What if there's never an effective vaccine?

[ThatsWhatHeroesDo]

That's it really. The world can't halt forever, can it? What will the country look like in, say, 2 years - schools, socialising, sports, leisure, shopping, mixing - if there's no effective vaccine?

People will die, others will survive.

CNN had an article that explored the idea, basically test and trace would be our best hope

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/05/03/health/coronavirus-vaccine-never-developed-intl/index.html

People will die, others will survive

This really. There’s a point where the virus can’t spread at the same rate anymore which lowers peoples general risk quite dramatically but I can’t recall when that is. I think it’s around 60%. At that point it can still crop up and there will be out breaks but there are natural ‘fire breaks’ in the population to control its spread.

That’s the theory anyhow, I imagine length of immunity makes a difference which is an unknown factor right now and another reason it’s better to control its spread so we’re not all vulnerable around the same time again.

The virus will probably become less aggressive over time, they normally do. Plus we’ll get a handle on best treatment.

There are viruses such as HIV for which they haven't found a vaccine. They have however found effective treatments that have been developed. I'd hope that if a vaccine isn't found then effective treatments would be developed that would mean less people would die.

Virus would spread widely until herd immunity achieved. Many would sadly die. The 'do nothing' deaths in UK was predicted at 500,000 I think.

Then we're proper fucked

If R remains below 1, the outbreak will eventually fizzle out. That's not to say the virus will be eradicated, but the current pandemic will end - just like outbreaks of things like polio ended before there were vaccines.

Well Spanish Flu is no longer around so hopefully if there’s no vaccine it will end up just dying out eventually too.

It doesn’t really help it going below one if when things relax it can shoot up again. I don’t understand why face masks weren’t mentioned as the one person I trust and listen to is a doctor John Campbell whose updates are usually daily on you tube and full of insight .

He strongly believes in them I think, not to protect the wearer but to protect others from us is how it works I think

Dr John Campbell is great isn't he?

The 'do nothing' deaths in UK was predicted at 500,000 I think.
No. The reason that particular figure disappeared from sight was because Imperial College made a fundamental flaw in their calculations. When they were predicting deaths in the UK in the year, they forgot to subtract something - the number of deaths that happen anyway, averagely, every year, because people die. That figure, the normal average death rate, is around 500,000.

And yes, that is correct. Every death is tragic to someone, but it is a simple fact that with few exceptions, about the same number of people would have probably died anyway, but spread out over a year. The point of the lockdown was never, in the main, to reduce deaths, but to stop the most serious life-threatening cases all happening at once. Bad annual spikes in death in previous years stand at between 20,000 and 50,000 additional deaths and correspond to flu outbreaks - which also strikes mainly at the weakest and most medically vulnerable members of society.

Whilst it is possible that no vaccine will be found, it is unlikely. We actually know an awful lot about coronaviruses, and the foundations of vaccine research already existed before this particular one emerged. Had the previous strains been a little more threatening, that research would have advanced further, but there was no investment in the research because there was no money to be made from finding a vaccine. Just as nobody was bothered about finding an Ebola vaccine whilst it was just wiping out poor Africans. There's a lot of money to be made from a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2. Probably a Nobel prize too.