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Well there are others claiming it will be under control by September, so we now have bookends somewhere between 1 and 100 years.
Who is claiming it will be under control by September?
Who's 'we' here? I assume the US plans to vaccinate Americans, and maybe we'll throw in a few bucks toward vaccinating all of those other people (you know, the ones who don't really count). Unless our president happens to be peeved with the WHO at the time, that is.
SARS-CoV-2 mutates rather slowly for an RNA virus, and every indication so far is that mutations will take much longer than six months for vaccine escape to become a problem. But updated vaccines will eventually be needed.
right. Me too. A few years ago my university had a measles outbreak. We did the same thing. It was open to anyone on campus, even drivers that delivered things to campus. What takes most of the time when I get my flu shot is the paperwork. If someone pays for it, you can just line people up at schools, companies, etc.
DiBlasio, NYC mayor is still under the delusion he will open school up in September, many colleges are still not clear if they could reopen (imagine, people from all over the world staying in dorms, attending lectures, etc). And of course Trump believes we'll open up with our without a vaccine. And that is just the US. India is having big trouble maintaining their lockdown. We could go on, but in every country there are those who are pushing for the economy to be reopened prior to September regardless of the consequences.
Americans represent 5% of the population. You cannot allow a virus which mutates to remain in 50-80% of the world's population, if you do it will return with new strains every single year.
The rate at which it mutates is a function of how many people have it. So if 10 million people infected gives you a year, 100 million infected gives you much, much less than a year, and 1 billion infected, might as well forget it.
I meant people who actually know anything. And ending lockdowns doesn't necessarily mean the virus is under control -- it just means a government has given up on that control measure.
You only have to worry about new strains that become common enough to be a threat. I would hope that in reality there will be a broad effort at world-wide vaccination.
That's really not true. Even for influenza, which mutates considerably faster than SARS-CoV-2 and which has many strains already in circulation, it's possible to come up with vaccines every year. I don't see why SARS-CoV-2 should be any different than measles, which if anything mutates faster, transmits more easily, and was very widely spread before vaccination began. And yet we don't need a new measles vaccine every six months.
what's the difference? I just read that Niger, Liberia, Senegal and Nigeria are reopening mosques. Whether you reopen because "you think" you can or because you have no choice, what is the difference? The effect is going to be the same, which is why comparing this pandemic in the very early stages with the sum total of past pandemics is very misleading.
When we have a vaccine I expect we'll vaccinate the US and 1st world first, if it turns out there is limited immunity to no utility at all, then we wouldn't even bother with the rest of the world.
When you say "that's really not true" I assume you are not referring to the basic formula that the rate at which a new and dangerous strain mutates is a function of how many people have it, but rather the conclusion that if 1 billion people have it the vaccine will be pretty much pointless.
I didn't say it made a difference. I just asked who thought the epidemic was going to be under control by September since that's pretty clearly not going to happen (except in a few places like New Zealand).
We won't even vaccinate the US if the vaccine doesn't work.
Actually, both parts are questionable. Given the substitution rate(*) and the number of infections so far, every single mutation that can occur in the virus has already occurred hundreds or thousands of times. What can still occur with more infections is new combinations of mutations. So far, everything I've seen says that likely vaccine targets have not been affected by mutations.
You're confusing control with elimination. Small pox was controlled in much less than 100 years and even eradicated from many nations. It took a century to eliminate the virus from the world -- something no one is talking about doing for SARS-CoV-2.
In the US? However long it took to achieve widespread vaccination -- cases plummeted in roughly a year. It took a lot longer for much of the world because they weren't being vaccinated. But measles is mostly well-controlled now -- and we haven't needed a new vaccine yet. So why will we need one for this virus in six months?
Measles has been around for about 1000 years. It was completely uncontrolled until a usable vaccine was introduced in 1968. Since then, it's been controlled.
It's unrealistic to think we will be able to control this virus in less than 12 months, since we won't have a vaccine until then (itself a highly optimistic target). I haven't suggested otherwise. What I objected to was your claim that a vaccine would start to become ineffective after six months. That seems quite unlikely to me.
No one is going to reopen while saying that it is going to be deadly. They will always claim that it is OK now, that the risk is overblown, etc. I'm not interested in divining what people are actually thinking, it is much simpler and more accurate to simply look at what they do.
You won't know that. They'll be vaccinating at an incredible rate for weeks, perhaps during that time there will be stories that some are getting sick even though they were vaccinated, but they'll be investigating, etc. It will be a month or two after the vaccinating that they'll confirm it isn't working. Besides, just like the flu vaccine, even if it doesn't confer total immunity it can still help. If you are targeting 4 antibodies and two are no longer effective you can still get partial immunity.
It all depends on whether or not mutations take place that affect the targets of the vaccine.
OK I'll look for some references. I got this virus in March and was happy that I was now "immune" but then much of what I read poured cold water on that suggesting there may be new strains and that my immunity might only be short-lived if at all. There were a number of cases where they were wondering if people had gotten reinfected, though they have since claimed that they can be attributed to an inaccurate test result.
Yes, I think what is most effective is to reduce the viral lode that you get exposed to. You will get exposed to all kinds of things, but if the viral lode is minute your body will be able to deal with it in most cases. But that means we aren't going back. Subways, trains and buses will be filled with people with masks on. Hopefully everyone will use hand sanitizer the minute they get off the subway. Zoom will dominate, corporate offices will shrink, movie theaters, concert halls, and large stadiums will shrivel up and die. Churches need to move to a small group meetings and Zoom. Hotels will also shrivel up along with airlines as business travel will be greatly minimized. People will continue to travel, but they'll choose to drive in their own car rather than take airplanes, trains, and rental cars.
I don't doubt that they'll be aware of potential shortcomings, but again, the political pressure to say "this works" and not to say anything to the contrary will be immense. The most anyone will say who wants to keep their job will be that "even if it doesn't give you total immunity it will help".
