Pardon my butting in, but.....
The article is correct, but doesn’t tell the entire story, which is a lot less dire than it would have you believe.
A sort of corona virus is responsible for 20% of common colds. Rhinoviruses, discovered in the 1950s, are responsible for 50%. How close are we to a vaccine for the common cold?
If memory serves me right, the polio and Ebola viruses are the only ones we’ve tamed. Neither are in the corona family. I don’t believe there’s a vaccine for any corona virus...I may be wrong.
I doubt very seriously that we’ll have a vaccine in 2-3 years. By then, the virus will have undergone several mutations. Or disappeared, like Spanish flu.
It’s nice to be optimistic about a vaccine, but I’m afraid that it is going to be some time before it’s perfected, if ever. By then, herd immunity should protect us.
I think, personally, my views only, that the first wave was the worst and that it is waning. We’ve learned to adapt, and the second wave should not threaten to overwhelm health systems as much as the first one. So, I don’t see any more lockdowns, etc. in the future, unless a deadly mutation takes place, which is doubtful because the natural history of these viruses is that they mutate into less lethal strains, not more lethal. If the opposite were true, I doubt the human race would exist
We’ll slowly but surely deal with it as a somewhat chronic thing, much like malevolent run-of-the-mill viruses, until it simply dies off like the Spanish flu abruptly did. In other words, we’ll be more rational about it.
Wikipedia on the end of Spanish flu:
en.wikipedia.org
End of the pandemic
After the lethal second wave struck in late 1918, new cases dropped abruptly – almost to nothing after the peak in the second wave. [59] In Philadelphia, for example, 4,597 people died in the week ending 16 October, but by 11 November, influenza had almost disappeared from the city. One explanation for the rapid decline in the lethality of the disease is that doctors became more effective in prevention and treatment of the pneumonia that developed after the victims had contracted the virus. However, John Barry stated in his 2004 book The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History that researchers have found no evidence to support this position. [5] Some fatal cases did continue into March 1919, killing one player in the 1919 Stanley Cup Finals.
Another theory holds that the 1918 virus mutated extremely rapidly to a less lethal strain. This is a common occurrence with influenza viruses: there is a tendency for pathogenic viruses to become less lethal with time, as the hosts of more dangerous strains tend to die out [5] (see also "Deadly Second Wave", above). |
