[jacquesm]

That's the equivalent of 'a mere matter of engineering'. Developing anti-viral drugs is hard, for plenty of viruses we have vaccines but no anti-virals, for RNA based viruses (which mutate rapidely) anti-virals are even harder.

[thaufeki]

Thank you. I'm not aware of the complications of developing an anti-viral for this disease (and I'm not going to go into the debate around existing anti-virals). I did not intend to be dismissive of the effort involved. I'm coming at it from a place of real frustration.

I can't see how this pandemic ends without an effective treatment.

[jacquesm]

It may not end.

We missed the 'golden window' early on in the epidemic when (for instance like SARS-CoV) it could have been contained. But now we have a real problem. The big difference between SARS-CoV and COVID-19 is that the former first gives you symptoms and then makes you contagious and with COVID-19 it is the other way around. That simple fact alone possible made it impossible to contain this. But we never really tried (except for a very few countries).

[grioghar]

Yeah, I had a real hard time with this at the beginning, knowing how people behave.

Trying to be as apolitical as possible here, but the leadership flopped hard and wrong here, and…well…welcome to the endemic reality.

As an aside: the World of Warcraft model was more accurate than most would have expected.