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> Keep wearing your masks and social distancing people. It’s hard, it’s a sacrifice, but together we can conquer this disease and return to life “as normal”. T

> Keep wearing your masks and social distancing people. It’s hard, it’s a sacrifice, but together we can conquer this disease and return to life “as normal”. This ghost is not going back into the bottle. It's way too widespread for that now. Even the WHO has determined that. Even if one country manages it, some tourist will bring it in. The vaccines don't stop the spread enough either to kill it completely. People will still get sick and spread it, they just don't get as sick in large numbers. The simple fact that even a country that has the ability to rigidly control all outside sources like New Zealand is unable to avoid the occasional outbreak. However they do seem to reduce the risk of severe illness enough to bring it to a level comparable to other endemic diseases. PS: Don't get me wrong, I'm totally pro-vaccine and will get at as soon as I finally can. I really hope that politics will deem the resulting levels sufficient to drop the other measures like the masks and distancing. Once the danger level is comparable to other endemic diseases I think we should. And I really hope that SARS-CoV-2 mutates to a variant that isn't as deadly. Most diseases have, after all as evolution favours it (not as deadly means we won't fight it as hard). But I doubt we'll ever be COVID free. That point was passed once we didn't strictly quarantine China back in Feb 2020. But anyway that's water under the bridge.

maxerickson 6y ago
The vaccines appear to be plenty effective enough to stop the spread, if enough people get them. We don't have great information about the variants, but the big improvements in Israel and England are encouraging, even with vaccination still ongoing.
- timmytokyo 6y ago
  Not sure why the GP is being downvoted. SARS-CoV-2 will most likely become endemic. [1] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6516/527.full https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6516/527.full
  - MAGZine 6y ago
    > Should reinfection prove commonplace, and barring a highly effective vaccine delivered to most of the world's population, SARS-CoV-2 will likely become endemic. The thing is, we don't know if reinfection will prove commonplace. We don't know how long immunity will last given a two-shot regimen—though the strong immune response that people are having on the second shot might be cause for hope. We don't know how the virus will mutate on it's point/spike, the main infection vector that the RNA vax target. We just don't know. Research is emerging, time will tell. In the meantime, it's fear mongering.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Well I will get the vaccine as soon as I can get it (which is not very soon, sadly). I'm not anti-vax, but the last few weeks the news has been all about "Don't be surprised if people still get COVID after being vaccinated". Like here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26522853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26522853 With that in mind I don't think eradication will be achievable. It only takes one person with a resistant mutation. I think we can hope to bring it under control. But not eradicate it.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    What does 'control' mean? In humans, if a small number of people are sick and you know who they are, you can eradicate the infection with isolation (it would only take a couple months). That it infects various animals may make that unworkable, and the difficulty in vaccinating a large percentage of people globally is another problem. But the effectiveness of the vaccines against the current variants does not appear to be a problem, high levels of vaccination will slow the spread of the virus dramatically in those populations, to the point where it barely exists (compare to polio, which is still endemic in some places around the world).
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      As far as zoonosis (animal-transmitted human diseases) go... Rabies infects a lot of animals, but many places of the world are now effectively rabies-free thanks to smart inoculation of foxes etc. with baits. We had last proven rabies case in the wild in 2002. (The Czech Republic, a landlocked continental country, not an isolated island.) You can still fall to rabies contracted from bats if extremely unlucky, but compared to countries like India where the disease still runs rampant, rabies is a solved problem in most of Europe. Maybe there will be a similar way to inoculate the wild mustelids against Covid one day. To be honest, human antivaxxers strike me as a bigger problem than random mink. I don't meet many mink on a regular day, but people with their masks halfway down are all too common.
      - maxerickson 6y ago
tamaharbor 6y ago
Sounds a lot like the flu.

maxerickson 6y ago

The vaccines appear to be plenty effective enough to stop the spread, if enough people get them. We don't have great information about the variants, but the big improvements in Israel and England are encouraging, even with vaccination still ongoing.

timmytokyo 6y ago
Not sure why the GP is being downvoted. SARS-CoV-2 will most likely become endemic. [1] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6516/527.full https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6516/527.full
- MAGZine 6y ago
  > Should reinfection prove commonplace, and barring a highly effective vaccine delivered to most of the world's population, SARS-CoV-2 will likely become endemic. The thing is, we don't know if reinfection will prove commonplace. We don't know how long immunity will last given a two-shot regimen—though the strong immune response that people are having on the second shot might be cause for hope. We don't know how the virus will mutate on it's point/spike, the main infection vector that the RNA vax target. We just don't know. Research is emerging, time will tell. In the meantime, it's fear mongering.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
Well I will get the vaccine as soon as I can get it (which is not very soon, sadly). I'm not anti-vax, but the last few weeks the news has been all about "Don't be surprised if people still get COVID after being vaccinated". Like here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26522853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26522853 With that in mind I don't think eradication will be achievable. It only takes one person with a resistant mutation. I think we can hope to bring it under control. But not eradicate it.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  What does 'control' mean? In humans, if a small number of people are sick and you know who they are, you can eradicate the infection with isolation (it would only take a couple months). That it infects various animals may make that unworkable, and the difficulty in vaccinating a large percentage of people globally is another problem. But the effectiveness of the vaccines against the current variants does not appear to be a problem, high levels of vaccination will slow the spread of the virus dramatically in those populations, to the point where it barely exists (compare to polio, which is still endemic in some places around the world).
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    As far as zoonosis (animal-transmitted human diseases) go... Rabies infects a lot of animals, but many places of the world are now effectively rabies-free thanks to smart inoculation of foxes etc. with baits. We had last proven rabies case in the wild in 2002. (The Czech Republic, a landlocked continental country, not an isolated island.) You can still fall to rabies contracted from bats if extremely unlucky, but compared to countries like India where the disease still runs rampant, rabies is a solved problem in most of Europe. Maybe there will be a similar way to inoculate the wild mustelids against Covid one day. To be honest, human antivaxxers strike me as a bigger problem than random mink. I don't meet many mink on a regular day, but people with their masks halfway down are all too common.
    - maxerickson 6y ago

tamaharbor 6y ago

Sounds a lot like the flu.