Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel appeared to agree Wednesday that
Covid-19 will become endemic, saying “SARS-CoV-2 is not going away.” “We are going to live with this virus, we think, forever,” he said during a panel discussion at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference.
"We are going to live with this virus, we think, forever," he said during a panel discussion at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference.
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So will we lockdown forever or may we open up the country and LIVE WITH IT like we do with all other viruses?
We're not willingly going to live with a disease this lethal. We've lost more than 400,000 in America alone so far, and I'm impressed, if you're not. We are sure to hit half a million in February. The 1918 influenza deaths totaled 675,000 in America alone: COVID will surely equal that even with vaccination. Why you think this is so benign, I don't know. The Hopkins epidemiologists are now worried about a substantial UNDERCOUNT of virus-associated deaths, because excess deaths for 2020 are over the COVID count by some tens of thousands.
We may have to live with it if we can't vaccinate against it ------- we ARE living with HIV/AIDS, after at least
50 million deaths since about 1980, because they can't get a vaccine for it. They do have drugs that allow people to live for a long time with it, though. They die of it in the end, however.
It looks like this one is possible to vaccinate against, though. I think that Moderna guy just meant we'll have to vaccinate forever, like we do for measles, mumps, etc. We have never wiped out any disease except smallpox to date. (And they have stocks of that in freezers in Atlanta and Moscow, just saying.) So he's right: we'll have to live with COVID, at least with the vaccine, indefinitely. Unless it dies out totally on its own, and several historical and recent diseases have done that.