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Ask HN: What is your opinion on whether Covid will disappear or not?

8 points by thallukrish ↗ HN
Is our life going to be like this. Variant after variant will come and keep hammering us. Our economy, our Child's education and eventually human race will go back to Farming ? Or do you think this is just a trying phase that will pass like many others?

8 comments

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fspacef
I believe it will pass. Already the Omicron variant was less fatal than the previous ones. I think we are getting closer to herd immunity where eventually the virus will mutate to just flu like symptoms and everyone will get one bout of it and then have antibodies.
marineset
Nitpick: Everybody will have B/T cells to kickstart antibody production on next infection, making it mild in the vast majority of cases. Antibodies naturally wane a few months after infection, otherwise our blood would turn into antibody paste in infancy.
drakonka
My hope is that each future mutation will be milder than the last. I am currently self-isolating as my country is hammered with cases, until I can get my booster. After that, I will continue being careful and avoiding crowded places, but will have passed my threshold of _high_ worry about catching COVID myself. Eventually, I suspect we'll have annual boosters for milder variants, but the disease itself will hopefully not be as concerning or impactful as it currently is.
thatwasunusual
I think it will end up as the flu, or as a combination. I read about a possible flu-corona (flurona?) combo a few days ago.
gus_massa
It's not possible to to get a virus that is a combination of the flu and a coronavirus, because they are very different. For example all coronavirus are "positive sense" RNA virus and the flu is a "negative sense" RNA virus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_(molecular_biology)#RNA_... (With a "positive sense" virus, the cell use the information in the virus to produce proteins. With a "negative sense" virus, it's necessary to make an inverted version of the RNA and then produce proteins.)

You probably read about getting both illness at the same time, not a single virus that is a mix of them.

Also, there are some test to make a vaccine against both flu and covid-19, but it's just a mix of the two vaccines. (The combination must be tested in case it has some nasty surprising side effects, or the body only makes protection against one illness, and other possible problems.)

pettycashstash2
Funny thing is that the virus does not care about our opinions. It will take it’s own course, for good or bad. We will have to deal with the outcome. The world will not end. It’s already different. Are you asking if Will it ever go back to the way it was? Based on past pandemics, eventually yes. The question is when? I’ll leave that for smarter folks then I to answer. People are already loosing patience and I am noticing more individuals not follow safety protocols in public. They are exhausted and resigned to whatever will be. It’s like people are following a grieving process: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and eventually acceptance. Look around when you’re out and about and notice every individual around you fits somewhat into a different phase. This applies to organizations as well as individuals. Ex Walmart says they don’t allow maskless, close to sanitize stores, yet when customers don’t wear masks they say they can’t enforce. Also look at ridiculous changing CDC guidance.
akagusu
Covid is too much profitable to disappear.
mikecoles
"Go back to farming" isn't necessarily negative.