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Al-O-Meter said:
We'll have to see how many more tricks SARS-CoV-2 has up its sleeve. Once a wave breaks, it doesn't seem to come back. The first wave was Wild Type, was intense for ~2 months and then broke. The second wave was UK-variant, was intense for ~2 months and then broke. This most recent third wave was Delta-variant, was intense for ~2 months and then broke. Wild Type was infectious, but UK-variant was more infectious, and Delta was the most infectious we know about.

The S-Spike protein isn't that big. There are only so many changes it can make and still attach to the ACE2 receptor. The number of people who have either been vaccinated or have been infected is shrinking the virus' pool of hosts. Much like in going from Wild Type to UK-variant, and again to Delta, the pathogen will have to mutate into something more transmissible or will have to mutate so much that our immune systems don't recognize it at all. It is tempting fate just to say it, but I'm not sure SARS-CoV-2 has that left in it.
Click to expand...
It is fun when things like this happen, and I had no idea she was going to say it, but around the time I wrote the above opinion the Royal Society of Medicine webinar had one of the lead scientists who created the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine give the exact same opinion I did.

www.independent.co.uk

Covid-19 variants have run out of ‘places to go’, says Oxford jab creator

‘There is no reason to think we will have a more virulent version of Sars-CoV-2’
www.independent.co.uk www.independent.co.uk
 
Why say/state something, when somebody in an another forum (aircraft related) says it much better:

Somebody from Canada:

I think Australia has largely abandoned covid zero and now have lockdowns in place until they reach a certain vaccination threshold. Things are getting testy there and in any democracy that is still using lockdowns now is going to face a very large backlash perhaps violent from their citizens.

Us polite Canadians have accepted a vaccine passport in essentially every province (not nationally put in place, but Trudeau probably pulled strings behind the scenes). If we have to lock down again to the extent we have already 3 times since March 2020, we will lose our collective s*it.

Also to make your point around risk. I bet if you put a doctor in charge of the government with unilateral control they would outlaw booze, all drugs, no cycling or skateboarding without being basically padded in foam, Cars can't drive past 30 km/h an hour etc. This is an exaggeration but medicine is a profession where saving a life in number one. The quality of that person's life especially in-between their ears is a different matter and part of a healthy lifestyle and a society is to manage that risk to an acceptable level.

It makes me wonder when I see Facebook comments that one life lost to covid is too many. We accept death all of the time and while it sucks for the family and friends of the deceased its life. That same person probably has absolutely no compassion for someone who dedicated their life to a business that closed through no fault of their own and turned to drugs and happen to OD in despair.

I make this case to my very risk averse parents all of the time. You risk death when you get in the car and why is the person who lost their life to Covid a more impactful death than the 25 year old who was in the wrong place at the wrong time on a highway and got hit by a drunk driver.

In fact their risk of being in a car accident is higher because under Covid they might not drive enough and to keep a skill like driving up in your later years you need to work extra hard to keep your reflexes up.

Probably a french citizen:

I do not believe that it is possible to sustain an R0 <1 for long enough to ensure elimination save for limited cases such as well isolated groups.
In fact, I don't even believe that the successive sub-1 R0 periods we've seen were due to human intervention in most countries, but rather due to the natural tendency of a contagious virus to spread in successive waves. The rebounds are IMO not due to any change in compliance with restrictions, but rather the natural resurgence of the virus, thanks to mutations or other natural factors. The point being that there is only so much we can do to control it in a large enough nation and past a certain degree of infection.
Sure, the effects and overall numbers could be lower with different population behavior, but each population values their freedom to live their lives as they please differently.
I disagree that waves would get 'bigger and bigger'. That has not been demonstrated in nations with large previous exposure in which the latest wave(s) seemed to not only not be larger, but also to engender a lower number of severe cases and deaths. Immunity from vaccination or exposure does wane over time (in terms of antibodies at least) but it does not disappear altogether. Gradually, global immunity builds up.

I am of the firm belief that elimination is not possible. There is absolutely no way you'd get 8 billion people to follow the absurdly strict restrictive measures that would be required to achieve this, starting with the fact that a few billion of these rely on a daily wage for their very survival... Lockdowns are a rich nation's privilege.

There is also the fact that attenuating measures such as social distancing, masks etc. would naturally tend to force the virus to evolve towards a more contagious genotype by virtue of natural selection.

Either way, Covid will be around, and the dilemma stands for those nations still seeking to shield themselves from it altogether: What to do after the vaccination campaign?
Some seem to have understood that facing the threat is an inevitability and are seeking ways of softening the blow somehow, others seem to be doubling down on strict isolation from the rest of the World and having their citizens living under the permanent threats of lockdowns or being summarily thrown into to quarantine camps along with their families. I don't believe the latter is a sustainable approach.
 
Another reason that Covid really, really sucks - they're predicting car prices might not return down to earth until 2023 now.

Anyone that told you Covid would be a flash in the pan and back to reality is dreaming.
 
So im on a weekend off and im on the clock got 48 hours before im potentially infectious. Gotta stock up on food and **** before I get tested on Sunday. Covid is the gift that keeps on giving.
 
Axios reports new cases are now averaging 114,000 per day, signaling the U.S. is "headed toward getting the virus under control," following delta's summer peak. Across 47 states, cases are expected to fall, as the average new infections coming from newly infected patients decline. Tennessee saw the most improvement over the two-week range, while Alaska experienced the biggest spike in cases. Unforunately, deaths from the virus are still on the rise nationwide, averaging 2,000 per day — up 4% over the past two weeks, which is expected as deaths trend to continue as the people infected during the peak recover or pass away.

We'll see if moving indoors puts a lull in the decline.
 
TheGoldStandard said:
Axios reports new cases are now averaging 114,000 per day, signaling the U.S. is "headed toward getting the virus under control," following delta's summer peak. Across 47 states, cases are expected to fall, as the average new infections coming from newly infected patients decline. Tennessee saw the most improvement over the two-week range, while Alaska experienced the biggest spike in cases. Unforunately, deaths from the virus are still on the rise nationwide, averaging 2,000 per day — up 4% over the past two weeks, which is expected as deaths trend to continue as the people infected during the peak recover or pass away.

We'll see if moving indoors puts a lull in the decline.
Click to expand...
I thought moving indoors increased infection rates. Someone comes home with covid and infects the household because everyone is indoors together for long periods of time.

On another note, beware RAS.

www.jpost.com

COVID may cause 'restless anal syndrome' - report

A patient in Japan seems to have developed the condition due to COVID-19, according to initial findings.
www.jpost.com www.jpost.com
 
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