Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I posted this about a week ago... https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/06/1015822/covid-19-immunity-likely-lasts-for-years/

Antibodies are only one small part of the puzzle...

Yup, here's hoping those t-cells and b-cells can stay mighty and active.

The opinion states "at least five months".  I did read someone is working on a booster/update.  And I'd guess at some point a variant will surface that is not well covered by the current vaccines. 

I wonder if the common cold first surfaced say 10,000 years ago, and humans developed immunity to it, but it morphed into something else, and then something else, etc.

Yes, I'd imagine that's how it works.  That's why the doctors and scientists point out that there is "a collection of various coronaviruses" that cause the common cold.  It's not just one virus variant, and it seems reasonable to believe that this collection of coronaviruses evolved over time, to work around the human immune system.

The current pandemic is being caused by a novel coronavirus, something our immune systems have never seen before.  That's why it's so transmissible, and also why it's so physically dangerous, at least for certain segments of the human population.  But over time, as the human immune system adjusts to it and encounters it more frequently, it's reasonable to believe the transmissibility, and physical danger, will diminish.

Yeah, if immunity (via vaccination and/or natural antibodies) only lasts 5 months for a decent % of the population, that's exactly why I continue to maintain that this is never going away.

I'd be willing to take a shot twice a year to make this go away.

I'm not willing to accept this as the new normal yet

that's what I'm hoping for

That's what worries me about some of the anti-vaccine folks.

The worst case scenario is that we always have enough people without immunity that not only is there a reservoir of small-scale transmission that is going on for years, stopping the chance to eradicate it, but that within that reservoir of transmission it mutates into something that the vaccine no longer offers protection for, or something with much higher lethality, or both(!).

The anti-vax segment in the USA is a small fragment of the global population that won't ever get access to the vaccine.  There are huge populations in Africa and southern Asia that are too poor, too remote, and too disconnected, to ever get on a vaccine radar.  And people from outside those regions, travel inside them, all the time.

We're not going to eradicate this.  I sincerely hope that no government official has that as a cornerstone of the plan on how to address this, now and forever after.  Because that would be a plan that is destined for failure.

damnit utee

that's not what I want to read this morning

That's just my take so read it for what it's worth.

I just sincerely, vehemently don't want to see "eradication" as "the plan" from anyone important whose job it is to make such plans.  That's not realistic for the reasons I've outlined.

I want to see other, solid, achievable goals put in place, as the plan progresses for moving forward and dealing with this thing as it bounces around the globe over the next 5-10-50 years.  Getting as much of the herd vaccinated as possible is the logical step 1.  But it's only step 1.  Beyond that, what else is being done to address it?

Wisconsin clicking back down, which is good news.