Covid19 Is Here For Years to Come

[ClimbDad]

Today, Sir Jeremy Farrar, a member of Sage, the government advisory body, said the world would be living with Covid-19 for "very many, many years to come".

"Things will not be done by Christmas. This infection is not going away, it's now a human endemic infection.

"Even, actually, if we have a vaccine or very good treatments, humanity will still be living with this virus for very many, many years.... decades to come."

Prof Sir John Bell, of the University of Oxford, said he thought it was unlikely that Covid-19 would ever be eliminated despite the positive news announced on Monday that trials by his university had triggered an immune response - an important step in developing a vaccine.

"The reality is that this pathogen is here forever, it isn't going anywhere," he told MPs.

"Look at how much trouble they've had in eliminating, for example, polio, that eradication programme has been going on for 15 years and they're still not there.

"So this is going to come and go, and we're going to get winters where we get a lot of this virus back in action.“

If these highly respected scientists are right, how will your life change? Do you believe we can go back to normal while the virus is circulating?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53488142

Well this is a cheery thread

What exactly is the purpose of posting this OP? And coincidentally just after some positive news re the oxford vaccine? Are people not allowed to be cautiously optimistic about a positive development?

Most people accept this is a serious and worrying situation, but the entire world cannot simply grind to a halt. Relentless negativity and doom-mongering is helping no one. I’m a natural pessimist and I’m far from suggesting it’s all over- but I just don’t think this kind of ‘well don’t get too excited, we’re stuck with this forever and life as we know it is over’ narrative is helpful or constructive 🤷🏻‍♀️

Ah I see. This op is the only one who KNOWS.

Are people not allowed to be cautiously optimistic about a positive development?

Nope. No way. We must submit to our short lives being nothing but misery and shit.

And people must never return to work or school....

Apart from the people who needed to work to look after people/provide food/provide transport. They can work as the same caution doesn't need to be applied to them.

Allmyarseandpeggymartin
Not quite gone the way you expected this thread eh op?
It’s gone about how I expected. This is why the government can’t be honest and why it has to pretend we can go back to normal. Most people can’t or won’t accept the changes that are going to happen.

Leaving this thread you are boring and just scaremongering

I just find the idea that we will just flounder around endlessly and never be able to do anything but live in fear of COVID quite odd.

When the world first became aware of HIV it was terrifying particularly as it kills just about everyone it infects. Now you can live an almost normal life with HIV and have been able to for quite some time.

The idea that this virus (which kills quite a lot less than 1% of those it infects) is so impossible to fathom that we will never be able to overcome it seems quite unlikely to me. When you think how far we've come already, give it another year and who knows what they will discover.

To those who wa ts to listen to these scientists that say we can't go back to normal.... Just remember they are scientists and don't have the foggiest about economics, international trade etc etc... At the end of the day we had to listen to doctors and scientist while the world. Prepared itself to deal with the virus better (better treatments, vaccines, better hygiene etc) we now have most of these, bar a vaccine and it is time for us to move on. Most health services are better prepared for this now.... Whitty can say all he likes about future lockdown... But he has a nice wage coming in unlike many other now.

We have not seen the chaos like China and Italy becuase these two countries had the first outbreaks and everyone rushed to hospitals and overwhelmed health systems... Looking back only 20% of these likely needed hospital treatment. This then led to thousands of people with other illnesses to die as there was no capacity.

There are many horrible illnesses that still exist. Measles, flu, mumps, scarlet fever.

Scarlet fever, and the complications from it, killed children within the last 50 years, kids with it were isolated for 7 weeks away from their families. Now it's a simple dose of antibiotics.

There are incredibly knowledgeable people out there working on this. We will be vaccinated against it or it will be treated.

The headlines sound scary, it will be around, but we will not live in a pandemic forever, we will be OK.

There are a great many viruses that still exist that don’t cause a huge problem.
The way I see it, if they vaccinate the vulnerable then the virus can spread as it wants really.
Vaccinate the vulnerable and you stop the NHS getting overwhelmed. The rest of us can just either have a week in bed when we get it... or maybe even not suffer symptoms!

Life goes on.

If you were to remove all immunity in the population to existing illnesses like measles, chicken pox and flu you'd have a similar levels of catastrophe in play. Covid is new and eventually it won't be new, just another 'common' potentially lethal virus doing the rounds.

And people must never return to work or school

Oh no. What’s the point in educating our children anyway? It makes no difference to doom living.

As for jobs. Ditto. I expect when we run out of money for the nhs we’ll just all curl up and die. The end.

You’re all so optimistic. The OP is right as far as I can see.

I wish I hadn’t had children. It’s all fucked.

My prediction

It’ll be rolled out in January for frontline NHS staff, followed by the elderly and the vulnerable by the summer. All those that need protection the most.

This time next year we’ll be in a much better place than we are now.

Also, China and the US are in similar stages with their vaccines. The three of them work differently so over time the scientists will be able to determine which ones are the most effective etc...

Pretty sure this bad boy isn’t going to end mankind.

We'Re all DOOMED....

We already live with various deadly illnesses - how will this be different? In time there will (hopefully) be an effective vaccine, and like the one for the 'flu it will probably have to be a yearly thing. Also more effective treatments will be found, and so we will go on with living our lives much as we were already doing.

Why on earth do people come on MN prophesising doom and gloom for mankind? Do you really think we are the first generation to have to live with some kind of danger? Get a grip.

@MarcelineMissouri

We don’t need to eradicate it, we just need to be able to treat and keep it under control. And I believe those things will happen.

I agree.

It feels like they’re trying to balance the good news stories about vaccines and treatments publishing this.

They need just the right level of caution, too much caution with people thinking I’ll wait for better treatments and maybe even for the vaccine to be closer and the economy will stall. Saying it’ll be here for years will make a fair few think sod it, I’m living my life now.

I can see why they’re doing it but it’s not great for people’s mental health, which could also carry a price tag for them.

Yes it’s endemic but like lots of people above I’m hopeful normal life may start to return in months not years, especially by spring 2021.

We will have seen how it behaves and is affected by each season then, and had more time studying the virus. I think we just need to hold on tight and be cautious for one more winter.

@inthebleakmidwinteriwouldsing the inky way you could eliminate polio through increased effort is with forced vaccination. Polio was nearly eradicated in the 90s but the attempt failed because religious leaders spread conspiracy theories and the followers refused the vaccine. The incidence of polio is already very rare thanks to extensive vaccination and reporting, and same strains are believed to be wiped out having not been reported for a number of years.

I'm curious about your nickname, Climb, because I have yet to meet a climber with such a pessimistic attitude (wouldn't want to, either). I'm in a supposed 'hot zone' right now, people are just largely going about their business, using masks and sanitising. Life goes on, Climb, it even went on when people were dropping dead from Bubonic plague, which is also still around . . .

As usual I would like to point out that malaria kills half a million people every year, mostly children. Diarrheal diseases kill 1.6 million people per year, mostly children. COIVD is nothing. We'll vaccinate and treat. It'll be fine.

www.againstmalaria.com/ do a great job. If you don't like people dead from preventable diseases, donate to them. They put their financials right on their website and your money will buy nets and save children. Let's prevent preventable diseases.

I did say to my Dh from the start that this would mean long term- less mobility, more stay at home culture , big struggles for retail
and social/travel/hospitality businesses and perhaps even lead to universal basic income and the end of full time employment culture.

And that there would be enormous social consequences for a lockdown or shut down.

So much that I struggled to envisage it, but here we are. Pandemics do happen - this was predicted - and now we all have to navigate our risk tolerance on an individual basis. It is sad.

I Naively hadn’t really thought about the education, wider healthcare and social impacts - and these are really tragic. Contextualising the economic bs the personal, it does seem rather silly and challenging that we can go to the shops but not hug our nan. As someone with an infant, I’ve started to make choices related to his long term best interests in the socialisation front and stopped listening to the news.

But this is also a class issue. Where people can afford to be and not be and how they are supported to do so has enormous worldwide Disparities- whether this is kids staying at home or workers needing to go out to work to eat. This has also been massively highlighted and is very worrying.

But you know what OP, we’ll adapt. We’ll find new ways to live, socialise etc. I’m not naive about this virus at all but the human race has the capacity to learn and to change and we’ll find new ways to enjoy life. Some of the limitations we now face may indeed be beneficial in terms of climate change. Live with hope and adapt.

Allmyarseandpeggymartin
Not quite gone the way you expected this thread eh op?
It’s gone about how I expected. This is why the government can’t be honest and why it has to pretend we can go back to normal. Most people can’t or won’t accept the changes that are going to happen.

Oh give over - you wanted everyone to agree with you with your dramatics that life is over forever!!

We’ve never had to deal with an endemic virus that is both lethal, causes long term harm to those who catch it, and has the capacity to reinfect after an unknown period of temporary immunity. Reinfection by coronaviruses does not seem to be strain dependent. Something else causes our immune response to fade - no one quite understands how or why.

Er. I read a very good article (back in January when people were thinking rationally and hadn't gone into blind panic mode) about coronaviruses and what would happen to this one. It was in Statnews.

The view back then was that this one would become a pandemic, kill a bunch of (mostly) elderly people for 2-3 years - mostly in the Jan to March timeframe which is when seasonal conditions are best for coronaviruses to do their thing - and would then attenuate and become like the other endemic coronaviruses we have circulating every winter (and which can still kill a relatively high proportion of the very frail).

Nothing I have seen since contradicts this theory.

I also - more recently - read a good article on the genetics of the OC43 Coronavirus which showed that it probably first spread to humans in ~1889. Which was when there was a "Russian flu" circulating, killing the elderly with a bad pneumonia. Coincidence? Maybe.

I think the biggest issue currently is we have a government being too bright and breezy. I respect these scientists far more than I respect our government.

That said, the fact it isn't going away doesn't tell us what impact that will have on daily life in e.g. five years' time.

I think we as a population have no clue yet where this is going. I agree there could be major social and economic change. It is interesting that our government went for a full fulough, hard cliff edge. I was reading in Europe many countries are considering longer term partial job support to limit unemployment.

I think countries taking a longer view will see less hardship in their populations. I'm very worried our 'it'll all be over by christmas' approach just makes it all worse.