Dominating the first half of 2020, Coronavirus is definitely here to stay for a long time. It was nearly 4 months back when my CEO had asked all of us, his employees, to work from home until things get better for resuming work from office again. And in the last team call a couple of days back, he informed us that we might have to continue working from home like this for longer than any of us had expected.
Getting straight to the point, this virus has certainly gotten onto the nerves of almost everyone now. With India now reporting around 28000 daily cases with such consistency, all the claims by the Government of having things under control only sound vague. The only ray of hope around is the news of some of the vaccines in development having shown successful results in the trials. A team of IIT Delhi have come up with Corosure, promoted to be the cheapest alternative in the market. Russia is planning to launch a vaccine by mid August. Earlier, ICMR had asked Bharat Biotech to increase their efforts in making a vaccine by August 15th. And there are many other vaccines in limelight too, one being of Oxford and a few from China, etc.. Though all these may seem like a relief for us, but we need to understand that making these vaccines available to the mass would be a Herculean task in itself which would take time and resources.
But will these vaccines, even if they are made accessible to presumably everyone, ensure the end of SARS CoV-2? My doubts here are mainly because of how vaccines ideally work. Vaccines are supposed to train our immune system to recognize and combat pathogens, by introducing certain molecules of those pathogens in our body. That way, people aren't infected and their immune system is assumed to be immune to future infections. But with many cases where we hear people catching the virus for the second time are making us a little less optimistic. In some cases, the second time infections are found to be less severe, but in some, the symptoms are much intense and severe. Weren't people who recovered from the disease supposed to have become immune to the virus? That's exactly why many people were betting so highly on the possibility of achieving natural herd immunity. To explain what the term means, it's when the population of people having the immunity against the virus is comparatively much larger than the ones not having the immunity, reducing the possibility of an outbreak. That was probably one reason some people assumed they need to get infected to achieve the immunity. And people thus started gathering together, having Corona parties, intended to have people infected in the hope of making them immune further. This led to a lot of fatalities as well, as the healthcare system being limited, with such a surge in the numbers, many infected didn't get the treatment, thus meeting their unfortunate fate. But if people are getting infected twice, certainly it questions our move ahead. The vaccines might make us immune for a few days or months, but would that be enough? We thus might need to be vaccinated at regular intervals to maintain the immunity, which isn't easy to achieve worldwide. Even if I stick to India, not everyone can afford to bear the cost of frequent vaccinations, even among those who can, many might not prefer to be vaccinated because of various reservations. How effective would the vaccines alone be in that case, if we rely fully on them without maintaining our personal hygiene. Even today when the only way out for us is to keep washing our hands and wear masks in the open, many don't seem to care, many people in USA have their bizarre reasons for it too.
I don't intend to make anybody pessimistic, humankind has a long history of figuring a way out from many difficult situations. But we need to remember, here again, we need a genuine and practical way out. And maybe the solution might not be a one fit all.
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