It is clearly apparent to experts in virology and epidemiology that COVID-19 is a pandemic. To be certain, you don't even need to be an expert to know this. This disease is also known to be caused by SARS-CoV-2, a virus which is a lethal infectious agent. It is also closely related to the original SARs virus that resulted in a mortality rate of ca. 10%. While the current mortality rate is lower, it is still capable of killing millions of people without an effective treatment, such as a vaccine. Most of us believe that allowing millions of people to die, when actions can be made to prevent their deaths, is not acceptable.
Moreover, the virus is constantly mutating. Its continuous replication in humans around the world could lead to a more lethal strain of the virus, killing millions more. It is not wise to take a cavalier attitude to such deadly threats. The better idea is to listen to the experts, most of them learned scientists who almost certainly have reasoned the best course of action based on our developing knowledge of this virus, and past viral infections. As most of us have seen, this is a strange virus, and its potential future threat as it continues to replicate in humans, and some animals, should not be taken lightly.
You're correct Chem, one doesn't need to be an expert one just needs to follow the numbers and the these United States it is only threatening 1% of the population after 6 months (not even meeting the CDC's definition of pandemic) currently with 183,653 deaths but an amazing 3,313,861 in recoveries that the news simply doesn't focus on because if it bleeds it reads. Also it is the experts that stated the fact that it does have a 97 to 99% recovery rate.
Now consider this, after six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, a body of scientific work is emerging that shows our immune system is capable of remembering COVID-19 and producing a lasting immunity.
This immunology work also supports the theory of cross-protection, whereby the body can mount a timely and appropriate defense on the simple inference that Sars-CoV-2 is a lot like other coronaviruses.
Over the course of the pandemic, medical fears have been shaped as much by what the future holds in terms of second waves and mutations during the cold of winter, as by what has been happening in the world at any particular moment.
However, studies both peer-reviewed and not, are seeing positive changes in the human innate immune response to COVID-19 that suggest the diseases’ days of unfettered infection are numbered.
For example, in
one peer reviewed study from
Nature, immunologists in Singapore studied the cellular memory of T-cells, an important immune cell that weaponizes other immune responses in addition to tracking and eliminating pathogens on their own.
The researchers found that:
- People with or recovering from COVID-19 displayed immediate memory T-cell activation to the virus’ proteins.
- People with an infection history—going back as far as 17 years—of SARS-CoV-1 which emerged in China around 2002-2003, had long-lasting memory T-cell responses that ”displayed robust cross-reactivity to the N protein of SARS-CoV-2.”
- And, perhaps most interesting, SARS-CoV-2-specific memory T-cell activation was found “in individuals with no history of SARS, COVID-19 or contact with individuals who had SARS and/or COVID-19.”
The last point is certainly enough to give us hope. And yet more positive research emerges.
Another
study, this one not yet peer-reviewed, found that the response of antibodies—one of the primary classes of immune cells used to defend against pathogens—stayed active in saliva up to 115 days after the onset of symptoms in COVID-19 patients.
While antibody and T-cell responses in the blood have been extensively studied, this work, published in the preprint publication, has been one of the first to look at responses in mucus cells. The scientists note this is an important area of research since the virus infects in the upper respiratory tract.
“The immune response is doing exactly what we would expect it to,” Gommerman, an immunologist at the University of Toronto who worked on the study,
told CNN. “At least at about four months, which is, as far as, most of us can measure at this point in the pandemic.”
Work on yet another kind of immune cell, the ‘helper’ T-cell as opposed to the ‘killer’ T-cell, was completed earlier in the year when
several studies published in Nature and Sciencefound that the helpers could also, more than half the time, identify COVID-19 and sound the alarm, and that these helpers were present in patients that had never been exposed to COVID-19.
The evidence of re-infection is, at this point,
non-existent, which suggests humanity’s collective immune system is working well to combat it.
“So that is all good news,” Gommerman said. ”That means that people who are infected with this novel coronavirus should have the capacity to mount what’s called a memory immune response to protect themselves against infection.”
Heck, even world wide there is only 829,666 deaths compared to influenza to be 500,000 deaths globally last year. We will possibly not see a million deaths from this but most certainly not in the States. I stand behind my comment.