Now, experts believe that in the future, COVID-19 will be like 229E: constantly around to infect people, but not something we have to fear.
COVID-19: From a Pandemic to Endemic
An endemic disease is consistently present within a certain geographical location. This also means lower and more predictable number of cases. Case in point, malaria is endemic to certain parts of the world: it’s there, but generally, it’s not a cause of alarm.
As mentioned above, experts believe that COVID-19 will end up becoming an endemic disease: it will always be there, and, similar to the small experiment, people will probably get infected with it not just once. Many experts even believe that everyone will get infected eventually.
The good news is, subsequent infections might not be as severe as the previous ones. Still, we can’t be too sure. After all, the severity of infection takes into consideration the variant itself and the immunity people get from recovering from the infection and vaccination.
Finally, scientists believe that in the future, COVID-19 will be like the flu. The risk is there, but so is the option of vaccination. And just as the flu virus mutates to escape immunity, SARS-Cov-2 will do the same.
How We’ll Get There is Unclear
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