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Expert Group Forecasts That SARS-CoV-2 Is Here To Stay

Enhanced Outbreak Control Strategy Is Proposed To Lessen Impact And Return To Relative Normalcy

Writing in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs, Larry Brilliant an epidemiologist and Chief Executive Officer of Pandefense Advisory and five other health professionals with varying backgrounds and expertise in epidemiology, infectious disease and other subject matters have assessed the status of the pandemic in the world, the international response to it, and given their opinions of what the most likely future of the disease will be. The article is entitled “The Forever Virus--A Strategy for the Long Fight Against COVID-19”.

Here To Stay

They begin their assessment exclaiming “It is time to say it out loud: the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic is not going away…Rather than die out, the virus will likely ping-pong back and forth across the globe for years to come…The virus is here to stay”

The authors advance several reasons for believing the virus will become endemic, including the growth of the virus in more than a dozen animal species, the practical difficulties in reaching herd immunity through vaccination, and the circulation of variants.

The authors mince no words in explaining how the world got into this situation. They identify leaders in multiple countries who showed parochialism and political insecurity and thus downplayed the crisis, ignored the science, and rejected international cooperation. “The result of all the chaos, delay, and stupidity was a largely uncontrolled spread and a heightened death toll.”

Outbreak Control Revisited

To meet the challenge of an endemic situation, the authors propose to modify and update the surveillance and containment strategy or ring vaccination strategy that was used successfully to eradicate smallpox. According to the authors, “the key lies in treating vaccines as transferable resources that can be rapidly deployed where they are needed most.” In short, this is an outbreak control strategy which will require an enhanced capacity to detect cases, sequence viral genomes, notify exposed persons, and collaborate more effectively between countries.

US Leadership

The US is tagged for being in the best position to take on the global leadership in this targeted outbreak control strategy. In part this is because the US is no longer seeing cases nationwide and could begin to deploy vaccine to areas with high infection rates to carry out basic outbreak control activities. Unlike smallpox, SARS-CoV-2 produces a high percentage of asymptomatic cases making case identification difficult. However, the authors believe that “powerful new tools for detecting outbreaks and developing vaccines exist today that were not available during smallpox eradication. These tools as described by the authors can provide the “situational awareness” in real time needed to effectively use an outbreak control strategy. Thus, “If the United States solves the puzzle of controlling outbreaks of COVID-19 at home and shields itself against importations of the virus from abroad, it will have a blueprint that it can share globally. It should do so, turning outward to help lead what will be the largest and most complicated disease-control campaign in human history.

In concluding their overview, the authors state that “Sustaining our way of life thus requires deep changes in the way we interact with the natural world, the way we think about prevention, and the way we respond to global health emergencies.”

Denial Stage

The authors frame the losses the world has experienced because of COVID-19 in terms of the five stages of grief that have been described whenever loss occurs. They claim the world is currently stuck in denial of the fact that the pandemic is far from over. This is only the first stage and they urge everyone to move ahead to a final stage of finding meaning in the devastation by doing more to mitigate this pandemic and preventing the next one.

To read the article in Foreign Affaris, visit:  https://fam.ag/2TrMIBY  ■

 


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