|
You're probably right, but I think you're getting downvoted because you're not providing a source. Polio - "Poliovirus causes acute, nonpersistent infections, virus is transmitted by infectious humans or their waste, survival of virus in the environment is finite, humans are the only reservoir, and immunization with polio vaccine interrupts virus transmission." Dowdle WR, Birmingham ME. The biologic principles of poliovirus eradication. J Infect Dis. 1997 Feb;175 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S286-92. doi: 10.1093/infdis/175.supplement_1.s286. PMID: 9203732; PMCID: PMC7110371. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9203732/ Sars-CoV - "Research so far suggests many species can be infected. In lab experiments, cats, fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus), ferrets, rhesus macaques and hamsters have been shown to be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. Outside the lab, animals including pet cats and dogs, tigers and lions at zoos, and farmed mink have also caught the virus — probably from people." https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01449-8 So, coronaviruses can hang out in animals, which makes it really hard to eradicate because it will just keep showing up. With Polio, however, if you kill it in humans, it's not hanging out in animals, and it's just goooone. Plus, with Poliovirus, vaccine adoption was high because the thing paralyzes children. As a result, parents who were considering vaccination were sort of faced with a very straightforward question: "Do you want your child to be in a wheelchair for the rest of their life like the neighbor's kid, or do you want to give them a quick vaccine?." With COVID, we don't have such a clear-cut causal relationship in terms of "give your children this vaccine or XYZ really bad things will happen to your kid." If you don't vaccinate them now, as a parent, you won't have to explain to them 10-years down the road why you're the reason they have to spend the rest of their life in a wheelchair. So, although it's a bit premature to say anything, I think it's reasonable to expect that vaccine adoption will be a little lower. |
Oh well, love to hear anybody with a counter-argument. Is there something I missed?
It's hard to eliminate a virus that hides in reservoirs.
> "Practical disease control requires answers to two questions: 1) Can an acceptable level of control be accomplished without consideration of a reservoir? 2) If not, what populations constitute the reservoir? "
> "Given a target-reservoir system, policies to manage infection may contain elements of three broadly different tactics:
1) target control: directing efforts within the target population with no reference to the reservoir (e.g., human vaccination against yellow fever [23]);
2) blocking tactics: directing control efforts at blocking transmission between source and target populations (e.g., game fences to control FMDV in cattle); and
3) reservoir control: controlling infection within the reservoir (e.g., culling programs, vaccination, or treatment of reservoirs)."
> "These three approaches require progressively increased levels of understanding of reservoir structure and function."
Haydon DT, Cleaveland S, Taylor LH, Laurenson MK. Identifying reservoirs of infection: a conceptual and practical challenge. Emerg Infect Dis. 2002;8(12):1468-1473. doi:10.3201/eid0812.010317
Coronaviruses have a lot of reservoirs.
Shi Z, Hu Z. A review of studies on animal reservoirs of the SARS coronavirus. Virus Res. 2008;133(1):74-87. doi:10.1016/j.virusres.2007.03.012
Scope of the question was whether or not it is possible to eliminate the virus entirely a la efforts with poliovirus. I looked at the literature, and cited it. Doesn't seem possible at the moment, unless we decide to make all of the confirmed and theoretical animal reservoirs extinct (e.g. kill ALL pet cats and dogs).
Doesn't mean you can't vaccinate people so they don't catch it.