These kind of pandemic tend to end themselves after about 20-30 months. We’re about half way there anyway.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.11.20229708v...
"In Sweden, the observed increase in all-cause mortality during Covid-19 was partly due to a lower than expected mortality preceding the epidemic and the observed excess mortality, was followed by a lower than expected mortality after the first Covid-19 wave. This may suggest mortality displacement."
Sweden had about the same mortality spike in 2009 from Swine flu: https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-...
A few months later the debate will turn to this being leaky vaccines (vaccinated still shed virus, but may not get really sick). Officially, this is also: We just don't know, we are monitoring it. But all the monkeys showed shedding. Trial participants showed shedding. This is a leaky vaccine. What happened to the targeted disease, when we used a leaky vaccine in life stock can be read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek%27s_disease
Edit: I'd like a single expert predicting that our current vaccines will eradicate novel coronavirus. That would prove the downvoted post wrong. You'll find many experts agreeing that novel coronavirus is going to mutate and live among humans for a long long time after the crisis is over. Facts, people.
This is a real risk!
Relevant quote:
> Under normal conditions, highly virulent strains of the virus are not selected. A highly virulent strain would kill the host before the virus would have an opportunity to transmit to other potential hosts and replicate. Thus, less virulent strains are selected. These strains are virulent enough to induce symptoms but not enough to kill the host, allowing further transmission. However, the leaky vaccine changes this evolutionary pressure and permits the evolution of highly virulent strains.[12] The vaccine's inability to prevent infection and transmission allows the spread of highly virulent strains among vaccinated chickens. The fitness of the more virulent strains are increased by the vaccine.
(...)
> Highly virulent strains have been selected to the point that any chicken that is unvaccinated will die if infected. Other leaky vaccines are commonly used in agriculture. One vaccine in particular is the vaccine for avian influenza. Leaky vaccine use for avian influenza can select for virulent strains which could potentially be transmitted to humans.[13]
I never heard this discussed as a big "risk". As far as I know this was always more or less known to be the endgame and not even a dangerous outcome but the "good" scenario.
Once it's an established coronavirus, it can be like the other known human coronaviruses we already have. The reason you don't die from OC43 at age 75 now is because you probably cought it a few times before that. It's not necessarily because OC43 doesn't have a high IFR at high ages. We don't know that because we don't have a large sample of it. For all we know, one or more of the existing HCOVs may have been quite a deadly disease back when it entered the population.
We aren't going to exterminate SARS-COV2. Especially obvious since it's not limited to humans (present in mink, cats, primates, ...). And that's not going to be a big problem.
The endgame is for the virus to turn into a community virus. This is not the big "risk". The big risk is in using leaky vaccines to combat the mortality and morbidity until we get there (or can reset economy). In chickens, use of leaky vaccines lead to the evolution of a disease which kills nearly all non-vaccinated. That's nothing like the seasonal flu (which would be a "good" outcome, indeed).
You'll find expert back-and-forth on leaky vaccines risk for humans here: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6247/461 "Risk of ‘leaky’ vaccines debated" (2015)
> Vaccines have saved millions of human lives, but according to evolutionary biologist Andrew Read they sometimes may also cause pathogens to turn deadlier. Read first put forward the theory 15 years ago. Now, in a new paper, he presents evidence that that is what happened with the virus causing Marek's disease, an infectious disease in chickens. Read acknowledges that the effect has never been seen with human vaccines, but he argues that future vaccines that prevent disease rather than infection could have the same effect. Other researchers say that no general conclusions should be drawn from the paper. Even if he turns out to be right, the study offers no support whatsoever for those who oppose vaccination, Read stresses. If "leaky" vaccines are proven safe and effective, they should be used, he says, but perhaps with closer monitoring and additional measures to reduce transmission, such as bed nets for malaria.
And for all the solid risk management in the West, China, a country where:
- SARS-1 leaked twice from a lab,
- which re-sentences Australian citizens to a death penalty as diplomatic punishment for Australia wanting joint investigation into the origin of a disease with still unknown zoonotic basis
- which would not allow WHO full access, and put information blackout its scientists
- informed the world way too late of an upcoming pandemic, pressuring the WHO to geopolitics and trade instead of world health.
That country will vaccinate a billion people with a leaky vaccine that skipped a trial with a poorly estimated 50.5% efficiency. Risky as all-living hell.
This is not correct. What is selected against is deadliness, which is not correctly referred to as "virulence."
By example, the virulence of the kind of herpes that most Americans call "cold sores" is off the charts: you can get it from a single kiss. But because the host barely notices, it's not a big deal.
Similarly, a great number of diseases occur to AIDS patients because they're omnipresent, but cause no harm in normal conditions.
Don't even get me started on mononucleosis.
And then, of course, this is just a generalization; measles and many kinds of meningitis are ridiculously virulent, as well as extremely deadly.
Made a bit more complicated by the fact that not all vaccines have the same properties here...somehow seems the mRNA vaccines do better at preventing shedding than the adenovirus-based ones [0].
AIDS was a huge deal back when there was no treatment for it.
I also realize that probably depends largely on where you live.
Yeah, I think this can largely be explained by the usual tendency to focus on our own backyards. Google says 'nearly 13,000 people with AIDS in the United States die each year', and I assume the rate is similar in other wealthy countries. Even if we assume the full total is causally attributable to AIDS, that's significantly less than the usual toll from flu, which we also tend to treat rather casually (which isn't to say that we should).
There is also pre exposure prophylaxis, which isn't a vaccine but does dramatically reduce the risk.
Between the two, the disease just isn't the problem it used to be -- assuming you can afford it. In poor counties it's still a problem.
And at the end of the day if it can't spread through casual contact then it's impact on wider society will be limited once it's understood.
Beyond that, we learned to treat it extremely effectively, today if someone who is HIV-positive adheres to their antiretroviral therapy they have a normal life expectancy.
https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9828348/ronald-reagan-hiv-aids
PEPFAR is also one of the more important things the US has done, i.e. there are something like 20 million people alive today thanks to the program.
HIV gets transmitted by sex, sharing needles or similar. So, no, it's not comparable. It's vastly easier to avoid.
Nonetheless, they've made a lot of progress on treatment since I first began hearing about it in high school.
Both PReP and antivirals are also not easy. You don't just get a shot and not worry about HIV for a few years, you have to take a pill every day as long as you're sexually active, and then treatment antivirals are expensive and need to be used consistently as well. One person slipping up can mean a lot of people catch it. Even assuming you know you have it to begin with, which is often not obvious until you've been a carrier for a while.
Never mind religious groups going around vilifying condoms doesn't help.
It's getting better, but yes it is still considered a global pandemic.
I mean, it's not the same thing as COVID but like COVID it carries with it its own unique challenges and at no point has the world dumped billions of dollars into single-use vaccines for it like we've done with COVID. Its stigma has migrated (or compounded) from a "gay disease" to an "african disease".
Honestly, I really hope that one silver lining out of all this is that an mRNA vaccine for HIV might get some development now. There was some work that way before everything got diverted to COVID and now that tech has proven itself so...
So no, an infection does not require one person to slip up. For an infection to occur requires both persons to slip up.
Getting PReP requires regular HIV tests so it is in fact obvious that you are infected, if you get infected.
Of course this indeed only solves the issue in the developed world that can pay for (and wants to use) this medication but there really is no way around that. People that don’t want or can’t pay for this medication won’t want and be able to pay for a vaccine either.
Too bad they don't allow the WHO full access to investigate, nor share critical information with the rest of the world, now suffering thousands of deaths. Most likely is a lab leak accident (Israel, UK, and US all said as much!). But unfortunately, the "China Virus" has become a political issue, and you won't find cites in the popular media anymore. Just articles about xenophobic conspiracy theories, and to listen to health experts when they tell you masks are not protective, go eat at China Town to show your support, don't worry about losing weight, and that vitamin D deficiency is a hoax.