Posted on 10/21/2021 9:36:25 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Some scientists believe the current surge of COVID-19 has peaked and the pandemic, at least in the U.S., will ease over the winter months. But then what? Will the virus surge back again next year?
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
What is the end game for COVID? We seem to have made it past the worst of the delta surge. Case levels are less than half what they were a couple of months ago. We've reported on this program on projections that new cases may keep dropping all winter. But of course, that is just a projection, and it does not answer how the pandemic would completely end, if it ever does.
NPR global health correspondent Michaeleen Doucleff has been asking, what happens next? Michaeleen, good morning.
MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: Let me just start by asking, can we hope for a time when the coronavirus is effectively gone from the world the way that polio and smallpox were all but eliminated?
DOUCLEFF: So that works when the virus is very stable over time - right? - its genetic sequence doesn't mutate much, like the measles. So when you get a vaccine, it can protect for a long time. But not all viruses are like that. For instance, the flu, it mutates really rapidly. And those mutations can decrease the vaccine's effectiveness. And that's one reason why you can get reinfected over and over again with the flu. So it really depends on how fast SARS-CoV-2 is mutating.
INSKEEP: OK. How quickly is that happening?
DOUCLEFF: Well, at first, during the first year of the pandemic, it looked good. It was mutating very slowly. And then in December last year, right around the holidays - remember? - that's when everything changed.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
BILL WOLFF: This is NBC Nightly News.
LESTER HOLT: Tonight, the race to stop a new, highly contagious strain of coronavirus.
UNIDENTIFIED ANCHOR #1: Tonight, London on lockdown - scientists there believe that this variant...
UNIDENTIFIED ANCHOR #2: More countries are detecting that new, highly contagious variant of the disease.
INSKEEP: You know, when this was happening, when the news was breaking, it sort of made intuitive sense to me because I knew that it had infected so many millions of people that the virus had many chances to evolve.
DOUCLEFF: Yeah, that's right. In South Africa, the U.K., Brazil, all of the sudden it looked like SARS-CoV-2 was mutating a lot. Recently, scientists at the University of Washington developed a new method to measure how quickly it's mutating or evolving. Katie Kistler was part of that study. And she says she was surprised at how fast this virus is changing.
KATIE KISTLER: Late in 2020, that evolution really starts picking up to a rate that's, like, remarkably, like, high right now - roughly four times higher for SARS-CoV-2 than it is for seasonal flu.
DOUCLEFF: And remember, the flu changes so fast that people can be vulnerable to it each year. So right now SARS-CoV-2 is changing four times faster than the flu.
INSKEEP: Wow. Does that mean that COVID is going to just keep coming back and back and back in different versions the way the flu does?
DOUCLEFF: That's the leading hypothesis right now. I was talking to Dr. Abraar Karan at Stanford University about it. He's an infectious disease specialist. He says exposure to this virus will be essentially unavoidable.
ABRAAR KARAN: So I think that everyone will be exposed to SARS-CoV-2 the virus. It's a matter of when that will be. And another question is whether you're exposed when you're fully vaccinated or when you're not vaccinated.
DOUCLEFF: So now, Steve, this is key. The virus SARS-CoV-2 will probably never go away. But as Karan pointed out to me, COVID the disease, the extreme illness that puts many people in the hospital, that could go away. And here's why. COVID is caused by a type of coronavirus. And the U.S. has dealt with many coronavirus outbreaks in the past. I'm talking about huge outbreaks year after year for decades. And people have hardly noticed them. I surely haven't noticed, have you?
INSKEEP: I hadn't, no.
DOUCLEFF: No. And that's because these other coronaviruses typically cause just a mild cold. So there are four of them. And every year, one or more of them sweeps through the country - through schools, churches, offices - and makes people sick.
Rachel Eguia is a biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. She says that throughout your lifetime, you've likely caught these viruses perhaps a dozen times.
RACHEL EGUIA: It definitely is known that every few years you're able to get reinfected with them. And so we were wondering, is that the same story for, you know, this new coronavirus, this SARS-CoV-2?
INSKEEP: I think I'm beginning to get this. The realistic hope here is not that the virus vanishes from the Earth but that we moderate its effects.
DOUCLEFF: Yeah. That's exactly right. And some scientists are starting to think that eventually, over time, COVID may turn into something similar to a type of disease like these other coronaviruses - a seasonal cold or a flu-like illness.
Rustom Antia is one of the scientists that thinks that. He's a computational biologist at Emory University. And for the past year and a half, he and his colleagues have been using data from these other coronaviruses to try and predict how COVID will behave in the long run.
INSKEEP: OK. What's his best prediction?
DOUCLEFF: He thinks that COVID will become a flu-like illness if two things happen. First, immunity to severe disease has to last a long time. So after some level of exposure - a few natural infections or two or three doses of the vaccine - you might still be able to get infected, but you aren't likely to get really sick and end up in the hospital.
INSKEEP: OK. So it depends on our bodies, in effect. Do we know if our immunity will protect us for a long time whether we got it from an infection or from the vaccine?
DOUCLEFF: Yeah. That's what everyone is anxiously waiting to see. After the vaccine, so far, immunity looks like it's holding up for at least six months or so for healthy adults. But Antia says right now it's unclear how long that critical immunity will last for people more at risk for severe disease.
RUSTOM ANTIA: What we don't know just now is for older individuals, like I am, and older people, how many times we'll need to be vaccinated for the vaccine to build up our immunity so that when we do get infected naturally, it's not severe.
DOUCLEFF: So with that long-lasting immunity, the vast majority of the population would, in theory, be protected against severe COVID. And that would really leave only one population unexposed. Can you guess which one that is?
INSKEEP: Brand-new people - newborns.
DOUCLEFF: Yes, exactly - young children. But remember, Steve, so far, COVID is relatively mild in kids. And as long as it stays that way, kids can get infected early on when they're young, build up their immunity and then have protections from severe disease as adults. So in theory, everyone around the world would be protected. Now, the buildup of this immunity across, you know, the whole population can take a long time. We're talking perhaps years. And that's why it's so important for people to get vaccinated because that can speed up this process and more quickly turn COVID into a disease that looks possibly like a mild flu or even a common cold.
INSKEEP: Hey, Michaeleen, thanks for this glimpse at what might be - could be our future - really appreciate it.
DOUCLEFF: Thank you so much, Steve.
INSKEEP: That's NPR global health correspondent Michaeleen Doucleff.
The end game is that the survivors eventually gather into two camps. One led by an old black woman who is a prayer warrior. And the other led by Randall Flagg who is the devil
This Steve Inskeep guy was a big time reporter for NPR.
The Fauci/China biological warfare virus will run its course like any other coronavirus.
Nothing the arrogant self-aggrandizing bureaucratic fascists do will make any difference, other than knee-capping the entire world for fun and profit.
Apparently he left NPR and does his own thing.
His show’s name “Agenda Free TV” seems appropriate. He has covered breaking news stories without political spin. And has done a pretty good job of finding sources. His viewers help.
wait, I’m thinking of Steve Lookner of Agenda Free TV.
Yeah, must be someone else. Inskeep is still on NPR (I heard him just this morning) and he’s a far left loon, same as ever. He was interviewing a prolife / antiabortion activist recently and went out of his mind when she used the term “abortionist.”
Being artificially created probably also means that it will eventually become inert or will shed it’s artificial characteristics and go back to what it originally was.
What does Covid eventually become?
These people have no idea. I can nearly guarantee you that all mutational models used point in some direction already indicated by some related, already existing virus. And so they point at some . . . improvement for society, because already existing viruses didn’t become species threatening events.
So they have no idea. What is in this transcript is a description of what will happen if if if if if if.
It’s an artificial virus. There is zero information for modeling. It is as likely to become more deadly and more species threatening as it is to be less so.
People only talk about the less so. I suppose if they suggested a bad future they will be called stupid or political or whatever. But in the absence of precedent, bad vs good . . . equally likely.
Are you talking about Steve Lookner?
I’m rooting for Mother Abigail!
The end game is the vaccinated dying off or having big health problems.
Sadly, I think you are spot on.
I believe Mother Abigail should use the Eminent Domain law and occupy one of Bernie Sanders’ lakeshore properties.
To heck with the cornfield. All of us that follow Mother Abigail will trek to the lakeshore to make Our Stand.
It will be like the American Indians and the flu. First wave kills many. Second wave kills many fewer as many in the vulnerable population have had immunity established. Every successive wave kills fewer yet until the Indians reaction to the flu was the same as the Europeans to what had become an endemic disease. Was a very similar event. Novel virus which Indian immune systems had never seen before.
Will be around forever because of the animal reservoirs established and because we have never developed an effective long term non variant specific corona-virus vaccine, including the mRNA stew currently injected. Think of the money left on the table not having a vaccine for the common cold.
Completely ignored other therapeutics like vitamins, ivermectin, zinc etc.
When sent to work from home as covid ramped up, that is the first movie I watched.
I think you are correct.
And that is one of the driving forces regarding vaccination.
The question remains if the government had been originally forthcoming regarding the Wuhan Lab and Fauci’s involvement would the current attitudes and perspectives around the world be different?
Fauci needs to come clean regarding this artificial virus. Basic questions need to be answered:
Will it degrade overtime?
What was lab’s projection if used?
As we watch China lockdown a city of 4 million again, over 13 cases, what do we need to know from the CCP?
What was the protection standard assumed once released? Surely not just shutdowns/lockdowns?
And since it is artificially made, is there a neutralizing protocol being hidden from the world? It is obvious the vaccines are barely effective and likely cause significant harm in other ways from the actual virus, if they are the neutralizing protocol...what’s plan C?
The only one who can really answer this stuff is Fauci, Birx, Pence, Trump, Pelosi, McConnell and now Harris/Biden. I do believe they have knowledge regarding what is essentially a top secret bioweapon. Yes, we can say certain factions played politics with events, but we must also recognize the rest of the world’s response too.
Stepping back from the tree in front of us, we can see the forest. And the forest fires of politics being burned.
Years ago I joined a ping list regarding deadly diseases. At the time it was an ebola outbreak (not the one under 0bama) we were tracking. We really were not watching the disease itself, but the African country’s response to it. Our conclusion at the time was if there ever was a great event, bioweapon, outbreak our governments would indeed be less than truthful. And that conclusion has remained true regarding Sars-Cov-2.
Fauci said years ago in an interview:
“If you’re talking about a vaccine that’s truly useful and will have a substantial impact on the epidemic it’s going to be more than three years. The most you can hope for by then might be a vaccine to protect against disease progression rather than infection.” Fauci https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd2491
Which very much sounds like where we are right now.
Primarily, he based his theory on a high AIDS rate for Haitian men, in the USA and in Haiti.
For months, Fauci claimed that none of the infected Haitian men were homosexual or IV drug users.
Obviously, some heterosexuals do get AIDS, but Fauci had a hundred million Americans believing AIDS would be as deadly for heteros as it was for gay men and IV drug users.
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