But truly engendering trust in historically wronged communities, McLemore said, would mean investing more fully in care, including free masks, testing, and consultations. One certainty about the vaccines is that they will be deployed unevenly. Just as the virus created a patchwork of infection in , the vaccines will create a patchwork of immunity in Globally, many poor countries will barely be able to start the vaccination process, because richer countries have hoarded doses.
Even within the U. Urban areas could speed ahead of rural areas , where people live farther away from any health facility, including commercial pharmacies such as CVS; where clinics have fewer staff members and fewer ultracold freezers; and where local health departments are busy with pandemic responses. Some scientists have estimated that 50 to 70 percent of the country will need to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, but the actual threshold is still unclear, and several researchers suspect it may be much higher.
Whatever the actual number, it will also apply at smaller geographical scales. So what if infected people from regions that have not reached the threshold travel to neighboring areas that have? Herd immunity is frequently misunderstood. It is not a force field. Outbreaks can still begin in communities with herd immunity if someone brings the virus in, but they will die out on their own because every unvaccinated person is surrounded by enough vaccinated people that the virus will struggle to reach new hosts.
In practice, there are two complications. Read: The end of the pandemic is now in sight. Second, unvaccinated people will not be randomly strewn around a community. These clusters will be like cracks in a wall, through which water can seep during a storm.
They will mean that even when some communities reach the 70 percent threshold, infections could still spread within them. People who waited because of distrust or hesitancy, and people who could not be vaccinated because of lack of access or preexisting medical conditions , will bear the brunt of these continuing outbreaks. Such outbreaks will grow smaller and be more easily controlled as more people get vaccinated.
The U. Most Americans—across the political spectrum— support measures aimed at curbing COVID , including restricting restaurants to carryout, canceling major sporting and entertainment events, and asking people to stay at home and avoid gatherings, according to surveys done by Lazer, the Northeastern political scientist, and his colleagues. Some state leaders have thus far been unwilling to enact such measures, but their attitudes might shift when the Biden administration takes office.
Especially now, with many questions already swirling around the vaccines , clear, consistent, evidence-based advice from that task force could go a long way in countering the chaotic, conflicting counsel that Trump and his associates have offered. So could more funding. States cannot legally run at a deficit, so some measures require the federal checkbook, including the mass manufacturing of personal protective equipment, the rollout of cheap and ubiquitous diagnostic tests, and aid for businesses and families financially harmed by social restrictions.
Slowly, life will feel safer. Masks will still be common, and public spaces may be less populated. But many of the joys that stripped away could gradually if patchily return—the joys of indoor dining, the thrill of a crowd, the touch of a loved one. Drugs that block HIV infections have been around for years, but 1. Polio vaccines were first created in the s, but polio, though tantalizingly close to eradication, still exists. So do most other vaccine-preventable diseases, including measles, tuberculosis, and cervical cancer.
What happens next with SARS-CoV-2 depends on how our immune systems react to the vaccines, and whether the virus evolves in response. Both factors are notoriously hard to predict, because the immune system as immunologists like to remind people is very complicated , and evolution as biologists often note is cleverer than you.
Immunity lasts a lifetime for some viral diseases, such as chicken pox and measles, but wears off much earlier for others. There are four mild coronaviruses that cause common colds, and the immune system only remembers how to deal with them for less than a year. Read: Immunology is where intuition goes to die.
So far, most infections seem to trigger immune memory that persists for at least six months , although a small number of people have been reinfected. Iwasaki, the Yale immunologist, expects that COVID vaccines will lead to longer and stronger immunity than natural infections, since vaccines lack the tricks that the virus itself uses to evade and delay the immune system. A bigger worry, perhaps, is what the virus will do as more people get vaccinated.
Viruses are always accumulating mutations—changes in their genes. These variant viruses are concerning but should still be containable if people wear masks, practice social distancing, and implement other measures that have worked thus far—another good reason to double down on those measures as the vaccines are deployed.
Other mutations might allow variants of SARS-CoV-2 to escape from current vaccines and infect people who were once immune. In that scenario, the virus would become like influenza—an ever-changing foe that forces humanity to regularly play catch-up. The pace at which this scenario might unfold depends on at least four factors. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and immunologist at Harvard, is worried, especially because many of the leading vaccines in development have the same target.
Offices could fill and bars could bustle. Schools could reopen and friends could reunite. But as the status quo returns, so too will the virus. Much about the coming years, including the frequency, duration, and timing of social upheavals, depends on two properties of the virus, both of which are currently unknown. First: seasonality. Coronaviruses tend to be winter infections that wane or disappear in the summer.
That may also be true for SARS-CoV-2, but seasonal variations might not sufficiently slow the virus when it has so many immunologically naive hosts to infect. Second: duration of immunity.
When people are infected by the milder human coronaviruses that cause cold-like symptoms, they remain immune for less than a year. By contrast, the few who were infected by the original SARS virus, which was far more severe, stayed immune for much longer.
Assuming that SARS-CoV-2 lies somewhere in the middle, people who recover from their encounters might be protected for a couple of years. To confirm that, scientists will need to develop accurate serological tests, which look for the antibodies that confer immunity. If so, immune citizens can return to work, care for the vulnerable, and anchor the economy during bouts of social distancing.
Scientists can use the periods between those bouts to develop antiviral drugs—although such drugs are rarely panaceas, and come with possible side effects and the risk of resistance. Hospitals can stockpile the necessary supplies. As Aaron E. Instead of playing defense, we could play more offense. Whether through accumulating herd immunity or the long-awaited arrival of a vaccine, the virus will find spreading explosively more and more difficult.
The vaccine may need to be updated as the virus changes, and people may need to get revaccinated on a regular basis, as they currently do for the flu. Models suggest that the virus might simmer around the world, triggering epidemics every few years or so. The cost of reaching that point, with as few deaths as possible, will be enormous. Hotels are empty. Airlines are grounding flights. Restaurants and other small businesses are closing. Inequalities will widen : People with low incomes will be hardest-hit by social-distancing measures, and most likely to have the chronic health conditions that increase their risk of severe infections.
We have more people traveling great distances and living far from family and work. After infections begin ebbing, a secondary pandemic of mental-health problems will follow. At a moment of profound dread and uncertainty, people are being cut off from soothing human contact.
Hugs, handshakes, and other social rituals are now tinged with danger. People with anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder are struggling. Elderly people, who are already excluded from much of public life, are being asked to distance themselves even further, deepening their loneliness. Children , whose bodies are mostly spared by the virus, may endure mental trauma that stays with them into adulthood. Health-care workers will take time to heal: One to two years after SARS hit Toronto, people who dealt with the outbreak were still less productive and more likely to be experiencing burnout and post-traumatic stress.
People who went through long bouts of quarantine will carry the scars of their experience. Already, communities are finding new ways of coming together , even as they must stay apart. Attitudes to health may also change for the better. Testing for STDs became mainstream. Pandemics can also catalyze social change. People, businesses, and institutions have been remarkably quick to adopt or call for practices that they might once have dragged their heels on, including working from home , conference-calling to accommodate people with disabilities, proper sick leave, and flexible child-care arrangements.
Its individualism, exceptionalism, and tendency to equate doing whatever you want with an act of resistance meant that when it came time to save lives and stay indoors, some people flocked to bars and clubs. Years of isolationist rhetoric had consequences too. Veterans of past epidemics have long warned that American society is trapped in a cycle of panic and neglect. But after short periods of peacetime, memories fade and budgets dwindle.
This trend transcends red and blue administrations. When a new normal sets in, the abnormal once again becomes unimaginable. But there is reason to think that COVID might be a disaster that leads to more radical and lasting change. The other major epidemics of recent decades either barely affected the U. The COVID pandemic, by contrast, is affecting everyone directly, changing the nature of their everyday life. Until now.
Those who relied extensively on rigorous lockdowns and border controls are now struggling to stamp out major new reinfections, for example in Australia and China. In the United States, where our masks and mass vaccinations have been our primary defense, case counts are escalating in many regions, particularly where these public health interventions failed to gain much traction. How did we get here? By telling ourselves stories that were convenient truths until they proved false—in other words, mythologizing a virus when it needed rigorous, evidence-based demystifying.
Below I unpack a number of such myths, explaining the difference between what we thought then and what we know now. Myth 1: Covid originated in a foreign country, so it will remain a foreign virus.
Infectious diseases neither recognize nor abide by geopolitical boundaries. The world stood by and did nothing as Covid infections escalated in China, when we should have known full well that nothing would stop it from reaching our respective shores. The highly contagious Delta variant has proven adept at penetrating even the most drastic containment protocols. Only in the small country of New Zealand, where government officials have combined dramatic limits on foreign travel with rigorous screening, contact tracing, and mandatory isolation of all travelers, has this strategy continued to reap significant rewards.
Initially it was thought that Covid might come and go like the seasonal flu, killing thousands but affecting most only mildly. The number of documented deaths from Covidrelated causes now exceeds four million ; clearly this wish did not come true.
Many predicted the virus would vanish in the summer of or , either quietly becoming endemic or succumbing to warm climates. But both summers the pandemic only intensified, proving SARS-CoV-2 can withstand tropical and even scorching temperatures, as has been the case in Indonesia.
The virus has been responsible for tens of millions of infections globally, causing more than a million deaths. The United States has been the most affected country. Below, we dissect some of the most common myths currently circulating on social media and beyond.
Applying alcohol or chlorine to the skin can cause harm, especially if it enters the eyes or mouth. These chemicals can disinfect surfaces, but people should not use them on their bodies. However, older adults and individuals with preexisting health conditions, such as diabetes, obesity, or asthma, are more likely to become severely ill. While people under 40 , including children, are less likely to become severely ill with COVID, the disease can lead to complications and death in anyone.
The condition, called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children , known as MIS-C, has features similar to Kawasaki disease and toxic shock syndrome. Both illnesses can also cause pneumonia. Different countries have reported different mortality rates, and the case fatality rate in the U.
While scientists are still determining the exact mortality rate based on developing data, it is likely to be many times higher than that of the seasonal flu. This is false. Mild symptoms may include a fever, a cough, a sore throat, tiredness, and shortness of breath.
There have been several reports of pets developing the infection, including in the U. Scientists are debating the importance of these cases in animals. For instance, Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, in the United Kingdom, says :. Healthcare workers use professional face masks that fit tightly to protect themselves from infections.
Disposable and cloth masks can protect against droplets, but neither can protect against aerosolized particles. The CDC recommend that all people wear cloth face masks in public areas where it is difficult to maintain a 6-foot, or 2-meter, distance from others.
This helps slow the spread of the virus. Even while wearing a mask, it is essential to continue with other precautions, such as not touching the face, physical distancing, and washing the hands frequently.
Instructions for making masks at home are available here. Surgical masks and N95 respirators provide greater protection, but reserve these for healthcare workers. The best way to protect oneself and others from the virus is to wash the hands with soap and water frequently for at least 20 seconds at a time. Coronaviruses are a large family, and each has spiky proteins on their surface.
Some use humans as their primary host and cause the common cold.
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