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All of Chris S's Comments + Replies

March Coronavirus Open Thread
Chris S40

That's a good answer, and consistent with this very good article by Johns Hopkins epidemiologist Justin Lessler. He makes many of the same points you make, and adds that there will likely also be partial immunity even within individuals. (At least, I suppose, if we aren't facing antibody-dependent enhancement.)

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March Coronavirus Open Thread
Chris S*80

Here's a credible-seeming claim from a computational biologist that, if COVID-19 is like other coronaviruses, long term immunity is unlikely. I imagine this also means a vaccine is unlikely.

If true, this changes everything. Does this mean we are all going to be working from home for the rest of our lives? Or will we accept a world where there is an endemic disease that we get for 3 weeks every year?

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4gwillen
I think this doesn't quite change everything, for the following reasons: * Even if long-term immunity is unlikely, short-term immunity will push this back towards the flu category, where most people are not getting it acutely at the same time. This will significantly improve the healthcare situation vs what we're seeing in the pandemic phase. * Diseases evolve towards increased spread, which usually involves evolving towards reduced lethality / severity. If this becomes endemic it's likely to do the same. * If it turns out that this does become a severe endemic disease, there will be a lot of pressure on the development of a vaccine, much more so than has been true for human coronaviruses in the past (when they were much closer to being mostly a nuisance, and included in the general "common cold" category.) Even if long-term immunity is unlikely, we can still improve the situation like we currently do with influenza, giving people periodic boosters based on the current circulating strains.