How does Coronavirus play out?

The Quarantine Zone
1

It seems there are a few options:

  1. Coronavirus could become some endemic scourge that stays with us.

  2. Coronavirus becomes seasonal like the flu

  3. Coronavirus just sort of disappears and goes away.

4…?

  1. Profit

Is there some other possibility I am missing? Are there certain scenarios that are the most likely to occur?

You ever think this is just Mother Nature’s response to overpopulation that once we reach a certain population pandemics are just inevitable, although compared to the global population there hasn’t been much mortality.

2

Isn’t #2 on your list basically a more specific version of #1, rather than a truly different possibility?

Anyway, I’m betting on “it sticks around, we continue to get better at treating it and at some point there’s a fairly effective vaccine, but we don’t actually manage to eradicate it, and it will seem a whole lot less scary once it’s no longer new and unknown and everybody in the world isn’t getting it at once.” Basically, a long slow fade into mundanity.

3

I assumed that 1 meant that it stays just as fast spreading, wide ranging, and serious in intensity as it does right now. That seems to me really different from option 2; 1 seems more like “what’s going on in Texas now is a possibility and probability forever.”

4

From the article …

The most famous example of this dynamic in modern history was the H1N1 influenza outbreak of 1918–1919. Doctors and public health officials had far fewer weapons than they do today, and the effectiveness of control measures such as school closures depended on how early and decisively they were implemented. Over two years and three waves, the pandemic infected 500 million and killed between 50 million and 100 million. It ended only as natural infections conferred immunity on those who recovered.

The H1N1 strain became endemic, an infectious disease that was constantly with us at less severe levels, circulating for another 40 years as a seasonal virus. It took another pandemic—H2N2 in 1957—to extinguish most of the 1918 strain. One flu virus kicked out another one, essentially, and scientists don’t really know how.

So Spanish Flu actually lasted 40 years and it took another virus to extinguish it. Perhaps that is our future with COVID-19.

5

Ah, got it. It didn’t even occur to me that anyone would think perpetual-July-2020-Texas was a possibility, since it’s not consistent with how epidemic diseases worked in the pre-vaccine era.

6

Why isn’t, ‘An effective vaccine is found.’, on the list?

I’m thinking it’s actually the most likely. Of course there is still the anti vax community to deal with, but this pandemic could change some minds, if the waves continue, and deaths escalate.

7

This thread sort of died out, but are there any new thoughts on what will eventually happen?

I mean, the current plan seems to be:

  1. Institute measures to keep people away from each other and other measures to help stop the spread (masks, etc)
  2. Test as many people as possible as fast as possible
  3. Isolate and quarantine those that test positive
  4. Something…
  5. Pandemic over

Is Number 4 “Hope we find a vaccine?” Is it “Number of infections drops below X?” “Number of deaths drops below X?” Something else?

8

And it’s worth adding that the rate of mortality / severe symptoms is low enough that effective immunization of just the most vulnerable people would be hugely beneficial. In other words, vaccination could have a huge impact on the seriousness of the epidemic even if we don’t have to have enough vaccine available or high enough compliance to achieve herd immunity.

9

Chicken pox or any other virus referred to as a childhood disease. This one is just burning through the adults now that other diseases did in ancient times. The younger humans seem to be more resilient to it thus it’ll make its rounds through schools every few years as they develop lifelong immunity (if that is in the cards) and not really be an issue for society as a whole. Without an effective vaccine of course.

10

One set of projections with different "if"s by a quite prestigious group that was published in Science back in May.

11

I read a few reports that people who get sick only express antibodies for a short period of time (suggesting herd immunity wouldn’t work).

I don’t think I’ve heard of a coronavirus doing that before. I’m hoping this is just hyperbole. Then again, I keep hearing that it can infest many parts of the body. Ugh. I’m coming across this even though I have generally not tried to follow the virus, simply because there are so many articles in places like Google News.

12

The time course of antibody fading is pretty similar to that of the common cold causing HCoVs according to the source article. I’ve bolded a few very important bits.

Following the T-cell citation (36) leads to this article which I find very important. Bolded for emphasis.

13

Thank you for those two articles. Very informative. Kind of scary.

14

The second very hopeful to my read! Titres rise and titres fall but specific memory T-cell responsiveness is where long-lasting immunity lives. At least as a general rule …

15

More on the T-cells story, specifically more on T-cell responsiveness without exposure and lasting protections. Antibodies are where the streetlight is, but maybe not where the keys are.

Challenging to study but very critical to knowing how COVID-19 plays out.