Ford should be pilloried for eliminating wastewater surveillance. But the notion we aren’t post-pandemic in a meaningful way is nonsense. The very fact that viral counts are as high but excess deaths have dropped almost to zero is a *good* thing. Vaccines work. Flattening the curve worked.
The better analogy is probably a cold—a coronavirus. I’m sure at various points the virus that became the common cold was a deadly pathogen. It’s almost miraculous how quickly vaccines accomplished that here.
It's actually too soon to say here! We really don't know what long-term immunity following multiple infections is going to look like. I think most kids who have had multiple COVID infections with few severe symptoms and may have antibodies that make it just a cold for them! Or not
Not discounting vaccination here, BTW, it's clear that they're an amazing breakthrough that–especially for the people who are getting multiple doses–that has perhaps really accelerated this process
It is exceedingly difficult to eradicate diseases that have other animals as vectors. Smallpox only infected humans so it was (relatively) easy to eradicate: just vaccinate all humans. Since the flu and coronaviruses infect other mammals and birds, vaccine escaping variants can be created
Even without animal vectors it sounds like it'd be impossible to eradicate. At least one major variant appears to have evolved almost entirely in the body of a single immunocompromised person. We detect countless "cryptic" variants in wastewater surveys. It's with us forever now.
