3 ms·
We are all going to get it. This isn't fatalism. It's just a statement of fact. It's an endemic respiratory virus with multiple animal reservoirs, and there is
by timr 5y ago
We are all going to get it. This isn't fatalism. It's just a statement of fact.
It's an endemic respiratory virus with multiple animal reservoirs, and there is no vaccine that provides sterilizing immunity. Elimination is a pipe dream.
- josephcsible 5y agoThere are plenty of other infectious diseases that aren't eradicated but that most people never get. Why that dichotomy for this one?
- timr 5y agoBecause those diseases have been circulating amongst the human population for thousands of years (or longer), and there is a level of population immunity that keeps large outbreaks from occurring. Also, you aren't even aware of most of the viruses you're infected with on a regular basis, because you aren't looking for them, and immunity you've built up over a lifetime reduces the severity of symptoms. For all you know, you've been infected asymptomatically / minimally symptomatically with any number of common respiratory viruses in the past year, and written it off completely. The big difference for SARS-CoV2 was that the entire global population was immunologically naive in 2020 (maybe; there's evidence for some level of immunity due to common-cold coronaviruses). This is rapidly changing.
- nradov 5y agoVinay Prasad MD wrote a good explanation about why it will be impossible to avoid this virus. https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646