Do you think we will ever be rid of covid-19?

[Butterbear86]

I know if there’s a vaccine I guess we will be - but rolling it out to everyone will be huge and then if it’s like flu and mutates it will be required every year?
There’s a large part of me that feels that if we aren’t given immunity by contracting the virus and can contract it again and again then as a race we’ve probably had it, apart from if we develop a vaccine.
Otherwise it’s just going to circulate and circulate for evermore.

Possibly not. Probably it will come back every winter. The illness itself would be less fatal if everybody didn't have it at the same time...

I think we will be free of THIS virus but we will have to have the equivalent of a standby medical volunteer army from now on. Preppers wont be mocked. People will reasses.

We won't be rid of it but as a population we will build up an immunity even without a vaccine, so it won't be so virulent and deadly. At the moment these lockdowns and extreme measures are necessary because the population has no immunity and the virus can spread so quickly.

It's like how there are isolated populations in the Amazon that can be devastated by the common cold - they have no immunity to it. We have all had colds so many times we have built up an immunity, so we are less likely to catch it, and when we do we shake it off. This immunity is even passed from mother to child. Plus those genetically susceptible to colds didn't survive centuries ago.

I thought it would just become part of the vaccine schedule?

It'd probably become part of the vaccine schedule for the old/ vulnerable like the flu vaccine and the rest of should be ok (ish).

Would it not be like bird flu or swine flu where there is an outbreak but not something you then hear about again once it has stopped spreading?