We have often asked ourselves in recent months: when will this pandemic end? When will the masks go back to being just a distant memory? According to some, covid is here to stay: certainly not upsetting our daily lives forever as now, but becoming endemic, that is, similar to a seasonal flu. Many experts believe that total eradication of the disease is impossible, but a study published on the British Medical Journal Global Health feeds the debate by arguing that eradicating covid is possible.
To reach this conclusion, the scholars took into consideration 17 factors that influence the achievement of this goal: among these are technical variables, such as vaccination hesitation, the duration of vaccination immunity and the spread of new, more contagious virus variants. and resistant, but also political, social and economic factors, such as the acceptance by citizens of the restrictive measures and the ability of the various governments to manage the health emergency.
We have already done this. From 0 to 3 points were assigned to each factor, to understand if the eradication of covid, understood as “permanent reduction to zero of the worldwide incidence of infection”, was feasible. According to the results, it would not only be possible to eradicate covid, but it would also be simpler than it was in the past with the two polio serotypes (almost totally eradicated disease): with an average score of 1.6 (a higher figure corresponds greater ease of eradication), covid ranks between polio (1.5) and well below smallpox (2.7) which, let us remember, was eradicated in 1979.
Between saying and doing… But if it is true that eradicating covid is possible, it is difficult to imagine that it can happen without strong political will accompanied by large economic investments and widespread social collaboration. And it is fundamental, we add, to understand that we all live on the same planet and that the pandemic can only be defeated together: as long as you look only at your own backyard, talking for example of third doses of vaccine when three quarters of the world has not yet received one, eradicating this disease (and the next …) will be really unlikely.