How long will we be dealing with the long-term ramifications of the virus?
“That’s the million-dollar question,” South Africa’s Gray said. “Hopefully we can control this in the next two years, but the issues of long Covid will persist. We will see a huge burden of people suffering from it.”
Life After the Pandemic
Over the coming months, a sense of what living permanently with Covid really looks like should take shape. Some places may forget about the virus almost entirely, until a flareup means classes are cancelled for a day or companies struggle with workers calling in sick. Other countries may rely on masking up indoors each winter, and an annual Covid vaccine is likely to be offered in conjunction with the flu shot.
To persist, the virus will need to evolve to evade the immunity that’s hitting high levels in many parts of the world.
“There could be many scenarios,” Yale’s Iwasaki said. “One is that the next variant is going to be quite transmissible, but less virulent. It’s getting closer and closer to the common cold kind of virus.”
If that evolution takes a more toxic path, we will end up with a more severe disease.
“I just hope we don’t have to keep making new boosters every so often,” she added. “We can’t just vaccinate everyone around the world four times a year.”
“It’s really hard to predict.”
--With assistance from Jason Gale and Jane Pong.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.