How long will our lives be affected by the COVID pandemic or some variation of it?

[milestogo]

Masking, vaccines, virtual meetings, restricted travel, etc.

27 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	My life is unaffected
	0 (0%)
	A few more weeks
	0 (0%)
	A few more months
	1 (4%)
	6 months to 1 year
	0 (0%)
	1 to 2 years
	4 (15%)
	More than 2 years
	3 (11%)
	Years and years
	3 (11%)
	There is no end in sight
	14 (52%)
	I have no idea.
	0 (0%)
	OTHER
	2 (7%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
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[BlueTsunami2018]

1. It's never going away.

We’ll never be able to get rid of this with such a large portion of ignorant assholes in the country. It’s just going to keep mutating. The latest variant completely ignores the vaccine. We had a chance to knock this down and failed.

[madville]

2. It's a worldwide problem

Regardless of what the US does, there are going to be new mutations coming out of Africa, Central and South America and poor parts of Asia for years or decades, maybe forever.

Say 30 million people in the US never get the vaccine, that’s just a drop in the bucket if there are billions around the world that also never get it.

That doesn’t even account for people getting boosters or if effectiveness wanes significantly or disappears after a year or two. It’s going to be impossible to keep the entire third world current on effective vaccines.

Or if we get a variant that completely dodges the vaccine, it’s right back to square one getting the world vaccinated.

[Texaswitchy]

3. Yes.

The horse is out of the barn.

Just more vaccines.

[marie999]

4. I figure about 2 years, but that does not mean we won't need annual boosters.

[Ka-Dinh Oy]

5. When the repukes quit making it political.

[Delphinus]

6. Then

we might as well say forever, or until one of the virus mutations actually does catch up with them.

[Tomconroy]

7. I really know nothing about this but it seems like it will

Be like the flu. Comes back every fall, but hopefully sort of manageable.

[Make7]

8. I am afraid this is going to be around forever similar to the flu.

There will be vaccines that will help, but won't be effective enough or used widely enough to stamp it out completely.

There will be therapeutics that will lessen the severity of illness for most patients, but not for everyone.

We will probably get to the point where everyone quits follow many of the precautions (e.g. masking, social distancing, etc.) and just lives with the fact that 50,000 to 100,000 people will die from Covid variants every year.

I hope someone develops medication that can prevent hospitalization and severe symptoms for almost everyone (or discovers that an existing medication would do the same). And I also hope the world isn't too dumb to widely share an effective treatment with everyone at little or no cost.

[Initech]

9. Let's put it this way - there ain't no going back.

But at some point this thing will become controllable and manageable like Influenza did. And we'll be able to live a more normal life than what we've been used to the last two years.

[BannonsLiver]

10. Illuminating.