"Endemic" and "Getting back to normal" are not mutually exclusive. The flu, even several serious flus, are endemic and yet things are normal. Especially since it is relatively easy to predict who is most at risk to COVID death, I imagine a future reality where many people are vaccinated and the vast majority of the most vulnerable are vaccinated, such that COVID transmission is lowered but not ended and deaths are significantly lower than flu deaths. That would be considered "back to normal".
I suppose what was implied but not made clear by me was the time factor. We might go back to normal at some point in
the future (but as I said I believe better treatments will play a role here). The narrative has been that we have turned the corner and we are on a straight-ish-line path to normalcy. Pushing back against that narrative is not just about "endemicity" but that is part of it. I made a post the other day about the time for honest disclosure from our leaders and in my mind that includes the fact that the effect of the vaccine is a great unknown, that if we get transmission rates cut by 50% (as suggested by BioNTech) and then go back to "normal" in the near-term the net effect will most likely be a higher level of live cases circulating in the population than we have now. That means that those who do not take the vaccine or the ~5% where it does not work will be much more likely to catch it than today.
Flu is different because we have effective treatments and vaccines and covid is more than a respiratory disease. Death is not the only marker of significant damage. You have seen the reports of amputees, heart and lung scarring, etc which are normal for a proportion of the infected whether they live or not. Remember too that under 16's will not be vaccinated so in a "back to normal" world covid will spread like widlfire in that group. And if T-cell/Abody-immunity is not long term those numbers will remain high. Consider how much we have distorted our lives and how cases would rise it we went back to "normal" now.
Covid attacks major organs and the immune system itself, the consequences of which are yet to be understood. The "still at risk" group will for their own safety have to avoid millions of walking infected but not showing it timebombs who might put them in hospital at any point.
When I say pushback against the narrative of normalcy (soon) these are the things I am including. And there is far more than that.
Draw a venn diagram in your head. For the portion of people who are high-risk and unvaccinated/unprotected by the vaccine is a covid-freely-circulating world life will be anything BUT normal.
And of course, "push back" is not being always right. It is about challenging the government narrative and getting answers where possible.
We have probably (rough guess here) 10, 20% chance of a return to
full normal... Maybe even lower than that.. But if you hear politicians tell it we are with high probability (~80+%?) on the home straight to that full normal now. The gap between that low and that high is the the pushback zone and it is massive.
Also, the 70% number may not be correct. It is the approximate math from what we currently understand about the average # of transmissions per person. But COVID transmissions have a strange distribution - the large majority of carriers only infect 1 or 0 persons, while a small % of carriers affect a huge number of other persons. It's not like measles which is highly infectious across the board. I don't know how that effects herd immunity calculations.
yes it is an approximation, it's not my number and is is subject to revision. It is not going to be 99 / 100% though.
I doubt animal reservoirs will be a significant factor but it remains to be seen.
Fair enough but we need to remember that
i. it only takes a few cases to spark another outbreak.
it started with animals after all ..
ii. some animals are better reservoirs for mutation - bats for example, i read that mink were too but can't find anything now. I need to get moving for the day..
I don't think anyone is arguing that the missing steps "don't matter". It's just that there's a difference between "sufficient" and "ideal".
It's not "ideal", it's more the "benchmark" for normal release. The "ideal" goes way beyond that "benchmark" as evidenced by "phase 4" (and beyond) issues in the past.
Similarly here, enough has been shown that we can safely consider the risks much lower than the ongoing danger of the current crisis. They've done more than well enough. But that doesn't mean we would want to go forever without doing better - on a long-term basis we can and will do better.
We don't know that yet.
