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Comment by baxtr | Hacker News Reader

Why indefinitely? If that was the case we would need shots for the other cold viruses as well, which we don't. As you say, Sars-2 will turn into an endemic virus and thus we will get used to it over time, death rates will drop and it will turn into a cold. There is absolutely no historic precedent to think it will turn out differently.

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We get shots for the flu every year (or at least we should). That's the historical precedent.

Influenza is a different virus which mutates aggressively (recombinant), I'm not under the impression sars-cov2 is similar in this regard.

Buckle up. Quoted tweet[1] below:

Congrats to Ben Jackson, @maciekboni, @viralverity, @AineToole, @robertson_lab, @EvolveDotZoo, @arambaut et al for their recent Cell paper.

Rock solid evidence of alpha/non-alpha recombination in #SARSCoV2 in the UK.

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00984-3

[1]: https://twitter.com/MichaelWorobey/status/142851583662971699...

Can somebody ELI5 what this means, and what the implications are?

Yes, you are right. At the same time, flu viruses are very different from coronaviruses. We didn't get any shots against OC43 and the three other already endemic coronaviruses.

Also, note that older people and immune-deficient people (who are most likely those needing a shot every year) have been dying from ordinary cases of flu before, too.

The only reason we don’t “need” vaccines for other cold viruses is that they’re very rarely severe, right? I’d certainly take the shot if they existed.

Yes exactly. But how was it when they first appeared in the human population? We can't know for sure, but most likely they caused a heavy pandemic in the first years and then over time became "harmless".

Just think about how bacteria/viruses which were not really dangerous for Europeans wiped out entire populations in Middle and South America.

We don't have vaccines for the 200+ viruses that cause "the common cold". The flu, which is usually a more serious disease, has a vaccine that is updated and offered yearly.

80% of US medical personnel already take the yearly flu shot.

If this is so clear, then my current question is how long would that take?

I would say 3-5 years without vaccines. See for example the 1889 pandemic [1], which might have also been induced by a coronavirus. It's hard to say with a vaccine since there is no real precedent. If I had to guess I'd say 1-3 years?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889–1890_pandemic

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