This is Mølbak’s last word as a permanent employee at SSI before retiring after almost 38 years at the department, where he started as a medical student.
– An actual elimination of SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus, ed.) Is at best future music, and it must rather be considered an impossibility.
– In return, the vaccines will get better and better, and we will learn to live with this new disease – like so many other respiratory infections, Mølbak writes in the article.
He points out that the only human infectious disease that has been eradicated worldwide is smallpox.
Therefore, he also considers it unlikely that the coronavirus will be eradicated.
This is because the disease is more contagious than smallpox, it can be transmitted between animals and humans, and coronavirus is contagious even when people are asymptomatic. Smallpox is transmitted only from people with symptoms.
Although we do not get rid of the coronavirus, we can learn to live with it, says Kåre Mølbak. He bases this on the fact that the vaccines become more effective over time, and that we can live with it among ourselves as with so many other respiratory infections.
Although Mølbak estimates that the corona situation looks better in the spring, he cannot predict to what extent the restrictions can be loosened.
– If the risk groups are vaccinated and the infection pressure is low, the consequences of letting the infection “escape” everything else being equal will be much less both for the individual and for society, he writes.
However, he stresses that there will still be a risk of outbreaks as long as the population is only partially vaccinated.
Source: The Nordic Page