Will The Corona Virus Come To Stay With Us Forever?
Sadhguru had in one of his recent videos mentioned that the whole world could be impacted by the Corona Virus and the virus may eventually adapt to live in humans. People who are vaccinated and are immune to the virus will get over the infection fairly smoothly while others may have severe impact.
Though the impact of viral infection is fatal right now, it is interesting to note that scientists are also expecting the Corona Virus to mutate itself and become a less virulent version of itself over time.
Source #1: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/03/biography-new-coronavirus/608338/
“These viruses need time to adapt to a human host,” says Akiko Iwasaki of the Yale School of Medicine. “When they’re first trying us out, they don’t know what they’re doing, and they tend to elicit these responses.”
A few SARS-CoV-2 viruses that were isolated from Singaporean COVID-19 patients are missing a stretch of genes that also disappeared from SARS-classic during the late stages of its epidemic. This change was thought to make the original virus less virulent, but it’s far too early to know whether the same applies to the new one. Indeed, why some coronaviruses are deadly and some are not is unclear. “There’s really no understanding at all of why SARS or SARS-CoV-2 are so bad but OC43 just gives you a runny nose,” Frieman says.
Source #2: https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/how-viruses-adapt-from-animals-to-humans
Most “emergent” viruses that are new to humans are regular inhabitants of other species. In some cases, the animal hosts have reached a peaceful coexistence with their viruses, as in the case of bats. In other cases, the viruses are as deadly in their wild animal hosts as in us, as with chimpanzees and their immunodeficiency viruses.
Going further into the past, scientists have determined that agricultural and domestic animals delivered to us our most deadly pathogens. For example, smallpox spilled over from camels, and measles came to us from cattle, both many centuries ago. These virus infections were not a flash in the pan but stayed with us and infected most people as children until the recent past. If not for vaccines, these viruses would still be a routine and deadly part of childhood.
At the moment, the novel coronavirus is transmitting at an R0 around 1.4–2.5, which means it could continue to spread indefinitely. For comparison, seasonal influenza viruses have a median R0 of 1.28, a rate that allows them to spread every year around the globe. R0 is a dynamic parameter that can change rapidly. The transmission rate can change upward as a result of the virus’ evolution and adaptation to humans, or downward by changes in human behavior and technology.
For example, in the recent West African Ebola outbreak, the virus spread from human to human to eventually infect over 28,000 people. In this time, the virus evolved to become better at attaching to human cells, while becoming worse at attaching to cells of bats. This human-adapted lineage went extinct as the West African Ebola outbreak ended. The novel coronavirus could possibly follow suit and adapt to humans, thereby increasing its transmissibility.
If the virus continues to spread at its current rate, or at an even higher rate through its evolution, the novel coronavirus could be with us indefinitely. The virus would then join the ranks of persistent viruses our species has accumulated over millennia from animals people have hunted or domesticated. It may take a combination of changes in individual behavior, investment in the public health abroad, and the development of new technologies for the novel outbreak to end happily.
There is still lot of scientific study going on about the new virus but most of them think that the virus is here to stay and will be a less virulent version in humans in the years to come.
