The Doctor Who Eliminated Smallpox Says COVID-19 Is Here to Stay
Last edited Sun Jun 13, 2021, 05:25 PM - Edit history (4)
'The Doctor Who Eliminated Smallpox Says COVID-19 Is Here To Stay,' MSN/The Daily Beast, By Harry Siegel, June 13, 2021. - Ed. (~ Lengthy article, worth the read).
In some pockets of the United States, if you squint hard enough, the coronavirus pandemic might feel like it’s almost over. Larry Brilliant would beg to disagree. With U.S. COVID-19 deaths soon to surpass the domestic toll from the great influenza of a century ago even as widely available vaccines have worked wonders, Brilliant, the epidemiologist who worked with the WHO to help eradicate smallpox and was the science adviser for the eerily prescient film Contagion, thinks there’s still plenty left to worry about—but also lots of good news to appreciate.
- Larry Brilliant.
In an hour-long interview that’s been edited for length and clarity, I asked him about why he thinks it’s too late to hope for herd immunity, and what he thinks we need to be doing now in what looks to be a long fight against what he describes as a Forever Virus. We also ended up talking about MERS, SARS, Ebola, the “Spanish flu,” anti-maskers, biological warfare and Yogi Berra.
- Harry Siegel: Let’s start with the big question: Why is it that you think COVID-19 isn’t going away, and does that mean the U.S. is in a bubble right now, as vaccines are being widely distributed here?
- Larry Brilliant: Boy, I wish we could reach herd immunity. But there’s a number of reasons why we can’t. First and foremost, a virus that infects multiple species, animals and humans, and a virus that has multiple new variants, each one having the potential to reinfect people, is sort of disqualified from being a candidate to be eradicated.
Because in both cases, the denominator keeps changing, of how many people could be exposed to the disease. If you’re exposed to or get vaccinated against the disease and then a new variant comes in that can still infect you, the concept of herd immunity no longer really applies. And if animals—and we’ve got 12 different species who’ve been infected with COVID-19, usually from humans—if they can harbor it, and then infect humans, then you can’t eradicate the disease like we’ve been unable to eradicate yellow fever, because monkeys get it and they just don’t like to put their arms out to get vaccinated, and it’s really tough to get them to stand in line.
- HS: How should Americans who’ve been vaccinated and are feeling a sense of relief and maybe going inside restaurants again or sending their kids under 12 to camp for the summer be thinking about all this and their behaviors?
- LB: If they’re like me, they’ll feel grateful. After an abysmal start in 2020—where America was part of the problem, as China was part of the problem, instead of being part of the solution—we’re getting there. President Biden at the G7 announced that we will supply 500 million doses of mRNA vaccines to the rest of the world that needs it the most, and I’m very proud of that. And we should be very proud of the mRNA vaccines.
When I was at Google, we used to say that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and the mRNA vaccines and the speed with which they were made are, in many ways, magic. We shouldn’t forget that the scientists working on mRNA vaccines had been working on them for 10 years, and almost had an mRNA vaccine against MERS [the Middle Eastern Repository Syndrome that was first identified in 2012]. And that’s what helped us to get off of the starting line so quickly.
Just think about this: It took us well over 200 years after we had a vaccine before we could eradicate smallpox, 70 years after we had a vaccine against polio before we could have a global polio program.
And by January, really, a year from the day that COVID-19 began, we already got the start of a global vaccination program...
Read More...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-doctor-who-eliminated-smallpox-says-covid-19-is-here-to-stay?ref=home______
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- Larry Brilliant, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Brilliant
Lawrence "Larry" Brilliant (born May 5, 1944) is an American epidemiologist, technologist, philanthropist, and author, who worked with the World Health Organization from 1973-1976 helping to successfully eradicate smallpox...
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- 'Contagion,' *Scene Clips (10 mins). Follow the rapid progress of a lethal airborne virus that kills within days, as the worldwide medical community races to find a cure. (2011). Matt Damon, G. Paltrow. *Larry Brilliant was the scientific advisor for the film.
- Film wiki, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(2011_film).*Find film entry.
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- BBC, 'Covid: 'Contagion' film shows lessons around vaccine supply - Hancock,' *Feb. 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55917374
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- NPR, Fact Checking 'Contagion' Movie, Trending During Coronavirus. *Feb. 16, 2020.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/16/802704825/fact-checking-contagion-in-wake-of-coronavirus-the-2011-movie-is-trending
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