Covid 19 Today

SARS-Cov-2 gave the world a new pathogen, and we will have to learn how to live with it. More people will die every day now than before, especially in the beginning as we learn about this new pathogen. Our lives will change. We will have to adapt. Vaccines will help, but we also will need better therapies and tests. Most of all we need your cooperation. Getting to a new equilibrium will take time. Think years, not months. Please be patient. We will get through this but not without pain.

How different would it have been if our leaders had started with this statement of truth and then acted accordingly. Words matter. They affect actions. From the beginning of the pandemic, the media and politicians have used words like defeat, kill, eradicate, win, return to normal, herd immunity,… None of these were ever likely. Miracles can happen in nature, so nothing is impossible. The virus itself is a miracle, albeit a malevolent one. Most pathogens causing pandemics end up being endemic. Life.

How do we respond to this pandemic? Largely, the world has followed its scientists and resorted to time-honored practices: lockdowns, masks and social distancing. Over a year into this pathogen, we still understand very little both about how it spreads and how it affects the body. There are many theories but few facts. We cannot follow the science, as politicians like to claim, because the science is incomplete and changing. What makes the time-honored practices appropriate is that we only need to follow them for some time and then can return to pre-pathogen life. We bet on vaccines, though lockdowns were critical at the beginning when we were trying to save our medical system by lowering the peak.

I have long argued that there is a Gresham’s Law of Answers: Precise answers drive out vague answers regardless of the merits of the antecedent questions. Nowhere has this been more true than in this pandemic. The precise answer became the vaccine. The vaccine would let us return to normal, meaning late 2019. The virus would be eradicated. Politicians could claim victory. The medical talking heads all went along enjoying the limelight. Just bear with the restrictions. All will be good soon.

It was not impossible that this could happen. We would need a 100% effective vaccine that also prevented transmission, and we would need to vaccinate the world quickly before the virus could mutate to avoid the vaccine. Almost 8 billion people in no more than 6 months. There has never been a 100% effective vaccine. Never. The…