control it (mandatory vaccination and targeted lockdowns).
Vaccines and lockdowns can help control the spread, but will never be enough to prevent it from being endemic. Vaccinated individuals can spread the disease and it is in animal populations around the world.
Please also provide sources for subsequent reinfection (as opposed to vaccination) being less severe.
Lockdowns have certainly worked in China (20% of the world's population), so it is possible, if we choose it.
(to my knowledge, no significant outbreak has occurred from spillback)
Depends on how you define "have worked". If you optimize for just variable (COVID infections), then yes, they have worked. Until now.
If you look at the entire system, they have failed miserably.
Kill peoples animals after forcing them out of their home. The list goes on. They still hide the origin and any information to this day and politically attack any country that pushes to open any investigation into it.
I agree that it is hard to find IFR/CFR for the common cold. You can use total influenza death to get a sense for a lower bound.
This paper[1] puts total H1N1 Mortality at 6/100,00ok per year for <18 year olds and CFR at ~20/100,000K
This paper[2] puts the total population mortality for flu at ~0.15/100K for <18 year olds
this paper [3] also puts CFR for flu like symptoms in single digits x/100K for <18 year olds.
>Please also provide sources for subsequent reinfection (as opposed to vaccination) being less severe.
There are many sources available for this one. This Israeli analysis [4] of 2.5 million individuals found that breakthrough infections were 7.13-fold higher in Vaccinated individuals than covid recovered individuals. Hospitalizations were 6.7-fold higher in vaccinated individuals than recovered.
Of course it is better to get vaccinated than get covid the first time, but this demonstrates that natural infection immunity is very robust.
>Lockdowns have certainly worked in China (20% of the world's population), so it is possible, if we choose it.
Lockdowns and vaccination have helped control covid in china. They have not eradicated covid in China. This supports my point that covid will be endemic.
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067361... 2: https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/141/4/e20172... 3: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1586/ers.10.24?casa_t... 4: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
Does the Israeli study control for age?
Given that China has perhaps a few 10s of cases currently, amongst 1.5B, I think eradication is accurate to a first approximation.
Covid is equivalent to the common endemic flus for the young*
>Does the Israeli study control for age?
It does
>Given that China has perhaps a few 10s of cases currently, amongst 1.5B, I think eradication is accurate to a first approximation.
Eradication does not mean "in control".
They 4 other CoV have been studied extensively and there are also theories about their origins. You are taking very different types of virii and compare them with a Corona Virus, which makes no sense at all.
The question you need to answer: Why should this CoV be so different than the 4 others we know?
Btw: Common colds can be very deadly if your immune system is weak or not familiar with them. Just go and ask some native Americans back in the 1640s.
As for the common cold and native Americans, you will need to ask them yourself - my understanding is that the common cold viruses have always been globally widespread. Please correct me if I'm wrong!
Here is just one paper around that topic: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34273512/
Even better.
The combination of today's fast advancing technical knowledge, paired with the deadliness and globalness of Covid, relationships to HIV in terms of amplified risk, and the common cold and flu, has triggered a highly funded and increasingly organized war, waged with new weapons increasingly generalizable across viruses.
This war started with an unusual bang of many "small" battles won surprisingly quickly, which will maintain commitment and momentum needed for the war. Which given the world's inequalities will not be short.
Like the world entering the Holocene, our immune systems are entering into the era of routinely engineered support. Watchful preparedness, with engineering and distribution systems for resistance, mitigation and cures.
Eventually we will get to routine rapid detection, isolation and extinction. Perhaps even going so far as to eliminate threatening viruses in wildlife. Although that is far off.
I'm wondering what we will call the variants after we run out of letters. Maybe they'll start to look like GPUs.
Latest Covid23000 GTX 600 series variant from Vietnam released, here's why doctors and investors are worried!
Will we reach a point where SARS-CoV-2, and its various mutations, are no longer a significant public health concern and we can return to "life as usual"... yes.
SARS-CoV-2 will probably mutate over time to become less virulent but more transmissible. Vaccines and immune system adaptation will allow most of us to not worry about COVID too much until our later years in life, much like the flu. COVID will continue to cause some deaths, but at a much lower level which is generally acceptable, as is the case with the flu.
We're only seeing 'this many' Covid variants, because right now it has so many hosts to work with. Whether through vaccination or infection, that will change over time however.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
Later the history books will mention covid as the catalyst for world transformation and it won't say a peep about the money that was made, because it doesn't matter.