There have been a few people in the lesser impacted countries (like today, in my immediate circle) saying maybe we should just let the disease run its course, and get it over with. That implies enormous human suffering and death, but beyond the moral, non-sociopathic reasons not to implement that, is the big scientific reason . The more people that get it, the more times the virus replicates and the larger the population of the virus. That means there is a greater likelihood of mutations.
There are already multiple strains, and it’s not clear the contagion with one strain provides even a moment of immunity to other strains. It’s not clear whether different medical outcomes are associated with different strains. The good-ish news (if you squint at it juuussssttttt right) is strains that are more deadly burn out quicker, so in the longer term, they are less successful in propagating. If a host dies, it means the virus stops replicating and ‘dies’ off as well. If it hasn’t already propagated, it won’t from a corpse.
Unfortunately, the long run is measured in human generations for this sort of thing - unless the virus just kills off almost everybody, and those that are resistant are the survivors. I don’t like that thought so I’m avoiding that possibility, but it would be quick! More likely, humanity will ‘mutate’ selectively (and probably with a scientific assist) to resist even a (very unlikely) successful deadly strain over time. Right now it appears that around half (or a quarter, or three quarters, or ninety percent or…whatevs) of infections are mild/asymptomatic and the other ones range from really horrible to life threatening and beyond. It is almost certain that, eventually, humanity will build up a resistance to this virus and it’s efforts at mutating as the next chapter of the long running war between living beings and the nanobot like pseudo life represented by a virus.
This is just math for the virus. If a person that has a resistance to the virus gets exposed to a wack of the virus, only virus mutations that can avoid that resistance can keep replicating. If people keep getting exposed to wacks of virus, it’s only the virus mutations that can avoid resistance that get to replicate. More people getting exposed to the virus, and trying to fight it off, means more strains and that make it harder for the body to fight it off. Its the game mankind has been playing with the flu since forever (in recorded history and undoubtedly before), and a war that has largely been won (yeah science!), over invasive bacteria altogether…although bacteria haven’t completely given up the fight - but that’s a different discussion altogether.
This is the same brand of virus that the common cold is. We are resistant to variations of the cold, and often win the battle when exposed, but mutations that can work around the resistance and/or temporarily overwhelm it keep the virus in circulation. For the flu, it persists better in colder weather, so is more likely to lead to outbreaks seasonally. It doesn’t go away in the summer - there is always flu in some host, replicating away, or it would just stop existing. They have a short shelf life, outside of an infected host. Taking away the ability to replicate, and burning the virus out, is what China, or if you don’t believe their data, New Zealand has done. If no people are exposed to other people for a month, the virus has either run it’s course in those infected, or not been able to transfer to a new host before is degrades, and ‘dies’ off.
This whole episode started when someone got a big dose of a virus from a bat (or pangolin or something), and a mutation within that population succeeded in finding a home in mankind. That’s how this all works. The mutation that could survive and pass from person to person is the one that did so. The previous million (or zillion or googleplexian or four or whatever) times a person got hit with a big dose of that very same virus, the mutation that could replicate in man didn’t happen, and we didn’t hear about it - there was nothing to hear about. A lot of epidemiologists would have bet of a flu virus mutating this way, but it was a corona virus in the event. ‘Life’ does stuff like that all the time, the jerk.
The more people that get this virus and dose other people and animals, the more likely more strains turn up, and more reservoirs the virus finds to hide in More strains are more chances for bad things to happen. We don’t want bad things to happen, so we want to limit the number of people that get exposed. Unfortunately that barn door is wide open, so now we need to get lucky. Scientists can help luck along, and mankind is nothing if not adaptable, so we’ll find a way through both this and Climate Change.
In my opinion, we would be better off if we can maintain a universal semblance of the ‘advanced’ world from the late twentieth century - where things don’t change very much very quickly. Progress yes, sudden change, not so much. People don’t like sudden change (unless they are in an uncomfortable place, and things can only get better). People are very good at getting comfortable, thus sudden changes get almost everyone on edge and grumpy, even when the present situation isn’t really that good. Grumpy and uncomfortable people are icky.
Just the technological changes of the last hundred years have left ‘older people’ uncomfortable - and by the end of their life, they end up sitting on their front step yelling ‘Damn kids! Get off my lawn’. ‘Older people’ are defined here as people that had made themselves comfortable in the world that existed when they were thirty-ish - that would encompass most people, from any cohort, as they age.
Now that the barn door (or Pandora’s metaphor or whatevs) has opened, the virus is likely to be transferred into animal hosts in places that have out of control spirals of infection and it will be extremely hard to avoid various strains of this thing for the rest of forever, as it applies to mankind. Later, in (hopefully a lot less than) a thousand generations of mankind and a whole lot more than a thousand generations of the virus, we will almost certainly find ourselves in a pseudo-steady state condition of resistance vs persistence with this virus, as we have with its cousins. It’s the time between now and ‘later’ that we have to worry about.
It is simply too late to get ahead of the persistence problem. This thing is going to rip through the underdeveloped world and the somewhat developed world like a chainsaw. The US/Europe/everywhere (except a few places in East Asia and New Zealand) have proved unable to completely hide away enough to burn the virus out. Say what you will about the Chinese, but they pulled it off in an absolutely massive population. Dictatorships come in handy in a crisis if the dictators are motivated to pull off good outcomes, and science driven. They can be pretty nasty when they are protecting themselves from internal unrest, so take the good.
In the ‘free’ world, the freedom to get infected and keep the transmission cycle going has been expressed across most nations. Just cus we have the freedom to be stupid doesn’t mean we should - but the species, most definitely including myself, is often stupid. Unfortunately, having the freedom to be stupid will be expressed by some portion of the population every time. Sometimes it takes too long to convince people about what they need to do. Countries that have a history of being compliant and getting along are predisposed to pull off the difficult trick of getting ahead of the virus. America, not so much. Here’s to living in a ‘free’ country that general follows expert advice, and goes along with stuff, whatever the stuff is, unless they have a good reason. We’re hardly out of the woods, even with that.
I’m particularly amused by at least some of the ‘preppers’. They have nuclear proof bunkers filled with enough food and water for decades, and of course, sufficient ammunition to survive the Apocalypse. Instead of hiding away in their bunkers, they are out protesting (in not very careful groups) in State capitals to open up the economy NOW!. This isn’t their preferred Apocalypse (no zombies), so it needs to be protested. That’s people for you. We do stuff like that.
Worst case is that this thing gets more deadly, and more persistent. More deadly strains will tend to burn out more easily, and eliminate themselves over time, but the Spanish Flu mutated into a more deadly form until that strain burnt out, taking a good chunk of the population with it. On the more persistent side of things, more persistent strains out compete less persistent strains, so are likely, not just possible. We may get to a place where a less harmful, more persistent strain gives resistance to other strains and becomes a natural vaccine of a sort. It’s happened before and some vaccines are injections of weakened or less aggressive variations of active viruses that give resistance to other strains (see cowpox/smallpox). That is actually the most likely end to the situation we are presently in, math-wise, without science doing anything in the meantime - possibly a long meantime that goes well into the distant future. Go Science!!
It’s the time before that ‘meantime’’s end that’s the trick, and where we will need a bunch of science and luck. The individual viruses that exist, and the more replications of viruses that occur, the more likely it gets more aggressive and the more likely it gets less so. The ‘more aggressive’ cases probably burn-out and the ‘less so’ cases are more likely to persist into the distant future. Science may intervene at any time, but usually trips over itself the first few times it tries something. We need to hope against ‘more aggressive’. Go Science!
Some advice. Before we get to that future - hide. With the virus out, into the wider world and replicating madly, stopping the occurrence of bad mutations is less likely, but getting ahead of a new mutation is still possible. We can limit the spread of any version of the virus by continuing to socially distance in parts of the world, and economy where that is an option, and supporting the people in the part of the economy that can’t hide with useful PPE. (I’m totally avoiding thinking about people in the less developed world as a coping mechanism, so their omission was not an oversight. Quite deliberate. Not because they are unimportant, but because they are important).
Anyway. PPE. I’m working on an exoskeleton that I can use for all interaction outside the home. It could be the next craze! Forget custom masks. That’s minor league stuff. I’m thinking Ironman, but with a better colour scheme.