Did he really say covid would be around forever?

[musicalfrog]

The scientist chap on the briefing earlier. Did I hear that right? I thought pandemics petered out after a year or two. Do we still have spanish flu knocking around because I've not heard of anyone getting it in my lifetime?

The pandemic won’t be around forever but the illness will become endemic was my understanding

The Spanish flu is flu. And flu is still around.

hiv/aids and flu.....both still around

It will still be around but because people will be vaccinated and immune it won’t be the big deal it is now.

It’ll probably end up being like the flu - seasonal, make you feel a bit ill if you get it, potentially fatal to a few vulnerable people.

Of course we still have Spanish flu. It's just flu. You hear about it all the time. The difference is, vulnerable groups are vaccinated each year :). So as soon as this can happen with covid, we'll be grand!

Spanish flu kills around 250k - 500k people worldwide every year.

There's a theory that the Great Plague was actually something like Ebola.

These things stick around, albeit usually less prolific.

Thanks all. Just wanted to understand. Goodness me, didn't realise spanish flu was still a thing!

Wow I never realised Spanish flu is what we now call flu. Did the flu not exist before Spanish flu? Genuine question.

It mutated to flu.

@CherryCherries

Wow I never realised Spanish flu is what we now call flu. Did the flu not exist before Spanish flu? Genuine question.

Spanish flu is one of the types of influenza virus. We refer to them all collectively as "the flu".

thought pandemics petered out after a year or two
Pandemics do peter out. We won't be living in a pandemic forever, but there will still be some covid cases, like there are some flu cases every year.

The Spanish flu was a particularly deadly strain of flu which did re-appear a few years back as the swine flu, though we were lucky it was not as bad as previously.
The virus is here to stay, the illness though, covid, will become less and less of an issue as we become immune to it in masses.

Influenza was around before the 1918/19 pandemic, but that was a new mutation which made it more transmissible and deadly.

The Black Plague is still around.

But I didn’t know that Spanish flu is flu!!! Feel a bit thick now

and the plague originated in China!!!

Bubonic plague is still around across the world, we now have antibiotics for it though.

As everyone else said spanish flu is still around and the swine flu pandemic was a nasty resurgence of it.

H1N1

@GirlCrush

and the plague originated in China!!!

And 'Spanish' flu originated in the US.

I feel he should have maybe clarified his statement there and then, because without context that line sounded quite alarming!

@musicalfrog

The scientist chap on the briefing earlier. Did I hear that right? I thought pandemics petered out after a year or two. Do we still have spanish flu knocking around because I've not heard of anyone getting it in my lifetime?

The Spanish Flu was the name of the pandemic, not the actual virus (H1N1) Same virus as the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic.

Swine flu was a mutated form of Spanish flu.

@Rainbows89

The Black Plague is still around.

But I didn’t know that Spanish flu is flu!!! Feel a bit thick now

Bubonic plague is still around. The Black Death was a pandemic of bubonic plague.

I feel he should have maybe clarified his statement there and then, because without context that line sounded quite alarming!

Im glad he said it. It’s high time they started admitting this and letting it sink into the minds of the general public. We have to live with this, it will obviously diminish hugely but I think this is hopefully a turning point and the start of the government trying to get people to change their mindset a bit. We have to get things opening up again once the elderly/vulnerable are vaccinated and the virus will still be there - it was never going to be eradicated.

Black death became more deadly when that mutated into pneumonic plague. Would be treatable to some extent with antibiotics

It will probably always be around as there is a large reservoir of the virus in animals which would be impossible to completely eliminate. But we won't be in a pandemic forever

Smallpox has been eliminated because apart from human hosts there is nowhere else for it to survive, so if you can get rid of it in humans it won't return. This isn't the same in covid.