Coronavirus may never go away. Duh!

From the Washington Post:

There’s a good chance the coronavirus will never go away.

Even after a vaccine is discovered and deployed, the coronavirus will likely remain for decades to come, circulating among the world’s population.

Experts call such diseases endemic — stubbornly resisting efforts to stamp them out. Think measles, HIV, chickenpox.

Do you remember when everyone was scared to death of getting HIV? Sports figures especially were afraid of getting spattered with blood from their gay teammates/opponents. Hasn't turned out that way. In part the fear factor was quashed because it was politically incorrect to be scared of homosexuals--even in situations where blood getting on you when you have an open wound is not unlikely (like in sports). No one called for a shutdown of all sports or identifying all gay people so that non-infected people could stay away. There has been an amazing lack of society-wide response even though lots of people die from HIV each year--770,000 worldwide in 2018.

But, the coronavirus is different according to the Washington Post. We need to have a national response.

So, It is a daunting proposition — a coronavirus-tinged world without a foreseeable end. But experts in epidemiology, disaster planning and vaccine development say embracing that reality is crucial to the next phase of America’s pandemic response. The long-term nature of covid-19, they say, should serve as a call to arms for the public, a road map for the trillions of dollars Congress is spending and a fixed navigational point for the nation’s current, chaotic state-by-state patchwork strategy.

We don't have a national response for HIV, but for coronavirus we supposedly need one which unfortunately includes shutting down major portions of the economy and causing widespread poverty, depression and in some places higher suicide death rates than coronavirus death rates. Some fear a major uptick in US suicide rates and domestic violence rates.

The Washington Post concludes that the virus will continue:

With so much else uncertain, the persistence of the novel virus is one of the few things we can count on about the future. That doesn’t mean the situation will always be as dire. There are already four endemic coronaviruses that circulate continuously, causing the common cold. And many experts think this virus will become the fifth — its effects growing milder as immunity spreads and our bodies adapt to it over time.

The CDC has a very interesting web article on the reconstruction of the 1918 flu virus. They found a key element of its ability to kill was quick replication:

The fully reconstructed 1918 virus was striking in terms of its ability to quickly replicate, i.e., make copies of itself and spread infection in the lungs of infected mice. For example, four days after infection, the amount of 1918 virus found in the lung tissue of infected mice was 39,000 times higher than that produced by one of the comparison recombinant flu viruses.

Well, what happened to the 1918 flu virus? It mutated and people gained immunity.

The first identified influenza virus, a direct descendant of the 1918 pandemic virus, was isolated from a pig in 1931;3 the human 1918 virus was itself sequenced between 1995 and 2005 from pathology specimens and from a frozen corpse.4 Virus reconstruction and experimental study has led to important findings about its origin, evolution, and pathogenicity.5 The 1918 virus was a novel “founder virus” that has, over the past century, served as the mother of the descendant influenza A viral progeny that have been infecting and killing humans ever since.6,7

, , ,

Although partial 1918 mortality protection of elderly persons (in this case, protection from incident influenza despite the expected higher case fatality) was not definitively observed in 1889, it has been observed in every pandemic since, most recently in the 2009 swine influenza pandemic, in which a cause was first clearly characterized. In 2009, persons who had lived through the first decades of the 1918 pandemic H1N1 era, especially those born before about 1950, were substantially protected from the 2009 pandemic virus by having acquired immunity to the antigenically similar H1 or N1 of the 1918 virus, or both, or to the descendant seasonal H1N1 viruses that circulated over subsequent decades. This is because the 2009 H1 gene was a 1918 viral progeny that had survived for more than 90 years, with minimal antigenic drift, in a domestic pig “time capsule.”18

The key is not for people to keep six feet away from all other people for the rest of their lives. And even the latest research says touching surfaces is not the main way people get the virus. So, all the expert advice that has transformed our lifestyle and economy in the last two months apparently is not going to get rid of coronavirus or keep us safe. We will encounter it eventually if not already (since "up to 80% of COVID-19 cases exhibit mild symptoms").

We know that up to 80% of COVID-19 cases exhibit mild symptoms. Complicating matters, pulmonologist Joseph Khabbaza, MD, says symptoms may sometimes not be evident for up to two weeks. And because those non-specific symptoms (fever, sore throat, cough, diarrhea, chills, headache) can mirror other more common illnesses like the flu or a cold, many of those infected — especially early in the outbreak — didn’t realize they were carrying the virus.

The key is developing immunity to it as has already happened to most people who have been infected by coronavirus. Developing immunity seems to be a natural happening since the current people with immunity did not get special vaccines or treatment.