Four Minutes of Doubt: What are the odds of ending the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022?

In 2022, the world once again ushered in the year under the new crown epidemic. With the rapid spread of the new crown variant strain, The microcosm, the world has ushered in another wave of epidemic "tsunami": the number of new cases in a single day in the world exceeded 2.8 million, the number of new cases in the United States exceeded 1.4 million in a single day, and the total number of new crown cases in Europe has exceeded the 100 million mark.

Standing at the beginning of this year, this slightly deserted New Year makes us wonder: How can we draw a rest for the epidemic? This year, can humanity end the COVID-19 pandemic? 、

Chen Jian, CEO of Trade Winds Technology and data science consultant of Zhang Wenhong's team: Poison mutation is eternal and has always been mutating. At present, according to some of our simulation models, in Europe and the United States or many places, most of the population in the current situation, it is likely to be infected quickly and then get immunity, it is possible to achieve a certain sense of herd immunity.

Zhao Dahai, executive director of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University-Yale University Joint Research Center for Health Policy: The main reason for Tedros' assertion is to give governments and the public the confidence to continue to fight the new crown, and his main basis is the global new crown vaccine, that is, by the end of 2022, theoretically, the vaccination rate of the new crown vaccine in most countries in our world should reach or exceed 70%, that is to say, the immune barrier to prevent and control the new crown virus has been established through the new crown vaccine. Of course, from my personal point of view, I don't yet have a very scientific basis to predict that 2022 will be the last year of the new crown virus.

Chen Jieliang, associate professor of Shanghai Medical College of Fudan University: We have also seen that in so many times, there are many mutant strains, of course, only a few strains that are popular in the population are finally retained, these strains have actually gained some advantages, carefully analyze what advantages it has? The main point is two points, one is that it is more contagious, and the other is that its immune escape performance will be stronger.

Early strains like alpha, which we mentioned earlier, may be an increase in the ability to "unlock", that is, its contagiousness will increase. Then to beta, to gamma, to delta, these strains are more of an increase in immune escape, because its transmissibility is already relatively high.

So my prediction is that if there is a mutant strain later, there may be a chance that the immune escape strain will appear. At the same time, it may be further integrated with its infectivity, like alpha and beta, because the mutation site of the Omiljun strain this time is already a relative set of large, which reflects the advantages of the sites of these mutations in the previous strains.

Of course, one of the main reasons in this, I personally think it is because the base of virus infection is very large, in fact, there are many mutant strains in the process of this kind of human interaction between people and viruses, because they have not obtained the advantages just said and died out, and these strains that have been screened down by natural selection, the most suitable for the population, it will stay.