ScienceToday

Will this pandemic end in a similar manner?

Compared with the 1918 flu pandemic, we cannot predict the Coronavirus to the same extent: society has evolved, and so have all the tools we have to combat it. From medical equipment to vaccine production, from how travel is done to how we get our data, all these things influence the pandemic. Moreover, compared to something like a flu virus, the COVID-19 infections have a high rate of asymptomatic transmitters, making it even harder to predict how the virus will evolve.

The new variants that have appeared have shown us that we do not know where the pandemic is headed, raising more questions than answers and scientists are not yet prepared to give us an answer to the most pressing questions: will we reach a point where it stops being such a threat to humanity? And will we need annual boosters or modified vaccines to include the COVID-19 one as well?

What helped in 1918 is the so-called “herd immunity”, something some are hoping will happen with the Coronavirus as well: back then so many people got the flu, that there were fewer hosts in which the virus could mutate, therefore they reached the point where it became endemic.

Scientists still hope for something of the sort to happen with COVID-19 as well: rather than hoping for it to go away (which it will not, not completely at least), they hope for a variant that while it is contagious, it will not produce as much clinical illness. Much like with the seasonal flu, which is highly contagious, but not many end up hospitalized by it, and very few end up losing their lives because of it.