In this new world we live in, looking past the next week or two may seem a meaningless exercise. We’re doing so much to “flatten the curve” of the pandemic to within the capacity of the health care system, there doesn’t seem to be much thought of the progression of this epidemic once we get to the far end of the curve.
Covid-19 is not going to go away.
Most of us who are social distancing today will eventually be infected with the virus.
It’ll just be postponed to sometime later than it would have been had actions to flatten the curve had not been taken. Hopefully, for most of us, this will be after effective treatments have been identified or developed or, even better, vaccines have been created to innoculate us for this coronavirus.
The outbreak’s heaviest impact will move into the southern hemisphere as we transition into summer.
Laurie Garrett, a former senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer, writes:
Outbreak
What’s the worst case scenario for this pandemic?
There is already evidence of widening transmission of SARS-CoV-2 across the Southern Hemisphere, though the virus is currently taking its primary toll in the North. It is likely that 60-65% of Northern Hemisphere populations will be infected with the virus by July or August.
(Note: this was written before action was taken to flatten the curve—MpG)
As the epidemics seem to diminish later in the summer, action will shift to the South, with COVID-19 sweeping across Latin America, Africa and the South Pacific, similarly infecting upwards of 60% of populations. And then by December, it will make a slow return to the Northern Hemisphere, creating a North/South cycle that will persist for years.
Adding additional fuel to the South’s fire will be high HIV infection rates, with more than a third of HIV-infected Africans, in particular, unaware of their status and therefore not on suppressive medication, and immunocompromised.
We need to be looking beyond the next 2 weeks or the next 30 days and realize this is a new longer-term contagion that will become likely endemic—a seasonal disease that cycles through the population periodically, possibly with some natural resistance to future infections if you’ve already had it.