How to minimize Covid-19 impact

Learn how to minimize Covid-19 Impact. Before the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, only four known coronaviruses were circulating among humans, including 229E. All four of these coronaviruses cause common colds, and in the most optimistic scenario, our newest coronavirus will end up as the fifth. In that case, COVID-19 might look a lot like a cold from 229E—recurrent but largely unremarkable. 

The pandemic will end

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The current spikes in cases and deaths are the result of a novel coronavirus meeting naive immune systems. When enough people have gained some immunity through either vaccination or infection—preferably vaccination—the coronavirus will transition to what epidemiologists call “endemic.” It won’t be eliminated, but it won’t upend our lives anymore.

If immunity to the new coronavirus wanes like it does with these others, then it will keep causing reinfections and breakthrough infections, more and more of them over time, but still mild enough. We’ll have to adjust our thinking about COVID-19 too. The coronavirus is not something we can avoid forever; we have to prepare for the possibility that we will all get exposed one way or another. 

The coronavirus will no longer be novel—to our immune systems or our society,

but does not mean we should drop all precautions.

The timing and severity of reinfections and breakthrough infections once COVID-19 becomes endemic depend on how quickly the protective effects of immunity against the virus wanes. And that, in turn, depends on a combination of two factors: first, how quickly our immune systems get rusty against SARS-CoV-2, and second, how quickly this coronavirus evolves to disguise itself.

Endemic Scenario:

The virus itself will also change with time. As more people gain immunity via either infection or vaccination, the coronavirus will try to find ways to evade that immunity too. This is a natural consequence of living with a circulating virus; the flu also mutates every year in response to existing immunity. But in the endemic scenario, where many people have some immunity, the coronavirus will not be able to infect as many people or replicate as many times in each person it infects.

In the best case, COVID-19 will follow the same pattern: we were likely first exposed to other common coronaviruses as children, when the resulting disease tends to be mild; our immune systems get rusty; the virus changes; we get reinfected; the immune response is updated; the immune system gets rusty again; the virus changes again; we get infected. And so on.

The risk we were willing to tolerate

It’s going to come down to some level we find acceptable, Better vaccines and better treatments might reduce the risk of COVID-19 even further. The experience may also prompt people to take all respiratory viruses more seriously, leading to lasting changes in mask wearing and ventilation. Endemic COVID-19 means finding a new, tolerable way to live with this virus. It will feel strange for a while and then it will not. It will be normal.