What’s so depressing is that as a species if we wanted to we could wipe out SARS2 like we did with that strain of flu a couple of years ago. Imagine lifting everyone’s lives up with this one action. But no, better to pretend it’s all fine and keep getting sick while millions are denied any form of a life.
🇳🇱
COVID research scientist here.
We cant and we didnt.
The flu strain from a couple years ago H1N1 is still alive and kicking just like SARS-COV- is
Neither was ever an option to eliminate entirely with current technology, we knew this very early on in our studies,
I suspect the reference was to the Yamagata strain.
Ahh ok, yea in that case the yamagata strain was just replaced with two new active strains.
Nothing unusual about strains being replaced with new strains, that happens no matter what we do and seen several strains of covid be eliminated by that metric.
Of course that doesn’t invalidate the basic sentiment in the OP: the high level of illness, disability, and death we are experiencing from Covid is absolutely a choice. We have tools that could significantly reduce this burden, both at an individual and a population level, and largely we simply refuse to use them.
Imagine a world where we continued to care enough…
I am not sure how you think the mutation of strains forming more varied genoms less able to respond to a single vaccine is an example of the OP.
Obviously the OP's later comments about engaging more with preventative care is certainly valid, the idea that we can eliminate viruses that way is simply not factual and an example of a flu recombinating into new forms (strains) is hardly a good example.
If you want a good example of preventative care eliminating a virus you can look at small pox, which we did eliminate and not just rearrange the strains.
The problem is neither the flu nor small pox is representative of COVID so sadly while we knew small pox could be eliminated once the science understoof the problem we likewise know COVID (like most viruses) cant be with current tech.
@freemo @andymoose
At this point Covid is with us for the long haul. I think this is where the message around a ‘new normal’ was mishandled.
It appears people have decided a ‘new normal’ actually just means the old normal but with a lot more disease, suffering, and disruption.
I imagine a ‘new normal’ in which we adjust our society to reality and stop mindlessly sharing respiratory viruses. We have the tools to bring Rt below 1 for most of them most of the time.