Just reminding you to have some humility.
No, we don't. Who knows if this coronavirus will ever truly go away? What will the new "normal" be like when—if—things truly settle down. Surely our world will be forever marked by this event.
Yes, it will leave a mark during our lifetime, but that doesn't mean forever. People quickly forget about terrible events, which is a blessing and a curse. Nobody remembers that much about the Spanish flu, and yet it was one of the deadliest pandemics known to mankind. This pandemic is dramatic and unprecedented in our lifetime, yet nobody can tell how that will affect us in the long term.
There are vested interests to come back to normal as fast as possible. And there are also incentives to use this crisis to push all kinds of agendas. I'd be wary about predictions.
Wait, what?
I keep hearing this notion floated around and I'm honestly very confused.
Are people under the impression that our lockdowns are going to eradicate this? Or are you using "going away" as a metaphor for "will recede to the background level of death from flu/etc that we have learned to tune out?"
It should be stunningly obvious that a highly infectious respiratory disease that is present in every country, originally came from animals and has shown the ability to infect other animals will never be eradicated. There's too many reservoirs, even if the totalitarian dream that everyone seems to want were a full reality.
If you meant the other sense, then it should be equally obvious that this will eventually pass through the population and we will build immunity to it, at which point Covid-19 joins the friendly cast of characters such as the common cold coronaviruses, common cold rhinoviruses, adenoviruses, influenza, etc. In short, a disease that kills people but not in numbers that we freak out about. (And incidentally once the globe has been exposed to it it should be much less deadly than Influenza since new humans will be exposed to it as babies/young children and not as 80+ year old nursing home patients, and Covid simply does not kill young children in significant numbers)
What's that? Do I hear the "There's no evidence for immunity to covid-19" crowd in the distance? I'm getting a bit tired of that line, but if someone wants me to dismantle that argument (again) I am happy to.
> it should be equally obvious
Clearly it is not obvious, considering most people have never spent a significant amount of time thinking about how infectious diseases work.
> What's that? Do I hear the "There's no evidence for immunity to covid-19" crowd in the distance? I'm getting a bit tired of that line, but if someone wants me to dismantle that argument (again) I am happy to.
Why make a snarky, coy comment like this? If you have something to say about immunity then just say it. In fact the WHO are among those who make this claim[0], so "dismantle" away.
[0]: https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/immunity-p...
(1) The presence of active circulating antibodies, which in sufficient concentrations should result in literal immunity in the sense of inability to catch the virus
Eventually those circulating antibodies will no longer be actively present, but you'll still have
(2) Memory B Cells which lie dormant, waiting for exposure to viral antigens at which point they ramp up antibody production like crazy.
So in the worst case scenario, immunity in the sense of inability to be infected disappears after X months, but any infection would be much milder and would clear much more quickly than normal with lower peak viral load.
Let's talk about "herd immunity" while we're at it since that's been branded as a "dirty word (phrase)". Herd immunity is just the logical consequence of individual immunity as applied to population-level dynamics. So people that don't "believe" in herd immunity are like people that don't believe in evolution, in that both logically follow from the ground truths.
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Nothing I've said there contradicts the WHO, but it's worth mentioning that at this point it seems inaccurate to say "there is no evidence" rather than to say "there is not overwhelming evidence", and they've sort of given themselves away with this line:
> People who assume that they are immune to a second infection because they have received a positive test result may ignore public health advice
So, as always, they carefully shape statements to try to control behavior.
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Anyway, I'm actually not trying to argue against the WHO here, but rather the hordes of people who trot out the "we don't know if there even is immunity" to try to argue that "herd immunity" is a foolish/dangerous proposition when the truth is that it's how we deal with every non-containable pandemic. That is what I was getting at with my needlessly snarky and coy comment.
BTW, just to be clear, vaccines rely on the same principle. So those who point to the uncertainty as an argument "against" herd immunity (which again to me is like arguing "against evolution" since both herd immunity and evolution are logical consequences of some simple ground truths taken to their logical conclusions), are also arguing against hunkering down for 2.5 years while we develop a vaccine.