Hacker News Reader

Comment by Dumblydorr | Hacker News Reader

How do you know there will be a time after Corona? In all likelihood, it is here to stay like influenza and rhinovirus and other respiratory illnesses. The only way we recover the economy is by gaining herd immunity such that 25-50k yearly die, not 200k. That comes with vaccine and with wide scale exposure, which I'd wager is by 2021 summer. But even then, old folks will still die by the thousands each year due to covid 19.

View on HN

At the current death rate, we're on track to reach 200k dead by early July. And that's only the deaths that are being counted. There is a substantial increase in overall mortality beyond the year to year average, beyond the confirmed Covid deaths. Considering that this disease is causing pulmonary embolisms, strokes, heart attacks, and other manifestations of out of control clotting even in healthy young people, we may realistically have already hit 200k dead in June counting the people who have died suddenly at home without being tested.

Even in the unlikely scenario where resistance/immunity/vaccines for corona never develop and it never goes away, there will come a point where people consider the death toll acceptable losses and the lockdowns will be lifted. E.g. the current attitude towards car accidents and influenza deaths. (And yes, I know corona is worse than either. Eventually, should corona truly become the 'new normal', that won't matter.)

It's helpful to use Spanish Flu as a proxy. It was almost completely overlooked by historians, mostly due to it coming on the heels of WWI, but look at what 1921 and beyond looked like. Back to normal. That's with the same social distancing and mask-wearing measures we see today. But no vaccine.

What's clear is society now seems to be willing to let COVID run its course (and kill discriminately) as long as we keep below hospital capacity. If we allow that to happen, then we'll reach herd immunity, regardless of vaccine availability, within a couple of years.

Let's just hope it doesn't mutate.

If you would like to keep an eye on mutations, some of them are tracked here [1]

[1] - https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global

A vaccine is a near certainty.

why?

Over an infinite period of time, sure.

Worst case 10 years, likely well less than that and coronavirus won’t matter to humans. You see we have what’s called an inate and an adaptive immune system. The inate immune system catches coronavirus and immediately illicits a response, the adaptive immune system catches infections that the inate immune knows about. The innate immune system dies off after you are 10 or 11 and your adaptive immune system catches 90% of foreign invaders over your life.

I’m giving some background because it means kids and children today have antibodies created by the innate system that fights off novel coronavirus. Which means their adaptive system will be able to remember and fight back against this virus. This means mutations, specifically this means weaker general strains in the future akin to the cold/flu.

Let me put it this way.. RSV is a nasty respiratory illness but we as a species survive quite well along side it even if it happens to kill a few babies and old people every year

Your descriptions of the human immune system and of viral evolution are both wildly inaccurate. I don’t intend to be snarky, but nearly every sentence is factually incorrect.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com