Read: Vaccines are still mostly blocking severe diseaseĪ nasal vaccine, or one that could create mucosal immunity, could be the ticket to accomplishing this. A lot of innovations are being developed (including ones that handle a wider range of variants) the most helpful vaccine would prevent us from catching and spreading the virus in the first place. For that to happen, we need innovation in vaccines, to make better ones than we have today. For us to be at a better place, everyone-including older, frailer, and sicker people-will need to be able to live like the pandemic is over.Īlthough we would all welcome a more predictable disease and more tolerable symptoms, the scenario we really hope for is one in which we don’t need to worry about getting infected at all. Some people think this a tolerable state, but for that, you have to become numb to thousands upon thousands of COVID deaths a year, not to mention lots of missed school and work, a taxed medical system, and the long-term chronic illnesses that come from many cases. alone, some estimates suggest that more than 90 percent of the population has been infected or vaccinated-and still hundreds are dying each day. We still hold our breath each time a new variant of concern is spotted. This is the path many mistakenly believe is inevitable, one we have already started on. Read: America is starting to see what COVID immunity really looks like COVID-19 wouldn’t disappear, but it would be characterized by mild symptoms that for many would barely register. Over time, SARS-CoV-2’s effect on us may come to resemble something closer to the common cold, caused by another, more familiar, coronavirus. This could happen as layers of immunity-from a combination of prior vaccinations and prior infection-give the virus less and less power to make us really sick. The virus may not ever mutate at a slower pace, but those mutations could become a lot less important. An accumulation of layered immunity might render COVID a more tepid illness. But COVID-19 tends to change in surprising ways that we can’t explain until later.

So far, there aren’t signs of a slowdown in coronavirus mutations, and the alphanumeric soup of BA variants is coming at us fast. Those who are immunocompromised or otherwise high-risk would be released from continual anxiety and could participate more freely in the activities that bring them joy. Planning and predictability would be nice for everyone, but especially so for people at high risk. Masking for one period a year (for those who still wish to avoid the virus) instead of constantly living in fear would be quite an improvement-and more people might be willing to do it.īetter yet, if the virus’s fluctuations came only annually and predictably, we could attack it with once-a-year boosters designed to match that year’s variant-something that’s essentially impossible today, when a booster developed in March is out of date by October. The virus’s rate of change could slow down.Ī virus of exactly the same rate of spread, immune-evasion properties, and severity as COVID-19 would be a lot more tolerable if it mutated at the rate of the flu and surged at more predictable times. So what could still happen to fundamentally change the COVID big picture? I’ve been thinking about that question, and I’ve come up with three possible good developments that could come down the pike. With a virus that has evolved to morph and recirculate with the frequency of the common cold and far greater deadliness, many people are wondering if we’re going to have to live like this forever. When we step back and assess the news in totality, we might feel that we are stuck, that things aren’t going to get better, and that, no matter what progress we make, the virus will outsmart us sooner or later.

But the vaccines came, and though they did wonders in bringing down the daily death toll, COVID is ever present in our lives.

Early on in the pandemic, we could look forward to the arrival of vaccines.

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