When will the Pandemic end? Is COVID-19 going to end soon?
Consider this unfortunately familiar scenario. In late 2019, a highly infectious and sometimes deadly respiratory virus infected humans for the first time. It then proliferated faster than public health measures could contain it. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a global pandemic as it spread worldwide. The death toll is starting to rise and everyone is asking the same question. When will the pandemic end?
The WHO will declare the pandemic over when infections are mostly contained and transmission drops significantly worldwide. But exactly when that happens depends on what global governments choose to do next. They have three main options:
• Race through it,
• Delay and Vaccinate, or
• Coordinate and Crush
One is widely considered best, and it may not be the one you think.
And the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a global pandemic, meaning that it’s spreading worldwide.
Race through it
In the first, governments and communities do nothing to halt the spread and instead allow people to be exposed as quickly as possible. Doctors have little time to study the virus, and hospitals reach capacity almost immediately. Somewhere in the range of millions to hundreds of millions of people die, either from the virus or the collapse of health care systems. Soon most people are infected, some perish while others survive by building immunity. Around this point herd immunity kicks in, where the virus can no longer find new hosts. So, the pandemic fizzles out a short time after it began. But there’s another way to create herd immunity without such a high cost of life.
Delay and Vaccinate
Let’s reset the clock to when the WHO declared the pandemic. This time, governments and communities worldwide slow the spread to give researchers time to produce a vaccine. They gain crucial time using tactics like widespread testing, quarantining infected people and their contacts, and maintaining physical distancing. For more on hygiene and safety practices, read Soap vs Sanitizer: Which Works Best During COVID-19?
Even with these measures in place, the virus slowly spreads, causing up to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Some cities control the outbreak and resume normal life, only to face a resurgence and return to distancing. Once 40–90% of people are immune, depending on the virus, herd immunity starts, and the pandemic fades
Let’s rewind the clock one more time, to consider the final strategy:
Coordinate and Crush
The idea here is to simultaneously starve the virus, everywhere through a combination of quarantine, social distancing, and restricting travel. The critical factor is to synchronize responses. In a typical pandemic, when one country is peaking, another may be getting its first cases. Instead of every leader responding to what’s happening in their jurisdiction, here everyone must treat the world as the giant interconnected system it is. If coordinated properly, this could end a pandemic in just a few months, with low loss of life. But unless the virus is eradicated – which is highly unlikely – there will be risks of it escalating to pandemic levels once again. And factors like animals carrying and transmitting the virus might undermine our best efforts altogether.
So which strategy is best for this deadly, infectious respiratory virus?
- Racing through it is a quick fix, but would be a global catastrophe, and may not work at all if people can be reinfected.
- Crushing the virus through Coordination alone is also enticing for its speed, but only reliable with true and nearly impossible global cooperation.
- That’s why vaccination, assisted by as much global coordination as possible, is generally considered to be the winner; it’s the slow, steady and proven option in the race. If the pandemic ends after full vaccination, the virus may appear seasonally, so vaccines will continue to protect people. Breakthroughs in treatment and prevention of symptoms can make viruses much less dangerous, and therefore requires less extreme containment measures.
To understand how vital healthcare professionals have been during this crisis, read Significance of Doctors and Doctor’s Day.
Take heart: the pandemic will end. Its legacy will be long-lasting, but not all bad; the breakthroughs social services, and systems we develop can be used to the betterment of everyone. And if we take inspiration from the successes and lessons from the failures, we can keep the next potential pandemic so contained that our children’s children won’t even know its name.
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