As major cultural events are forgotten, workplaces, bars, and restaurants close, and prominent politicians around the world go into quarantine, two simple questions about the novel coronavirus pandemic seem to rise above the rest: How long will this last? And how will it end?
William Haseltine, president of the global health think tank ACCESS Health International, who recently chaired the U.S.-China Health Summit in Wuhan, where the virus likely originated, has a theory.
“There are four ways,” the doctor told The Daily Beast. “One, it peters out with the weather. Two, everybody gets infected, so it’s got no new places to go… so it ends—but that’s a pretty horrible ending. Three is a vaccine, which is about a year away. Fourth way is the most likely: We’re going to have a few drugs, within a few weeks to a few months, that prevent people from getting infected—like PrEP for HIV—and for treatment.”
Let’s break those down.
“There are four coronaviruses which cause upper-respiratory infections like the common cold,” said Arnold Monto, a professor of epidemiology and global health at the University of Michigan who has advised both the World Health Organization and the Defense Department on communicable diseases. “Those tend to be very seasonal.”
But there’s no guarantee that will happen with this new, deadly 2019 novel coronavirus, he added: “There’s so much unknown.”
‘I Could Easily Kill Them’: Terrified Doctors Sound Alarm on Coronavirus
President Trump has been widely mocked for framing the outbreak, at least early on, as a problem that would disappear when the snow melts. But he wasn’t entirely off-base, experts have said.
Based on the epidemiological evidence currently available, there’s reason to believe that “with warmer, more humid weather” the virus will spread less efficiently, leading to a drop in cases, said Jeffrey Klausner, an adjunct professor of epidemiology at the University of California Los Angeles who previously worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
