{"id":207347,"date":"2020-05-16T07:43:52","date_gmt":"2020-05-16T07:43:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=207347"},"modified":"2020-05-18T06:25:38","modified_gmt":"2020-05-18T06:25:38","slug":"who-the-coronavirus-may-never-go-away-if-clusters-of-anti-vaxxers-oppose-a-vaccine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=207347","title":{"rendered":"WHO: The coronavirus &#8216;may never go away&#8217; if clusters of anti-vaxxers oppose a vaccine"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Hilary Brueck &#8212; Business Insider May 13, 2020<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The World Health Organization on Wednesday said no one &#8220;can predict when or if this disease will disappear,&#8221; but said that a vaccine against the coronavirus is the &#8220;one great hope&#8221; at eliminating the virus.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The WHO&#8217;s Executive Director of Health Emergencies said that he&#8217;s &#8220;cynical&#8221; that the world will muster the &#8220;will&#8221; to vaccinate against COVID-19, even if and when a vaccine is available.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8220;We have some perfectly effective vaccines on this planet that we have not used effectively for diseases we could eliminate and eradicate, and we haven&#8217;t done it,&#8221; the WHO&#8217;s Mike Ryan said.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">In the absence of a vaccine, the WHO&#8217;s chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan,\u00a0estimated it could take four to five years to get COVID-19 under control.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-204576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Corona-virus-fear-and-poverty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"243\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Corona-virus-fear-and-poverty.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Corona-virus-fear-and-poverty-300x203.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/>In November 2019, before the world had even heard of the novel coronavirus, <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/nov\/28\/samoa-measles-outbreak-who-blames-anti-vaccine-scare-death-toll\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>14 children on the Pacific island nation of Samoa<\/strong><\/span><\/a> were hooked up to ventilators. They were each fighting for their lives against a different, but also highly infectious viral disease: the measles.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">During that outbreak, 81 <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.who.int\/docs\/default-source\/wpro---documents\/dps\/outbreaks-and-emergencies\/measles-2019\/measles-pacific-who-unicef-sitrep-20200103.pdf?sfvrsn=82f90381_2\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Samoans died<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, and they were all deaths that could have been prevented with a safe and effective vaccine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">It&#8217;s this anecdote, among so many others of people who&#8217;ve died because they opted not to get their recommended shots, that has the World Health Organization worried that we may never get rid of COVID-19, even if and when there is a vaccine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8220;I don&#8217;t think anyone can predict when or if this disease will disappear,&#8221; the WHO&#8217;s Executive Director of Health Emergencies Mike Ryan said during a press conference on Wednesday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8220;We do have one great hope, if we do find a highly effective vaccine that we can distribute to everyone who needs it in the world. We may have a shot at eliminating this virus. But that vaccine will have to be available. It&#8217;ll have to be highly effective. It will have to be made available to everyone, and we will have to use it.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Ryan&#8217;s curmudgeonly assessment came just hours after the WHO&#8217;s chief scientist <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/69c75de6-9c6b-4bca-b110-2a55296b0875\">Soumya Swaminathan told the Financial Times<\/a><\/strong><\/span> that it may take &#8220;four to five&#8221; years to &#8220;control&#8221; the coronavirus, adding there is &#8220;no crystal ball&#8221; to know if things will get better or worse in this outbreak, or whether we&#8217;ll be able to develop an effective vaccine at all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Even getting a vaccine on the market, Ryan agreed, is still a &#8220;massive moonshot.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8220;This virus may never go away,&#8221; he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Most people in the world have not yet been exposed to COVID-19, which means the world is still in a very vulnerable spot.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8220;The current number of people in our population who&#8217;ve been <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/herd-immunity-few-people-have-had-the-coronavirus-who-2020-5\">infected is actually relatively low<\/a><\/strong><\/span>,&#8221; Ryan said, alluding to recent blood tests being taken around the world to look for antibodies, which so far (though the tests are still somewhat unreliable) suggest <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/herd-immunity-few-people-have-had-the-coronavirus-who-2020-5\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>less than 10%<\/strong><\/span><\/a> of the world has been exposed to the coronavirus.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">In the absence of a vaccine, then, it could take many years for the disease to settle &#8220;into an endemic phase,&#8221; Ryan said, where many people have been exposed, and it&#8217;s circulating like other seasonal viruses do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">In the US, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, where scientists are at work developing a COVID-19 vaccine, told members of the US Senate on Tuesday that a vaccine will certainly not be ready by the time university students head back to class this fall.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8220;Even at the top speed we&#8217;re going, we don&#8217;t see a vaccine playing in the ability of individuals to get back to school this term,&#8221; Fauci said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">If a vaccine does become available in the years ahead, there are also plenty of political, financial, logistical, and human-scale issues to solve about how it will be distributed fairly and cheaply, and whether there will even be enough <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/coronavirus-vaccine-glass-vial-shortage-could-delay-global-rollout-2020-5\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>glass vials<\/strong><\/span><\/a> and <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/rick-bright-whistleblower-statement-cronyism-led-us-covid-19-response-2020-5\">needles<\/a><\/strong><\/span> to go around.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8220;Science can come up with a vaccine,&#8221; Ryan said, &#8220;but if someone&#8217;s going to make it, then we&#8217;ve got to make enough of it that everyone can get a dose of it, and we&#8217;ve got to be able to deliver that, and people have got to want to take that vaccine. Every single one of those steps is fraught with challenges.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Only about half (53%) of US adults aged 35-44 said definitively that &#8220;Yes, I would get vaccinated&#8221; against COVID-19, if a vaccine were to become available, according to a <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/morningconsult.com\/form\/coronavirus-outbreak-tracker\/#section-99\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Morning Consult poll<\/strong><\/span><\/a> taken earlier this month.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Likewise, the percentage of US adults who feel &#8220;very comfortable&#8221; with vaccinations is declining, and the share of people who say they&#8217;re &#8220;not at all comfortable&#8221; with vaccines is on the rise, even since January, in the midst of this devastating pandemic, according to a <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/civicscience.com\/most-americans-would-opt-for-coronavirus-vaccine-but-some-are-wary\/\">CivicScience<\/a><\/strong><\/span> survey.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8220;Forgive me if I&#8217;m cynical, but we have some perfectly effective vaccines on this planet that we have not used effectively for diseases we could eliminate and eradicate, and we haven&#8217;t done it,&#8221; Ryan said. &#8220;We&#8217;ve lacked the will, we&#8217;ve lacked the determination to invest in health systems to deliver that, we&#8217;ve lacked the <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kff.org\/coronavirus-covid-19\/issue-brief\/eligibility-for-aca-health-coverage-following-job-loss\/\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>capacity to sustain primary health care<\/strong><\/span>,<\/a> at the front end.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/who-coronavirus-may-never-go-away-vaccine-years-off-2020-5?r=US&amp;IR=T\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More scare stories to convince us we need to vaccinate. After all, if pockets of anti-vaxxers remain it may be necessary to enforce mandatory vaccination<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[105,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-Health"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=207347"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207352,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207347\/revisions\/207352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=207347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=207347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=207347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}