Ioannis Ioannidis, Professor of Epidemiology, Medicine and Statistics at Stanford University, spoke about the course of the pandemic on the front page.
Asked where the story ends with the mutations, he replied that “it is most likely that the coronavirus will not disappear. A virus that has infected about 40% of the world's population and continues to have active epidemic waves is extremely difficult to eradicate completely. As long as the virus continues to reproduce, mutations will be induced, this is inevitable. “This coronavirus is not a 'champion' of mutations in relation to other respiratory viruses such as influenza viruses, for which we have the fact that every year we have to deal with new mutations and last year's vaccines are usually useless.”
He went on to say that “in the case of the coronavirus we can be more optimistic, without this meaning that we will not be in front of mutations and we will have to adjust the possibility of vaccines to cover them”.
He explained that “in several countries of the world we have probably already gone into the endemic phase. A pandemic does not stop suddenly at 12:00 o'clock on a specific day. There is heterogeneity in different regions and countries. Some of them have already gone through the pandemic. In many other countries, including many European ones, it is possible that the pandemic has made its pandemic cycle and has entered the endemic phase and we will understand this when two things happen. One is that in terms of the numbers of cases, intubations and deaths we are in numbers that are not strange and are within the limits of what we see every year. The second is as a society we can live without being in a state of panic. Several European countries are moving to lift this second part, for example Denmark has lifted all restrictive measures and so far it is doing very well. The image of Cyprus is very close to the image of Denmark. “If someone changes the way we think, that we are not dealing with a virus that will kill us all but we have a virus that we will live with and most of us with some exceptions will do very well.”
Regarding the vaccine, he noted that “it is a very useful tool, it has helped and saved many lives. In the future it will especially be a tool that we will need. However, it is not very likely that the vaccine alone can stop the epidemic wave. We have seen in countries that have been pioneers in vaccination, such as Israel, that at some point they were at the top of the rankings, that is, although the vaccine was still relatively effective in reducing deaths, especially in the elderly and vulnerable groups, it failed to prevent the epidemic wave, ie people continue to transmit even if they are vaccinated. There is also the feeling that because they are vaccinated and feel that they are not in danger, they stop being completely careful. In some countries we have seen an oversupply of exposure and mobility beyond the 2019 level, with the result that even if the vaccine had some moderate efficacy in spreading the virus, it would lose it as well. But I see that there is a tendency to demonize the vaccine, the terror of the coronavirus has been transferred to a terror of the vaccine with terrible tendencies and controversies “.
Finally, speaking about the vaccination of children, he stressed that “it is a controversial issue, in countries that have very validated studies come to different conclusions. What we do know is that the risk is much lower than older people. In terms of deaths, the US had the worst picture and we are talking about five deaths per million for children under 18. In the Netherlands this percentage is eight times lower. Many of these deaths are in children outside of vaccination coverage. On the other hand we have to see what the side effects are. The most dangerous is myocarditis. However, its percentages come from passive vigilance, ie someone will have to send a yellow card if such an incident is recorded. We are talking about small risks, which if we multiply them by millions of children, we will unfortunately have some tragic cases from the coronation and I can not rule out that we will have cases of deaths from vaccines.
source: Sigmalive
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