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| DATE | 2021-02-07 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] So now where are we at ...
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-vaccines-raise-hope-cold-reality-dawns-covid-19-is-likely-here-to-stay-11612693803?mod=hp_lead_pos1
wsj.com
As Covid-19 Vaccines Raise Hope, Cold Reality Dawns That Illness Is
Likely Here to Stay
Daniela Hernandez and Drew Hinshaw
11-13 minutes
Vaccination drives hold out the promise of curbing Covid-19, but
governments and businesses are increasingly accepting what
epidemiologists have long warned: The pathogen will circulate for years,
or even decades, leaving society to coexist with Covid-19 much as it
does with other endemic diseases like flu, measles, and HIV.
The ease with which the coronavirus spreads, the emergence of new
strains and poor access to vaccines in large parts of the world mean
Covid-19 could shift from a pandemic disease to an endemic one, implying
lasting modifications to personal and societal behavior, epidemiologists
say.
“Going through the five phases of grief, we need to come to the
acceptance phase that our lives are not going to be the same,” said
Thomas Frieden, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. “I don’t think the world has really absorbed the fact
that these are long-term changes.”
Endemic Covid-19 doesn’t necessarily mean continuing coronavirus
restrictions, infectious-disease experts said, largely because vaccines
are so effective at preventing severe disease and slashing
hospitalizations and deaths. Hospitalizations have already fallen 30% in
Israel after it vaccinated a third of its population. Deaths there are
expected to plummet in weeks ahead.
But some organizations are planning for a long-term future in which
prevention methods such as masking, good ventilation and testing
continue in some form. Meanwhile, a new and potentially lucrative
Covid-19 industry is emerging quickly, as businesses invest in goods and
services such as air-quality monitoring, filters, diagnostic kits and
new treatments.
A person slept outdoors to save a spot in line for a limited number of
oxygen-tank refills during a Covid-19 outbreak in Peru last week.
Photo: sebastian castaneda/Reuters
The number of gene-detecting PCR tests produced globally is expected to
grow this year, with manufacturers like New Jersey’s Quest Diagnostics
Inc. predicting that millions of people will need a swab before they
attend concerts, basketball games or family functions.
“We assume it would last for years, or be eternal, such as the flu,”
said Jiwon Lim, spokesman for South Korea’s SD Biosensor, Inc., a test
maker that is ramping up production of at-home diagnostic kits. Leading
drug makers—Switzerland’s Novartis International AG and Eli Lilly &
Co.—have invested in potential Covid-19 therapies. More than 300 such
products are currently in development.
Airlines like Lufthansa are restructuring to focus on short-haul flights
within Europe, and away from Pacific countries that have said they’ll
keep borders closed for at least this year. Some airports are planning
new vaccine passport systems to allow inoculated passengers to travel.
Restaurants are investing in more takeout and delivery offerings.
Meatpacking plants from Canada to Europe are buying up robotic arms, to
curb the risk of outbreaks by reducing the number of workers on assembly
lines.
Diseases are considered endemic when they remain persistently present
but manageable, like flu. The extent of the spread varies by disease and
location, epidemiologists say. Rabies, malaria, HIV and Zika all are
endemic infectious diseases, but their prevalence and human toll vary
globally.
Very early on, after countries failed to contain the coronavirus and
transmission raged globally, “it was evident to most virologists that
the virus would become endemic,” said John Mascola, director of the
National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center. “When a virus
is so easily transmitted among humans, and the population [lacks
immunity], it will spread any place it has the opportunity to spread.
It’s like a leak in a dam.”
Immunologists now hope vaccines will prevent transmission, a finding
that would drastically reduce the virus’s spread. An Oxford University
study published last week found people given the AstraZeneca vaccine
might be less likely to pass on the disease.
A woman got a Covid-19 vaccine from a member of the National Guard on
Saturday at a mass vaccination site in Maryland.
Photo: Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images
Still, there are vast pockets of the human population that will remain
beyond the reach of a vaccine for the foreseeable future, giving the
virus plenty of room to continue circulating.
There is currently no vaccine authorized for young children, and supply
issues will leave most of the developing world without a shot until late
next year at the earliest. Meanwhile, Europe has seen high rates of
vaccine refusal: Less than half of French people were willing to get a
shot when asked in a recent YouGov poll.
As scientists develop new treatments, Covid-19 will further “become an
infection that we can live with,” said Rachel Bender Ignacio, an
infectious-disease expert at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
in Seattle. As such, she said, it will be important to develop therapies
for the persistent debilitating symptoms that many patients struggle
with months after getting sick, like memory fog, loss of smell and
digestive and heart problems.
Some countries like Australia and New Zealand have brought their average
daily case counts into the low single digits, but neither ever
experienced the enormous outbreaks that the Americas and Europe continue
to see, and both island nations have watched the virus slip past their
strict travel restrictions.
“I don’t believe we should start setting elimination or eradication of
this virus as the bar for success,” said Mike Ryan, executive director
of the World Health Organization’s emergencies program. “We have to
reach a point where we’re in control of the virus, the virus is not in
control of us.”
The Tampa, Fla., convention center on the day before Super Bowl LV;
demand for Covid-19 tests is expected to explode as millions of people
get swabbed before sports, cultural and family events.
Photo: shannon stapleton/Reuters
Just one human virus has been entirely eradicated in modern history:
smallpox. While that disease infected only people, the novel coronavirus
can spread among small mammals like mink, then, though less effectively,
back into humans, turning the world’s fur farms into potential
reservoirs for the virus.
Moreover, tens of millions of Covid-19 cases have given the virus ample
opportunity to improve its ability to infect other mammals, said Sean
Whelan, a virologist at Washington University in St. Louis. A mutation
present in the variants from South Africa and the U.K. gave the pathogen
the ability to infect mice, he said.
Diseases that spread from people who don’t show symptoms—often the case
with the coronavirus—are particularly hard to eradicate. Decades of
multibillion-dollar global efforts haven’t eradicated another such
disease, polio, which, while eliminated from the U.S. in the 1970s, was
cleared from Europe only in 2002 and still exists in Afghanistan and
Pakistan.
Respiratory viruses like the novel coronavirus are prone to becoming
endemic because they can transmit through usually benign acts, like
breathing and talking, and can be particularly good at infecting cells.
They include OC43, a coronavirus that researchers now think caused the
Russian Flu of the 1890s, a pandemic that killed one million. That
virus—still present in the population—is responsible for many common
colds, though it has become less virulent likely because people
developed immunity.
The Coronavirus Is Mutating. Here’s What We Know.
The Coronavirus Is Mutating. Here’s What We Know.
As new coronavirus variants sweep across the world, scientists are
racing to understand how dangerous they could be. WSJ explains.
Illustration: Alex Kuzoian/WSJ
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
How have you adjusted to the “new normal” of Covid-19 over the past
year? Join the conversation below.
Mutations in the novel coronavirus variants appear to have made it
better at infecting human cells or at evading some antibodies, raising
concerns that existing vaccines might become less effective. Scientists
say monitoring for new variants will be critical to vaccination programs
long term. Understanding their characteristics will help determine
whether the shots need to be updated periodically, as they are for flu.
Vaccinations will be just as important when the pandemic subsides and
Covid-19 becomes endemic.
“People seem to think that when a virus becomes endemic, it becomes
attenuated and it doesn’t become as serious,” said Angela Rasmussen, a
virologist at the Center for Global Health Science and Security at
Georgetown University. The misconception stems from the fact that
usually viruses evolve to maximize the number of people they infect
before they kill.
But most people survive Covid-19, so “there’s not a lot of pressure for
this virus to become more attenuated because it’s already spreading and
finding new hosts and new opportunities to replicate before its hosts
are getting sick,” she said. “It’s doing just fine.”
Write to Daniela Hernandez at daniela.hernandez-at-wsj.com and Drew Hinshaw
at drew.hinshaw-at-wsj.com
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
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Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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