If covid19 is going to hang around until we have a vaccine, why didn't SARS and MERS?

[goldpartyhat]

A vaccine is a long way off.

I know the other diseases were less infectious, although more deadly, but they have disappeared completely, while Covid ravages the world. Where did they go? And what defeated them?

Covid19 also does not appear to be weather dependent, so summer isn't going to help us.

I'd ask on the BBC if I could find out how!

SARS and MERS made themselves known a lot sooner, not hanging around with causing symptoms, and no or very few asymptomatic carriers, plus the affected countries too a lot of action before it spread widely

I believe they got SARS and MERs under control and didn’t need the vaccine in the end

SARS was contained effectively and stamped out, although it was different to Covid in the way that people were at their most infectious a few days into their illness, rather than at the beginning (so less opportunity for it to spread). I also don’t think there was the same spectrum of disease severity we’re seeing with COVID (from asymptomatic to mild to severe).

MERS is still around but thankfully doesn’t seem to pass easily between people.

How did they get these other diseases under control? Testing and tracing?

With MERS people tended to be very ill by the time they were infectious, so testing wasn't necessary and tracing was easy (sufferers were "self isolating" in ICU or coffins by the time they were infectious)

They had very different characteristics - eg not being infectious before symptoms were apparent, lower R0.

MERS is still around

As a PP said, people were contagious when they had symptoms. Same with Ebola. With Covid... well, you can be asymptomatic for nearly a month and spreading it to an awful amount of people.

Diseases are all different. Incubation periods, infectiousness, how many people are asymptomatic, how it is spread.

Thank you. No wonder ☹️. I was hoping it just burned itself out somehow, but it's way of spreading is vastly different. I just can't see how this will be beaten without a vaccine then.

Even with a vaccine it may not. Vaccines vary in their effectiveness and application.

World travel has increased 10 fold since SARS in 2003. Also, China’s Belt and Road initiative means there are Chinese-owned businesses all along this “road” through the ‘stans and 100s in Northern Italy for example. The world was massively more connected leading up to 2020. Just look at the increase in air travel between 2003 and 2020, you may be amazed.