Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote...
by abeppu on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:25AM
(#25035090)
I think we can control it well with a vaccine and contact tracing. But though this is not my area, I've heard experts say that "eradication" is unlikely, in that we've still only actually eradicated one human viral disease.
But if covid-19 was well enough controlled that most of us wouldn't come across an infected person in normal life, or need to think about it for months or years at a time ... I think that's good enough for most of us to think of it as "gone".
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Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote...
by throwaway2245 on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:52PM
(#25038204)
>we've still only actually eradicated one human viral disease
SARS-CoV-1 was eradicated.
Re:Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% prote...
by abeppu on Monday November 09, 2020 @02:53PM
(#25039102)
It seems that this is a subject of debate among experts. From what I understand, the disagreement is over when we can say that a reduction in cases to zero is "permanent" if animal reservoirs still exist.
> To date, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared only 2 diseases officially eradicated: smallpox caused by variola virus (VARV) and rinderpest caused by the rinderpest virus (RPV).
> Although successful containment strategies eliminated transmission of SARS among people, the continued presence of an animal reservoir means that SARS is not yet an eradicated disease.
https://asm.org/Articles/2020/March/Disease-Eradication-What...
> ... the 2003 SARS epidemic was permanently reduced to zero as a result of deliberate efforts, requiring no further intervention methods. This is precisely the definition of eradication.