[ianai]

It’s not just about saving the life of the person being vaccinated. It’s about not giving the virus anymore “fuel” to burn through. Every infection is a roll of many dice. Statistically at some point someone’s mutation will overcome even the vaccines we’ve made. If that spreads we’d be back in February of 2020.

[giantg2]

"If that spreads we’d be back in February of 2020."

You mean 'when'. There's no going back at this point.

[ianai]

You get the idea. The point is this isn’t about any individual persons life. This is about the vaccine being our only weapon that can actually stop this pandemic. If we just went on without a vaccine then we probably would see a variant arise that could live longer on surfaces or otherwise spread immensely more effectively or even more deadly. There’s nothing stopping a mutation from really killing 50-75% or more of people. The speed of evolution depends in part on the speed of replication -even in viruses. It’s a war of virus vs humanity.

[giantg2]

"actually stop this pandemic"

I think that's wishful thinking. This will be globally endemic just as the flu is. It will continue mutating in the unvaccinated population as well as the non-human carriers (like pets). Sure, if a lot of people are vaccinated, then it might slow the timeline down for when that mutation will emerge.

"There’s nothing stopping a mutation from really killing 50-75% or more of people. It’s a war of virus vs humanity."

A neverending war, as it always has been. I think the 50-75% casualty numbers are highly unlikely.

[ianai]

Last I heard, pets were still a one in a million or smaller likelihood. Doesn’t seem a likely place for a disease to bounce around long term. The unvaccinated population is the far greater problem.

[giantg2]

Probably. My point is that even 100% vaccination won't fully stop it since there are other carriers in the environment. They slaughtered a bunch of minks due to infection, so I would imagine there are other reservoirs out there (wild weasels, pet ferrets, some other species). After all, one theory is this virus got it's start though human-animal contact.

[ianai]

Thinking of this reply for a bit. From "How to survive a pandemic" by Dr. Greger, I recall this being an avian flu. So it's possible for covid to bounce around in them. Quick search, I'm seeing articles about even newer coronaviruses being discovered in birds. I don't think the wild population is the threat to most worry about creating future variants of covid. The biggest threat is probably where there are the biggest populations of birds in close quarters with one another and humans - on farms. Given how mink farms were recently slaughtered to stop the spread of covid amongst them, similar measures would be taken with poultry.

Avian viruses on farms have always been a big concern among the epidemiologists, if Dr Greger's book is any indication. Stopping the virus movements among humans and similar mass slaughterings among livestock could work. I takeaway that it's a statistics problem as to when and not if we see another virus capable of becoming a serious pandemic again.

The extent to which society learned how to monitor and react to new viruses during the covid-19 pandemic may well determine our fates next time.