Eventually, as there is less community transmission of the virus, we will be able to control its spread through contact tracing. Anothet important thing to note: we are just getting the Pfizer pill online. The importance of this cannot be overstated. The idea of taking medication to turn a deadly disease into something manageable will completely change the course of this pandemic.So when’s it end? If it’s so pernicious as soon as we stop artificial measure it’s going to come right back.
And we’ll rinse and repeat.
Even the WHO is saying omicron appears to be less problematic than delta and travel restrictions aren’t warranted.
There is a natural cycle of viruses yet we’re treating it like some alien virus.
Australia is putting people in force quarantine for fourteen days solely based on contact tracing. Test negative before during and after, stay in your hut.
Sure this will squeeze the cases down to an appropriately deemed level. But as soon as they stop it will return because the population has artificially been protected to exposure.
Until its reached the equilibrium point of herd immunity and regulated naturally spikes will happen. Some will be worse some won’t. But it’s nature and as we’ve proven corona viruses aren’t eliminated their mitigated.
Get the vaccines to high risk groups and get on with life.
As for my prediction? I predict that sometime by the middle of this decade, we could probably drop masking and quarantine. I can envision us getting annual boosters, similar to the flu. By that time, anybody who's infected would receive antivirals, and their contacts would be traced. It would become more of a yearly nuisance, not a deadly pandemic.
If you want a look at how this might play out, look at the status of the other pandemic that we're currently fighting: HIV/AIDS. Transmission in the United States is currently lower than during its peak in the 1990s. Treatments have reduced morbidity and mortality, while contact tracing helps slow further transmission. That's where I see SARS-CoV-2 heading- a slow burn instead of a raging inferno.
It's somewhat ironic considering that I became an epidemiologist due to seeing the effects of HIV/AIDS when I was coming of age in the 1990s.