Yay. Someone hit the Ask Me Anything button…
That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? It’s what everyone wants to know. I’ve given it plenty of thought myself. And my conclusion is this: it’s the wrong question. The right question is ‘how will we be able to return to a normal life?’ The answer to that is going to vary, I reckon, on where in the world you live.
It seems to me that there are a few possible answers to ‘how’. A reliable vaccine is the one that most people seem to be pinning their hopes on. This could fix the problem worldwide. When? A year, maybe. Two years, maybe. Never, maybe.
Effective antiretroviral drugs is another answer. Anyone familiar with progress on combatting HIV might lean towards this. Decades on, there’s no vaccine, but there are drugs that have increased life expectancy in sufferers from about a year to something approaching normal.
I imagine that the right drugs would work even better with Covid-19, seeing as, unlike HIV, this is a disease that the body can fight off within a few weeks. This will work best in countries with a single payer, free at point of use health system. Parts of the developing world will remain screwed for a long time. When? Absolutely no idea. Not this week.
It seems to be that there’s one other ‘fix’ albeit a very unsatisfactory one. Mass, repetitive testing of the entire population with an effective reporting system. You’d need a test which is extremely cheap to produce and administer. Something everyone can do at home. Perhaps on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis, depending on the spread of the disease at any given moment. Positive tests mean self isolation. This will likely work in developed countries. Much less so in developing ones. When? Could be quite quick, couldn’t it?
There’s one last possibility. That Covid-19 mutates into something much less harmful. We have no control over this – our fate is in the hands of the gods. But it’s possible. Fingers crossed.
Needless to say, I’m no medical professional. My knowledge on the subject comes from a reasonable level of interest over the last decade or two and a ton of reading in the last month or two. I’m very much an armchair expert. Which, rather sadly, means that I seem to be over qualified for the role of political decision maker…
The Mexile 