Quote:
Originally Posted by snowball
Booster shots won't be needed if we can stamp it out this year or early next year. But we all know that's not going to happen because there are some people holding us back.
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It isn't just anti-vaxxers holding us back. Another unfortunate and inconvenient truth is -- so far, only the wealthy countries have reliable access to the effective vaccines. The poorer countries have very poor access to those effective vaccines, and that reality just means the pandemic will continue to ravage them for some time. As the pandemic continues, new variants will emerge, and there will come a point when a new variant is fairly good at defeating the existing vaccines.
Add world travel and global economy to the mix, and you can guarantee the new variants will spread around. Countries with strong immigration programs -- Canada and the US immediately comes to mind -- cannot stop people from flying back to their countries of origin for whatever reason, nor can they stop them from returning, so the virus will continue to spread.
This COVID genie is out of the bottle already. I can picture how it might mutate to become less virulent over time, much like how many different diseases have done, but it ain't gonna go away ever. It has already made too large an established base.