I'm a bit surprised no one has commented on my earlier post (#6,627) about white-tailed deer acting as a wild animal reservoir for corona virus.
If this is as widespread as that paper shows, it would explain the curiously rapid spread of the virus, but it would also essentially dash any hopes of eradicating the virus in North America, or the world.
Vaccinations would protect individuals, but it couldn't get us to herd immunity. That herd now includes all humans, all white-tailed deer, and possibly other species as well.
I noticed the NPR article about mutations and the endgame forecast for the coronavirus. Some of it is sobering, if not downright depressing:
>>>Six months into the pandemic, the virus seemed to be following the predicted course. "To date, there have been very few mutations observed," molecular biologist
Peter Thielen at Johns Hopkins University told NPR in June 2020 for a
story with the headline: "This Coronavirus Doesn't Change Quickly, And That's Good News For Vaccine Makers." Then in December 2020, right around the holidays, SARS-CoV-2 shifted course, drastically. . . .
So all of a sudden, it looked like SARS-CoV-2 not only was mutating but was doing so quite rapidly. Last month, Kistler and her colleagues at the University of Washington
published a new metric to measure how quickly SARS-CoV-2 is evolving as it adapts to living inside humans. When Kistler first saw the value, she was shocked. "SARS-CoV-2's rate of adaptation is remarkably high right now," she says, "like roughly four times higher for SARS-CoV-2 than it is for seasonal flu." . . .
"I don't think SARS-CoV-2 will stop adapting," Kistler says. "It may slow down, but viruses that evolve adaptively tend to keep doing that. They don't tend to hit the limit of evolution."
This fast evolution has immense implications, many scientists say. It essentially dashes the hopes of eradicating SARS-CoV-2 in the U.S. or even in smaller communities. As with the flu, the coronavirus will likely be able to reinfect people over and over again. It will keep returning year after year.<<<
Hopefully we do reach a point where it becomes more like the common cold, as suggested in the article.
Switching back to a more depressing possibility, I find myself wondering if the politics surrounding the virus will eventually fade. It seems like it might be part of the political landscape almost indefinitely.
Pandemic predictions have been made — and then things would change. But based on models and studies (including a 1980s test that squirted virus up human noses), researchers have a new endgame thesis.
www.npr.org
