Coronavirus can now be categorised as one of several respiratory illnesses with seasonal variation, Geir Bukholm, assistant director of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH), has said.
Source: Covid-19 in Norway can now be compared to the flu, says health chief – The Local
At least three promising antivirals that could prevent symptoms and limit transmission of Covid-19 are in clinical trials.
Source: A daily pill to treat Covid could be just months away, scientists say
The normal progression of viruses.
There aren’t many places left for the COVID-19 virus to mutate and evade immunity as it will only get weaker with time, said the creator of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, the most widely distributed jab in the world.
Source: Not Many Places Left For COVID-19 Virus To Evade Immunity, Says UK Vaccine Creator Sarah Gilbert
Would have been helpful for this info to have been published widely to the public a while back, among media fear mongering of each variant is going to be worse.
I’ve been saying this but I am a brain injured idiot with no relevant experience:
Pandemics only truly end through immunity – via vaccination or acquired by having the disease (or the virus mutates into a less lethal form). NPIs never bring an end to the disease, they only delay the inevitable.
Leading up to Labor Day weekend (Sep 4, 5 and 6), the “experts” warned us of a “Surge expected after Labor Day” as people would congregate and not wear cloth facial coverings when hanging out with friends and neighbors.
Health experts fear a post-holiday COVID-19 surge could already be brewing, after several days of potential super spreader events.
Source: Labor Day weekend: Health experts fear COVID-19 spike
What actually happened
Sep 1, 2021 was the peak day for the 7-day moving average. The peak occurred before the Labor Day weekend and has gone down since.
Nearly every “super spreader” event the “experts” predicted, never happened. Remember, Christmas? Cases were actually trending down just prior to Christmas and collapsed in January. Remember Superbowl weekend? That too was to be a super spreader. But cases continued to collapse. Various football games last winter and again this fall have been proclaimed as super spreaders – but they were not.
The track record of forecast superspreader events has been awful and leads many to think the experts have no clue.
Sturgis SD motorcycle event was also forecast as a superspreader – and SD’s epicurve, like many other states, did start climbing around then. But that is more random correlation. Many states that had no large events were also rising. The Sturgis event has several hundred thousand attendees – but only 5% come from South Dakota. Four states send more attendees than South Dakota, for example (SD’s population is pretty small). It likely did lead to a number of new “cases” but not as a superspreader.
My state’s health and science university issued a report in late August projecting that by the end of 2021, about 90% of the state’s residents will have been vaccinated or acquired immunity by having had Covid-19. At which point, the pandemic is mostly over with.
On that notes comes this new model:
The delta surge appears to be peaking nationally, and cases and deaths will likely decline steadily now through the spring without a significant winter surge, according to a new analysis shared with NPR by a consortium of researchers advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Source: Is The Worst Over? Models Predict A Steady Decline In COVID Cases Through March | WBUR
But note that disease models have had the accuracy of astrology, so there’s that too.
The end point to a pandemic is immunity – either via vaccination or acquiring immunity by having had the disease. Vaccination is a safer approach than having Covid.
The head of vaccine-maker Moderna said on Wednesday that the coronavirus pandemic could be over in just a year, also predicting that it could become similar to the current situation with the flu.
Source: Moderna CEO predicts pandemic could be over in a year | The Times of Israel
Hmmmm. Not sure what to make of this yet.
Wuhan and US scientists were planning to release enhanced airborne coronavirus particles into Chinese bat populations to inoculate them against diseases that could jump to humans, leaked grant proposals dating from 2018 show.
Source: Wuhan scientists planned to release coronavirus particles into cave bats, leaked papers reveal
Good grief. Ohio University was regulating student travel within the United States (you know, their own country).
Ohio University has lifted its suspension of student domestic travel activities. Effective immediately, students are not required to seek approval from their college when planning domestic travel.
To test whether face masks work in blocking the virus from being transmitted among people, the study measured how much S-CoV-2 is breathed into the air and tested how much less virus people sick with COVID-19 exhaled into the air after putting on a cloth or surgical mask.
Face coverings significantly reduced virus-laden particles in the air around the person with COVID-19, cutting the amount by about 50 per cent, the researchers found.
However, the loose-fitting cloth and surgical masks didn’t stop infectious virus from getting into the air, they said.
Source: Coronavirus Variants: Covid Variants Getting Better At Travelling Through Air, Study Shows
The “Alpha” variant (we are now at Delta) put 43 to 100x more viral particles in to the air than did the original virus.
The study authors say we now need to use real high filtration, tight fitting masks, not cloth facial coverings.