Will the covid-19 restrictions ever be lifted?
The Covid-19 pandemic will be with us, wrecking our lives, through 2022, according to a sampling of scientific opinion.
After 18 months of living with this disease, everyone is exhausted, writes Business Insider. The Delta variant is by some estimates a thousand times more potent that previous versions of the virus. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention says the war has changed but not for the better. “Right now we are the tortoise in the middle of a critical race against the virus, which appears to have the winning, twitch-like reflexes of a hare. It is becoming more contagious, achieving mild infections in the fully vaccinated population, prompting calls for booster jabs.
“People are emotionally and mentally drained,” said epidemiologist Saskia Popescu. “It is just going to take longer than many of us thought — at least a few more years before we can live truly postpandemic.”
Bloomberg is depressing, saying at the current pace of vaccination 75 per cent of the global population will not be inoculated for seven years. Herd immunity may not be achieved until near the end of this decade. ” Brace yourself,” it warns. “Long-haul air travel may not get going until 2023.” (IATA has said 2024.)
Pseudo-colour thin-section electron micrographs of the 2019 novel coronavirus grown in cells at The University of Hong Kong. The image shows part of a virus infected cell grown in culture with multiple virus particles being released from the cell surface. Each infected cell produces thousands of new infectious virus particles which can go on to infect new cells. Photo: Image credit: John Nicholls, Leo Poon and Malik Peiris, LKS Faculty of Medicine, and Electron Microscopy Unit, The University of Hong Kong
“People need to understand that Delta is not the end of what the virus can do,” Dr James Hildreth, president of Meharry Medical College, said. “If we could all get vaccinated . . . we limit the possibility a scarier Delta will arise.”
This virus will not disappear. The best we can hope is that it will become an infectious nuisance that we can control like polio, measles and chickenpox. “We will get to a point,” Dr Hildreth said, “where we’re comfortable that the incidence of cases and deaths is low enough that we don’t feel we need to change our life any more… It will probably not be this year or next. But at some point in 2023 life may feel the way it used to again.”
About a quarter of the world’s population is now vaccinated. WHO’s Dr T. A. Ghebreyesus hopes 40 per cent of the global population will be vaccinated by the end of this year and 70 per cent by the middle of next year. Bloomberg, we see above, differs. “The pandemic will end when the world chooses to end it, because the solutions are in our hands,” Dr Ghrebreyesus said. WHO doesn’t see the pandemic being over for at least another year, saying people who believe otherwise are “fools”.
Pseudo-colour scanning electron micrograph of SARS-CoV-2 grown in culture from a patient isolate. After 24 hours in culture there are large numbers of viral particles (orange) on the surface of the cell (blue). Image credit: LKS Faculty of Medicine, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (K.Tsia, K.Lee and Q.Lai), and Electron Microscopy Unit, The University of Hong Kong
With time the effectiveness of the vaccines drops, necessitating booster shots. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla says the company is preparing to manufacture booster shots. Bourla said people will likely need boosters within 12 months of full vaccination and annually thereafter.
Eradication of diseases is rare, with a few exceptions such as smallpox and rinderpest. Dr Joshua Epstein, epidemiology professor at New York University, said diseases “retreat to their animal reservoirs or they mutate at low levels. But they don’t typically literally disappear from the biome. Most causes of past pandemics are with us today. More than 3000 people caught bacteria causing bubonic plaque between 2010 and 2015, according to WHO. And the virus behind the 1918 flu pandemic, killer of 50 million, ultimately morphed into less lethal variants, with its descendants becoming strains of seasonal flu.
The New York Times says the coronavirus will change our lives long term. “It is the most important global experience since World War II and the Great depression. Events that hold the world’s attention for long stretches — and that alter the rhythms of life — do tend to leave a legacy. Crises can force or accelerate behaviour changes.”
Masks and border controls will be with us for a long time. Be grateful the HK Government has done a good job preventing Covid from taking off within the community. So far. Hope that 2022 is no worse than 2021 and don’t believe that this will end soon. Dr Popescu: “I am hopeful for the future, but I also know that this is going to be a lot longer of a struggle than people realise.”
This article is distilled from CNN, NY Times, Business Insider, National Geographic, Bloomberg and CNBC
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