TPM "COVID Threatens To Become New Forever War" [View all]

[NRaleighLiberal]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/covid-threatens-to-become-new-forever-war

By Josh Kovensky
|

The current vaccines may not be enough to bring about the end of COVID-19. In fact, the virus could be with us for years to come.
Increasingly, public health authorities and drug companies are indicating that mutating strains and fading vaccine efficiency could mean perpetual campaigns to keep the population immune, including the need to organize regular booster shots. The virus would morph from being an acute, albeit lengthy, crisis to a fact of life.

Thats not to say we’d have to live with the periodic lockdowns or public health measures on the national scale that we’ve seen. But it would mean an ongoing effort to confront COVID-19. Governments would be faced with the prospect of building long-term vaccine and PPE manufacturing capabilities and of organizing regular vaccination drives that could make the annual flu season look puny by comparison.

That fear has been exacerbated by new strains of the virus emerging across the globe. Some of the vaccines currently in mass production have been shown to be less effective against the South African variant, for example, while another mutation of the deadly virus appears to affect directly the ability of vaccines and antibodies to respond.

Pfizer announced on Tuesday that it was preparing for a “potentially durable, long-lasting need for COVID-19 vaccines,” telling investors that there would likely be a “need to boost regularly” to maintain its mRNA vaccine’s immune response.

snip

Offit said that the coronavirus is relatively young in terms of its existence in the human population. It spread across the world after leaving Wuhan, he said, in the form of a new variant. “You should start to worry when you see people who were fully vaccinated with the mRNA units who, despite that, are still getting hospitalized with the variant strain,” Offit said. “That’s when you know your vaccine has failed.”


(one of the reader comments - "We have never had any real choice with this virus except to do what NZ did and go for eradication. Letting it get into the general population has given it such a huge biomass to work with, that of course even a slow mutater like COVID is going to be able to keep ahead of us.

We chose to be stupider than a virus. We’re not quite so stupid under the new administration, but we are still too stupid to get ahead of this virus. In the end it is going to take a NZ approach, or it really will be our end. Spoiler alert, the NZ approach will involve rank socialism. We are going to find out soon if we prefer death to socialism&quot