2022 and victory over covid-19

I'm going to go out on a limb here with one prediction for 2022:  this will be the year we finally defeat the covid-19 pandemic and life returns to something like the pre-2020 norm.

This doesn't mean I think the disease will entirely vanish.  That's probably not achievable in the foreseeable future.  My criteria for success are that (a) covid-19 becomes no more deadly or burdensome than the ordinary flu as it was before 2020, and requires no more onerous precautions to deal with; and (b) it becomes safe to resume most in-person activities as before 2020 without masks.

Before 2020, the death toll from the ordinary flu was a few tens of thousands per year in the US, and people needed to get a new flu shot every year to deal with the constant emergence of new strains.  If we reach the point where the death toll from covid-19 is similar, and the only precaution people need to take is a vaccine booster shot every year or every six months, then we'll be in a situation we know we can live with, because we were living with it all along before covid-19 emerged.  And if people can go shopping, attend public events, and socialize with strangers without the need for masks, life will feel normal again.

I base this prediction partly on the likely trajectory of changes in the virus, and partly on technological progress.  Natural selection tends to make disease germs more infectious but less deadly over time, and the characteristics of the omicron variant suggest that this is already happening with covid-19.  Data from South Africa indicate that the omicron surge is already subsiding there, barely a month after it began, even though that country's vaccination rate is much lower than that of the US.  Also, growing numbers of treatments, some of them available in pill form, are showing promise for fighting covid-19 infection.  And vaccine research continues; the US Army claims it will soon have a vaccine which will be effective against all covid-19 variants, including possible future ones.  If so, this will be a game-changer, since the new vaccine will have been developed by the Army rather than a private company and thus will not carry any patents barring it from being widely produced and distributed in poorer countries.  Even if the Army vaccine doesn't pan out, research is continuing all over the world and we can expect new treatments and vaccines at an accelerating pace.

These developments are rooted in a more fundamental factor.  We can think; the virus cannot.  The virus changes, but those changes are driven by the blind forces of mutation and natural selection.  We can study and understand the virus, and devise new plans and treatments based on what we learn.  The virus cannot understand what we are doing, or plan anything.  This is an example of the observation in my profile:  "in the long run, human intelligence is the most powerful force in the universe."  Given enough time, the power to understand and think and plan can out-maneuver and defeat almost any mindless process.

It's true that the US will continue to be plagued by vaccine rejectionists (as are several other countries, for various reasons).  But their numbers will erode.  Most covid-19 deaths now are among unvaccinated people.  The number who are vaccinated keeps creeping up as less hard-core rejectionists come around for one reason or another.  Those who are infected and survive will gain some immunity, even if it's far inferior to vaccination.  Vaccine improvements and other treatments will reduce the danger to the vaccinated.  Far more importantly, the vast majority of unvaccinated people are outside the US, so that's where the main danger lies that a pool of unvaccinated is enabling the emergence of new variants -- delta and omicron originated outside the US.  The danger posed by unvaccinated people is the same regardless of where in the world those people are.  And most of them are unvaccinated because of unavailability of vaccines, not because of rejectionism.  Vaccinating as many people as possible globally is the key to reducing the risk posed to Americans by the unvaccinated.  Even if a certain element of the US population never accepts the vaccines, minimizing the global number of unvaccinated will still solve most of the problem.

Finally, it's important to keep perspective.  So far, the official world-wide death toll from the covid-19 pandemic is between five and six million.  Even if you believe the true number is two or three times that, due to under-reporting and inadequate testing in some countries, remember that the 1918-1920 flu pandemic killed between twenty-five and a hundred million people, out of a global population less than one-quarter of what we have today.  Our century's more advanced medical technology has already saved millions upon millions of lives, compared with what could have been.

In the battle between the virus and the living mind, I'm betting on the latter.