Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Fool's avatar
  2. Santa Monica's avatar
  3. Charles Bakker's avatar
  4. Matty Silverstein's avatar
  5. Jason's avatar
  6. Nathan Meyvis's avatar
  7. Stefan Sciaraffa's avatar

    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

Brace yourselves: we may be years away from not worrying about the coronavirus

Brian Leiter

The South African variant is leading major vaccine makers to update their vaccines.   We are, I suspect, looking at at least yearly vaccines to protect against this virus.   Perhaps, as with influenza, vaccines that are not wholly effective will nonetheless protect against serious illness and mortality from the virus.   I'm as hopeful as the next person that the current vaccinations, which are just barely beginning in the U.S., will dramatically reduce mortality.   But I fear we are a very long time away from "normal" life. 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

2 responses to “Brace yourselves: we may be years away from not worrying about the coronavirus”

  1. Kenny Easwaran

    One potentially hopeful thing to remember – we've had well over 100 million cases in the past year, with (apparently) a few relevantly new variants. If vaccination can keep the annual case counts much lower, then the number of relevantly new variants will also likely be correspondingly lower.

    And if the worst we have to deal with is annual new vaccinations, that's not so much worse than many of us already do for the flu.

    Reply
  2. Rollo Burgess

    I fear that too.

    For almost all of human history, and for many people still today, the risk of death or serious illness caused by infectious disease has been very material. The situation often referred to as 'normal', where the risk for a healthy person to get seriously ill from infectious disease is negligible, is in fact very abnormal and anomalous, and only lasted for a few decades from the mid 20th century onwards and only in some fortunate countries. The only virus that has been eradicated in nature is smallpox and this is because it doesn’t mutate much.

    However, if we take smallpox as an example, it was with us for most of what we think of as history (Pharaoh Rameses V seems to have had it), and during these thousands of years humanity grew and prospered and many people lived happy and productive lives. And of course many people were killed or disfigured and doubtless suffered other long term symptoms – the virus was far more dangerous and more infectious than covid. But the show went on.

    Basically – with vaccines and treatment we can get this to a better point than it has been or is now, but it an endemic part of our ecosystem which is not going away. And there could easily be others. ‘Normal’ (1930s normal not 1990s normal) can return when we adjust our risk appetites.

    —–
    KEYWORDS:
    Primary Blog

    Reply

Designed with WordPress