Note that Smallpox and Polio didn’t mutate like COVID19.
There was much debate on whether or not the so called “Spike Protein” of the COVID19 virus would mutate rapidly enough to keep up with vaccines. If COVID19 mutated slower (like smallpox), then it would have been erradicated. Some supercomputer even went in and calculated all the ways COVID19 could change and decided that the spike-protein was the least-likely to change. So this is our best shot at stopping the virus.
Alas, here we are on… erm… JN.1? After EG.5, after BA.5, after Omicron, after Delta, after Alpha, after the original COVID19. The speed of this thing’s mutation is too quick (even on the so called “Spike Protein” that was supposed to be a difficult to mutate sequence). Which was not the happy future we wanted. Still though, we can make new vaccines as fast as COVID19 mutates. So this isn’t too bad in the great scheme of things. Just keep your shots up to date and we’ll be good moving forward.
As I said earlier: I really, really was hoping for eradication.
Moving forward: this means that as different variants pop up, it will be the job of public health officials to:
Sequence the new mutations.
Predict the dominant mutations.
Order a vaccine against the (future-predicted) mutations.
Tell everyone when the new vaccine is ready and when its been a big enough change that we all need to update the vaccine in our system.
And moving forward, step 2 or step3 are perilous. A bad prediction will cause people to lose trust (and real-life situations, like government shutdowns during said studies, like back in 2014, could cause worse predictions. IE: government mismanagement causes loss of trust, causing more mismanagement causing more loss of trust). I think its more important to realize how many little elves need to do their job in this big chain of predictions for any of this to work out, and to respect the hard work put in.
Even when the work will inevitably fail / mess up one year or two.
A lot of people are in practice stuck at step4 (too distrustful of our public health officials that they refuse to take the updated vaccines). But as a reminder, it can absolutely get worse, and will get worse when they finally make a mistake. Its hard work trying to predict the future, and I’m honestly surprised a mistake hasn’t happened yet. (BA.5 was a perilous vaccine, there was a lot of debate over the prediction. It turned out to be correct, but we aren’t going to be so lucky moving forward).
Becoming endemic doesn’t necessarily mean “no big deal”. Smallpox was endemic. Polio was endemic. Malaria is endemic.
Note the key word ‘was’. Reason is vaccines. The malaria vaccine is only recently available
Note that Smallpox and Polio didn’t mutate like COVID19.
There was much debate on whether or not the so called “Spike Protein” of the COVID19 virus would mutate rapidly enough to keep up with vaccines. If COVID19 mutated slower (like smallpox), then it would have been erradicated. Some supercomputer even went in and calculated all the ways COVID19 could change and decided that the spike-protein was the least-likely to change. So this is our best shot at stopping the virus.
Alas, here we are on… erm… JN.1? After EG.5, after BA.5, after Omicron, after Delta, after Alpha, after the original COVID19. The speed of this thing’s mutation is too quick (even on the so called “Spike Protein” that was supposed to be a difficult to mutate sequence). Which was not the happy future we wanted. Still though, we can make new vaccines as fast as COVID19 mutates. So this isn’t too bad in the great scheme of things. Just keep your shots up to date and we’ll be good moving forward.
As I said earlier: I really, really was hoping for eradication.
Moving forward: this means that as different variants pop up, it will be the job of public health officials to:
And moving forward, step 2 or step3 are perilous. A bad prediction will cause people to lose trust (and real-life situations, like government shutdowns during said studies, like back in 2014, could cause worse predictions. IE: government mismanagement causes loss of trust, causing more mismanagement causing more loss of trust). I think its more important to realize how many little elves need to do their job in this big chain of predictions for any of this to work out, and to respect the hard work put in.
Even when the work will inevitably fail / mess up one year or two.
A lot of people are in practice stuck at step4 (too distrustful of our public health officials that they refuse to take the updated vaccines). But as a reminder, it can absolutely get worse, and will get worse when they finally make a mistake. Its hard work trying to predict the future, and I’m honestly surprised a mistake hasn’t happened yet. (BA.5 was a perilous vaccine, there was a lot of debate over the prediction. It turned out to be correct, but we aren’t going to be so lucky moving forward).