When the second wave of COVID-19 swept the world, which turned out to be much stronger than the first, there was no doubt that the world was repeating the path of a standard respiratory pandemic for the umpteenth time. This is how the Spaniard behaved at the beginning of the last century, and the Hong Kong flu behaved in the same way in the 60s of the XX century.
The first wave of the Spanish flu in the spring of 1918 passed in “light” mode, but the second brought with it a real “horror” in the fall and winter of 1918. Finally, the third wave in the spring of 1919 was medium in strength. And by the beginning of 1920 it all suddenly ended.
If we talk about the Hong Kong flu, then it also developed in three waves: from July 1968 to the spring of 1970. During each pandemic, the virus mutated, gradually weakening its properties, and then gradually became seasonal and abruptly left. However, what we call “abruptly” was in fact the result of the very herd immunity that we all expect so much.
As bioengineer Alexander Kudryavtsev told MK, historical examples tell us that there are only three waves of the pandemic: “Moreover, the first wave is relatively small in mortality, the second wave is maximum, the third in power is between the second and the first, and then the pandemic is declining …
But this is about the flu situation! It should be borne in mind that the situation with coronavirus is completely different. An example is the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome SARS, which occurred in November 2002 and completely disappeared in the summer of 2003.
This suggests that if it is possible to completely eradicate the coronavirus, then summer is the best time when it can be done, when nature itself helps us. Therefore, the speed of vaccine development is extremely important, otherwise we risk being left with this SARS-CoV-2 virus forever, as happened with the OC43 coronavirus, which annually causes 10-15% of colds. But its severity, of course, cannot be compared with SARS-CoV-2, it is carried, as they say, “on its feet.”
An important condition for the end of the pandemic, according to scientists, is 70% immunity of the population to the pandemic virus.
“However, we are talking about immunity at the same time for everyone and everywhere around the globe. And we do not mean cellular immunity, which protects against severe disease, but an intense antibody, which prevents the active spread of infection by neutralizing the virus,” explains Alexander Kudryavtsev – And this condition can be achieved only by universal vaccination of everyone and everyone, not only in our country, but in all other countries. Otherwise, as we already see in the example of China, which has achieved almost complete elimination of the virus by quarantine and isolation, the epidemic will be provoked the introduction of infection from the outside. “
Daria Khalturina, Chairman of the Board at the Council on Public Health and Demography, absolutely agrees with this: “There is no reason to expect that the coronavirus epidemic will resolve itself. .), it is far from group immunity. According to experts, in 2021 an excess mortality is planned not less than in 2020. Only vaccination can quickly stop all this. “
By the way, the threshold (76%) required for the emergence of herd immunity for COVID-19 has already been established in a separate city on Earth – Brazilian Manaus. And what? The spread of the virus there, alas, has not ended, people continue to get infected and die.
“I think the reason, most likely, is that the method of counting antibodies is wrong there,” suggests Alexander Kudryavtsev. “But even if everything is as reported by the sources, this is also possible. Because there should be not just immunity, but, like me already noted, tense antibody immunity for effective neutralization of the virus, as they say, at the approaches, so that it, even when it gets into the lungs, cannot multiply there.
There is another option: in Brazil, a mutant strain that escapes the generated antibodies, but this is a very bad scenario. “
Could the current pandemic end abruptly and suddenly? “In the event of an outbreak of the SARS virus, the conditions developed in such a way that it was possible, but such a course of events could have been expected in the summer after the first wave or during the Spanish flu pandemic, when population mobility was not so high,” Kudryavtsev continues. I would rather expect a scenario, as with OC43, when this virus has stayed with us forever, but vaccination can fix it.
Now more than ever it is necessary to unite all countries to fight this problem. If everyone is on their own, the pandemic will continue. And no matter where, in our country or in other countries that have decided not to fight the virus or cannot do it – having defeated the coronavirus at home, we will get it again from other countries in a year or two. “
Today, many fear that vaccines will be powerless against new mutations in the coronavirus. The latter, according to British scientists, is about 50-70% more infectious than the previous version. Yet scientists reassure: there is no reason to believe that the vaccines being developed today will not keep pace with the mutations of the virus.
As the well-known American epidemiologist Mikhail Favorov said on the social network, it is likely that the coronavirus simply “improved”, began to better approach a person, it became easier for him to enter the cell. The scientist writes that this is a natural process. The new strain of the virus has acquired an evolutionary advantage, and it is quite possible to replace the population of COVID-19 viruses with this particular strain. “However, the vaccines created today will be effective against the new strain: the mutation that has occurred does not affect the regions underlying the coding of vaccine proteins,” the scientist emphasizes.
Could it be that SARS-CoV-2 will constantly mutate and herd immunity will never appear? Alexander Kudryavtsev does not rule out such a scenario: “But vaccines – or rather, there will already be a whole set of antigens – can help us in this case too. However, I still want to draw attention to the old and working way of defeating any pandemic in the country – a two-month quarantine, which can one hundred percent eliminate the spread of the virus in the population. But this requires political will, which, apparently, only China and Vietnam have. “
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