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

yawn

@ZombieFan your yawn has set me off. Yaaaawn.

@StrawberryCloud

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.

When measles arrived in the new world, it decimated the local population. As in, it killed the vast majority of them, about 85%.

This new virus has an overall death rate of about 0.4-0.6%

Hardly the same

I view this statement to mean that of course it won't be eradicated. There are lots of diseases, but we are able to reduce the risk and make them manageable.

We know that drinking alcohol increases our cancer risk , but most of us drink alcohol (including me, at higher risk of cancer and having had it once). We make judgements every day like this.

It will the same with covid. We will just wash our hands more and be more aware of symptoms. And covid is not nearly as lethal as a lot of the disease we are still prone to.

I don't see this statement as depressing, just accurate.

A vaccine would be good of course, even just to reduce the impact. I had the swine flu vacc and I'm sure I still had it but not that badly - compared to others in my household who were absolutely floored by it (and hadn't had the vaccine).

Measles still kills 10% of children who catch it in developing countries and no one raises an eyebrow

I also agree it isn't depressing in itself, I just find it depressing we're not politically following the idea it'll be around and seeing what we can do to mitigate.

@labyrinthloafer

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.

Snap.

Lordy imagine how people would be if we were facing a virus that did have high morbidity and transmission.

@Silvercatowner

Lordy imagine how people would be if we were facing a virus that did have high morbidity and transmission.

I seriously can't imagine how people would deal with it at all. All this panic is bad enough. Imagine if we had to deal with ebola. I listened to a radio interview with a nurse in Uganda who laughed when asked if she was worried about covid. They've seen it. It's nothing special for them. Puts our panic in perspective.

More likely we will start to look at how transmissible it is (not very), how deadly it is (not very), who is at risk (the very elderly, the demented, the obese), shrug and get on with things.
It's hardly up there with the plague, doesn't kill the young or young adults (bar rare exceptions), and is asymptomatic for up to 40% of people
Hard to maintain high levels of fear for years in the face of that

What a reply. Not accurate, selfish AND cruelly dismissive. Well done @TheLegendOfZelda - the holy trinity of twatiness.

Haha that's what I think of the average person's response. You think different I assume? Looking at how we worry about deaths that don't affect us in other countries (measles and malaria already mentioned) I am not sure what you base your optimism about people on

Throughout history we as a population have dealt with pandemics. Sometimes by burning people as witches and making sacrifices to appease the Gods, to be fair. We are not the most logical of species. But never have we cowered inside for years because of a disease that kills the over 80s. Not going to happen now either - in my opinion.

@Juststopswimming

A second ridiculous scaremongering thread by the OP I've seen this week. Sterling work.

As I said to you on your other thread - you're welcome to self isolate for the next 40 years in a sterilised cage, but the rest of us would like to carry on with our lives, even if they do have to adjust slightly whilst we wait for a vaccine.

I was about to say the same thing !

Of course it's going to be around for the long haul.

But we do lots more things every day that are much riskier.

Honestly, posts like this don't bother me in the slightest because I wasn't worried about covid before, and this won't make me any more so as it's quite obviously going to be around for ages / for ever. But goodness me I feel for the people who are already bloody anxious about this as this sort of thing really isn't going to help. I'm sure people will say well, they could just not look, but there are so many scaremongering posts around it's hard to avoid.

I like social distancing, I don't like folk in my face. I'll always do the handwashing, that can only be a good thing.

I'm with you ssd. There have been some positive societal changes due to this pandemic which I hope will stay. Mainly making other people more hygienic, like me. People washing and sanitising their hands more is a good thing, it should mean i don't have to suffer a couple of weeks in bed with a cold/flu every year. I'm glad that its taken out hand shaking, hopefully forever. I used to find it gross that blokes would come out of the toilet at work and then want to shake my hand, without washing them in many cases I'm sure. I used to also hate people coughing, sniffing and sneezing all over me on the train. I'm also glad that we now don't have to commute for 3 hours a day, and hopefully will never have to go back to doing this 5 days a week. My DP is a much nicer, less tired and grumpy person as a result and can now enjoy seeing his kids more and taking more of an active part in their lives because he can pop out to get them from school or attend sports day etc like I could since working from home for the past few years. It's also going to hasten the decline of cash, which is a good thing for me, also unhygienic and I much prefer tap and pay.

I also think and hope that it has made us value the NHS and our scientific community more in this country. As someone who left science because of shit pay and conditions, i think that is a very positive thing too. I hope we learn the lesson this time and keep all the research programs and vaccine manufacturing capability in place rather than dismantling it all like successive governments did, so we will be ready to spring into action when the next novel virus emerges in a decade or so, as it inevitably will.

I also don't see any evidence for all this doom and gloom about acquired immunity to this virus being only for a few weeks. I think that is bollocks. It is almost certainly going to last at least one season, for most people, and that is good enough for me as I will be happy to have an annual coronavirus vaccine, along with my flu one.

Loving the use of 'average person', I always defer to people who think they're special

I think that is bollocks

You've convinced me, this Farrar bloke who runs the country's biggest medical research charity and the country's leading doctors can't hold a candle to that kind of argument!

The point is though it will become far less of a threat even without a vaccine (which I trust there will be) but with better, targeted treatments and we’ll live with it as we do multiple other viruses.
Or, as happened with Spanish flu which was horribly deadly but so successful, too successful, that in the end it brought itself to an end, it may well mutate and be considerably less of a threat. That was with no treatment but bovril , fresh air and morphine for pain (detailed in very interesting 2018 documentary narrated by Chris Ecclestone, where the Consultant epidemiologist explained how the most successful, long lived viruses adapt for their own self preservation: they don’t want to kill off their victims because that prevents inward transmission and their own existence, so they become weaker as they learn).

We're already living with it and getting back to normal. The main difference is wearing a mask in some situations which most people are able to do. I'm going to pubs, restaurants, shops, I've been to the hairdressers and tomorrow I'm having a pedicure. Next week my gym opens so I'll be able to go swimming. I went to an art gallery earlier this week and at the weekend I'm going to a National Trust garden.

We have to adapt, socially distance and be mindful of good hygiene, but life goes on. Businesses and people are adapting OP, we can't all just stay indoors forever.

Onward not inward!

@ClimbDad I really think you need to find another forum. I knew before I even opened this thread it would be you posting.

@labyrinthloafer

Loving the use of 'average person', I always defer to people who think they're special

Did I ask you to defer to me? What do you think the average person will do, and let's take that to mean what the mean response of people in the UK will be, in a year's time if/when covid is still around? And what past events or psychological insight lead you to think we will behave that way? Always happy to revise my opinion of people ;)

On a related note.
I was just wondering today how places like Delhi will deal with it in a year's time. 25% of the population there have been exposed already according to antibody results. I wonder what the tipping point psychologically is. Of course, rich white over 50s males with long life expectancies are probably driving the response on a legislative level. Their idea of risk is going to be different.

YANBU. The days of concerts, huge crowded events, constant globe trotting are over. We will be as normal as is required to work but that's it. The infection rates here in the states are still ll climbing and show no sign of slowing down. Schools will reopen soon and that will bring another rise. We will have to adapt but it won't be the way it was, certainly not for many years.

Here"s some really good information from a respected scientist about why declining antibody levels doesn't really mean what people think it means:
twitter.com/florian_krammer/status/1285618977654407169

and shows that immunity to this virus will most probably last 1-3 years for most people and, at a very minimum, at least 90 days, which again means you are very unlikely to get it twice in one season and why all this doommongering about oooh the immunity doesnt last and you can get it again if you go back outside is, scientifically, bollocks.

Not sure why the OP isn't entitled to post as much as any other person. Just because you don't like what they post?

The OP as set out might not please people but it is expressed in an entirely factual fashion.

You can't police membership of MN because you don't agree with an OP's angle on things!

Right, I have been pretty cautious about this whole, partly because I have been shielding and partly because I have been appalled at our government's response and don't trust their ability to manage it into the autumn one bit.

However, there is some really encouraging evidence with regards to immunity that suggests a vaccine will certainly sort this out. Recent study in nature found that those that had SARS (COVID's nastier big sister) still have t cell immunity 17 years later. Not only that, but those t cells in people that had been exposed to SARS appeared to give them immunity to COVID. Excitingly, they also found evidence of cross reactive t cells (those that have the potential to give immunity) in the control group. These were people that had not had SARS or COVID and had not (to their knowledge) been in contact with anyone who had. So some of us might be immune without ever having COVID.

Explained here for anyone that's interested:

I look at a future where the virus doesn't bugger off and there is no effective vaccine and no better treatments. Yes, that worries me.

But there comes a point where you have to get on with things. You seriously envision a future where there is no indoor theatre or concerts, no team sport, no busy pubs or markets? How utterly joyless. Those who died matter as do the minority who experience longer term complications. But it would be profoundly unhealthy for the majority to shut down their lives on a permanent basis for something that kills 0.4-0.6% of it's victims.

Worldwide if we modified cars so they could never drive above 10mph we would save a vast number of lives and prevent countless disabling accidents. If we successfully banned junk food and sugar, again millions more people would live longer and have drastically better health. Why don't we do both those things? For lots of reasons. The people who die in those ways also matter, don't they, but society would also be harmed by those changes.

Your posts are potentially harmful to those with very fragile mental health op. Please rein in the doom. Plenty of people are taking this virus appropriately seriously but also need to get back to living. You seem determined to terrify people into hiding under their duvets.