German institute: Two years for pandemic to run its course

BetterWay

I've had the same sick feeling in my stomach all week about how long this will last


"BERLIN (Reuters) - The coronavirus pandemic is likely to take about two years to run its course, the head of Germany’s public health agency said on Tuesday, adding that much depended on the speed with which a vaccine against the virus was developed.


Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute, said that eventually some 60% to 70% of the global population would have been infected, recovered and acquired immunity, but it was impossible to say how fast that would happen.



“Our working assumption is that it will take about two years,” he told a news conference on Tuesday, adding that the timing depended on how long it takes to get a vaccine developed and deployed."


Full article https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-germany-millions/german-institute-two-years-for-pandemic-to-run-its-course-idUSKBN2141GT

krissovo

Read up on the timeline of the Spanish flu and the different waves, its clear that this will be similar but it will also end and return to a new normality.

CinemaGuy45

krissovo wrote: »

Read up on the timeline of the Spanish flu and the different waves, its clear that this will be similar but it will also end and return to a new normality.

That is what people are not getting things will never go back to the way they where before all of this.

Fred Cryton

Everything depends on the vaccine. Then people simply need to get the vaccine and they can happily go back to normal life. The elderly can be immunized en masse first. People may still get it here and there but the numbers will be low, hospitals easily able to cope and it will disappear from the headlines.

Hopefully we'll have something before next winter.

bilbot79

CinemaGuy45 wrote: »

That is what people are not getting things will never go back to the way they where before all of this.

Actually they will. Everything will be fine.

fryup

BetterWay wrote: »

Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute, said that eventually some 60% to 70% of the global population would have been infected, recovered and acquired immunity, but it was impossible to say how fast that would happen.

if the best way to acquire immunity is to get infected what's the point in staying indoors then??

CinemaGuy45

bilbot79 wrote: »

Actually they will. Everything will be fine.

With all the economic damage alone things will be different.

The airlines and holiday industry will be among the hardest hit.

grindle

fryup wrote: »

if the best way to acquire immunity is to get infected what's the point in staying indoors then??

If everybody gets infected at once or over the course of a month or two, the health system can't cope and many more people die unnecessarily.

fryup

fryup wrote: »

if the best way to acquire immunity is to get infected what's the point in staying indoors then??

Flattening the curve is all about keeping the volume of cases below the level the heath service can cope with. The area under the curve stays the same, which to me indicates the same number of people will get it, but at a rate that can be managed.

Manach

Historically it took generations for social patterns to emerge to combat an illness. For instance even when say Colera's origin was traced, it took decades to clear up the infrastructre that allowed it to spread. Thus unless the base reservoir is removed (open air meat markets) then two years is optimistic.

Harry Palmr

Until populations stop living with and eating animals there will always be a risk of viral jumps.

When this ends, the veggies and vegan movements will be letting us all know!

bilbot79

CinemaGuy45 wrote: »

With all the economic damage alone things will be different.

The airlines and holiday industry will be among the hardest hit.

Different than what though? We are literally just out of a global financial crisis and now we're in a recession. Nothing unusual here and everything will be fine as it always is.

krissovo

CinemaGuy45 wrote: »

That is what people are not getting things will never go back to the way they where before all of this.

The new normal will be positive, our kids will remember the hygiene habits were are introducing so less seasonal impact to colds and flu in years to come. More people will take the annual flu jab. Our health service may even get some new investment.

There is so much money being pumped into Europe and the US that while there will be short term failures after being stuck indoors to flatten the curve we will hit pubs and restaurants again. People will make money from the stock market crash, there will be a new flux of millionaires. Everyone I know is creating trading accounts and ready to make a few bob on the recovery as will come.

joseywhales

Just imagine the Geo political games if one country develops the vaccine 6 months ahead of another

joseywhales

joseywhales wrote: »

Just imagine the Geo political games if one country develops the vaccine 6 months ahead of another

From what I saw in sky news earlier, it looks like a lot of countries are collaborating on this, so it is unlikely one could monopolise the final drug.

threeball

fryup wrote: »

if the best way to acquire immunity is to get infected what's the point in staying indoors then??

Because if everyone gets infected at once the health system collapses.

the_syco

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Until populations stop living with and eating animals there will always be a risk of viral jumps.

Actually, multiple animals being next to each other causes this; humans lived closely with livestock for a long time until fairly recently.

Also, the less animals that there are to eat, the more often this will occur, imo.

Beasty

Harry Palmr wrote: »

When this ends, the veggies and vegan movements will be letting us all know!

Can you leave my movements out of this....

HattrickNZ

the_syco wrote: »

Also, the less animals that there are to eat, the more often this will occur, imo.

can you expand on that? How does less animamls give more viruses? Or is our immunity reduced? tks

HattrickNZ

threeball wrote: »

Because if everyone gets infected at once the health system collapses.

This reminds me that if everybody went to take their money out of their bank accounts you would have a financial collapse. which was an issue around the GFC..

eddie73

I thought about this yesterday. I am alone at the moment. Besides the trips to the shops and dropping off food to my parents, I could be looking at 18 months to 2 years alone. I got a very sick feeling about this yesterday. Self employed. All work gone. It's going to be very very hard indeed

nthclare

eddie73 wrote: »

I thought about this yesterday. I am alone at the moment. Besides the trips to the shops and dropping off food to my parents, I could be looking at 18 months to 2 years alone. I got a very sick feeling about this yesterday. Self employed. All work gone. It's going to be very very hard indeed

Im alone myself, can't meet parents, siblings etc
They have their own families to look after.

The only way this can be sorted out from a financial perspective is change the system.

Start at the top, there's too much now at stake.

Companies are holding onto their management structure and laying off the people who are doing the real work.
If they've no one to manage why the fck are they looking after each other?

Fcking greed to the highest order and the problem is there's not enough people with the courage to all get together and call a meeting with the management teams.

I have a friend who has an essential role in his company and he's the one who's doing maintenance, keeping certain areas ticking over, cleaning toilets, grease traps, painting, a bit of gardening, a porter, a handyman and they left him go kept on someone who looks after events, and another who does the wages, she's no one to do wages for only the 5 managers and 4 other clerical staff being kept on.

Everyone who's able to keep the business maintained as in make sure the place will be kept clean and tidy and might I add he's not getting paid half as much as the office staff.

The person who was helping the maintenance guy and the maintenance guy's being left off.
He's a great worker and gave 30 years to the business, he's seen plenty of CEO's and managers come and go and all these people who came after him some only in the business a year are being kept on.

This has to be addressed.

I heard that when we come back from this there could be a huge restructuring of businesses and a cap of 40,000 being the highest earning wages.
There fore enabling people who need a job to be able to get back to work and earn a decent wage, I'm only earning 30,000 myself.

If you cut out these salaries of 150,000, 90,000, 500,000,a year etc and bring it way down then there will be more people who'll have a chance to get back on their feet.

This will be a reset I reckon.

Wanderer78

nthclare wrote:

This will be a reset I reckon.

Just like the reset we got from the last recession!

nthclare

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Just like the reset we got from the last recession!

No I think this is going to be different, union's are going to get stronger they can't stop a pandemic but they can stop the greedy ****s looking after each other.

When I heard about my friend being ****ed over in order to protect a few on double his salary, who've no work to do, rather than keep him on to keep up maintenance etc.
That says enough.

You can be sure this is going on in a lot of places, like in the wars send the riff-raff over the trenches well sip away on our tea and coffee etc

Tally ho

Wanderer78

nthclare wrote:

No I think this is going to be different, union's are going to get stronger they can't stop a pandemic but they can stop the greedy ****s looking after each other.

I'm not convinced at all they ll be much change, the wealthy will probably just remain wealthy, and the rest of us will probably remain to being shafted

eddie73

nthclare wrote: »

No I think this is going to be different, union's are going to get stronger they can't stop a pandemic but they can stop the greedy ****s looking after each other.

When I heard about my friend being ****ed over in order to protect a few on double his salary, who've no work to do, rather than keep him on to keep up maintenance etc.
That says enough.

You can be sure this is going on in a lot of places, like in the wars send the riff-raff over the trenches well sip away on our tea and coffee etc

Tally ho

I wasn't really having a go at employers higher up the food chain here, I was making a general point. 28 students gone. All gigs gone. No one is to blame here. It's just the way it is now regardless. No work. No one to go out and talk to. The phone will be busy this week and months ahead

nthclare

Wanderer78 wrote: »

I'm not convinced at all they ll be much change, the wealthy will probably just remain wealthy, and the rest of us will probably remain to being shafted

Hopefully something good will come out of this, shafted I hear you and a lot of people have been shafted again by the same people.

Unfortunately there's some situations where people cannot go on running a business.

But there's always people who will capitalise on it too look after themselves and their middle class buds, while sending out emails to the rest of the staff saying, WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER, NOW **** OFF....

nthclare

eddie73 wrote: »

I wasn't really having a go at employers higher up the food chain here, I was making a general point. 28 students gone. All gigs gone. No one is to blame here. It's just the way it is now regardless. No work. No one to go out and talk to. The phone will be busy this week and months ahead

I know Eddie but im having a go at them, in some situations they're looking after themselves and people like yourself and myself and wanderer will be shafted.

Sorry to hear that you are having a hard time, we're in this together as they say.

krissovo

nthclare wrote: »

If you cut out these salaries of 150,000, 90,000, 500,000,a year etc and bring it way down then there will be more people who'll have a chance to get back on their feet.

This will be a reset I reckon.

Sounds great but no chance of a re-set, you are talking about a shift to communism or extreme socialism at best. Also those salary brackets are not typically in the impacted sectors that are currently struggling to remain afloat.

Elmer Blooker

krissovo wrote: »

Read up on the timeline of the Spanish flu and the different waves, its clear that this will be similar but it will also end and return to a new normality.

Nothing was done to stop the spread of 'Spanish flu' in 1918 as strict war time censorship covered it up, the last thing the authorities wanted was high absenteeism in the munitions factories. It was believed it would affect morale and the war effort.
We don't know yet how bad this pandemic will get but it will not be similar to the 1918 one.

Yurt2

Some sort of wage restraint on executives and an adoption of German style collective bargaining between workers and the C-Suite would be a good outcome. For wealthy countries with strong social cohesion (not I'd Ireland I'd argue, we're far too beggar thy neighbor to be first movers), universal basic income starts to make more sense.

The free-wheeling global tentacle 'f*ck you' capitalism started under Thatcher and Regan is on life support since the Great Financial Crisis, and this could be a knockout blow. This has shown how weak the growth at all costs agenda economy really is.

Vicxas

Elmer Blooker wrote: »

Nothing was done to stop the spread of 'Spanish flu' in 1918 as strict war time censorship covered it up, the last thing the authorities wanted was high absenteeism in the munitions factories. It was believed it would affect morale and the war effort.
We don't know yet how bad this pandemic will get but it will not be similar to the 1918 one.

I was reading up on the Spanish flu and it was so bad due to the fact that all the minor symptoms were sent back to the front lines while all the severe symptoms were kept back in the field hospitals and allowed it to mutate and get much worse.

I think the aftermath from this will be mostly positive. We will now have more focus on hygiene more awareness and proactive approach to combat diseases.

We were all worried that the economy was going to overheat but we've now set it back a good few years. Which sucks a bit

deathbomber

i completely disagree with the op(article) and some of the gloomy responses. Yes a vaccine is a while away but believe they are more or less have one and indeed have begun clinical trials which normally take a while but this will be fast tracked once deemed safe, i expect 1 to be available around November latest, there will be a delay with manufacturing and distribution on such a mass scale though. My main hope is that suitable anti virals are imminent and should be with us within the next couple of months, these should alleviate most of the issue. Until theen, grind it out and be a good citizen, wash your hands and do what is instructed:cool:

deathbomber

Vicxas wrote: »

I was reading up on the Spanish flu and it was so bad due to the fact that all the minor symptoms were sent back to the front lines while all the severe symptoms were kept back in the field hospitals and allowed it to mutate and get much worse.

I think the aftermath from this will be mostly positive. We will now have more focus on hygiene more awareness and proactive approach to combat diseases.

We were all worried that the economy was going to overheat but we've now set it back a good few years. Which sucks a bit

In a study done rather recently, it was determined lack of hygiene (due to war) and malnutrition were the main issue with the Spanish flu onset and deaths

nthclare

Vicxas wrote: »

I was reading up on the Spanish flu and it was so bad due to the fact that all the minor symptoms were sent back to the front lines while all the severe symptoms were kept back in the field hospitals and allowed it to mutate and get much worse.

I think the aftermath from this will be mostly positive. We will now have more focus on hygiene more awareness and proactive approach to combat diseases.

We were all worried that the economy was going to overheat but we've now set it back a good few years. Which sucks a bit

We'll get back to normal if we're all going to share the burden and be normal together.

The monetary situation world wide is going to have to be reset and bring everything down to affordability, cutting mortgages in half and 600 euros a week is more than enough to live on.

Cap wages at reasonable amount a week for big earners a week for a few years, let industry recover.

Stop buying rubbish from other continents and Europe should have enough resources to make it work.

snotboogie

nthclare wrote: »

No I think this is going to be different, union's are going to get stronger they can't stop a pandemic but they can stop the greedy ****s looking after each other.

When I heard about my friend being ****ed over in order to protect a few on double his salary, who've no work to do, rather than keep him on to keep up maintenance etc.
That says enough.

You can be sure this is going on in a lot of places, like in the wars send the riff-raff over the trenches well sip away on our tea and coffee etc

Tally ho

Unions are weak outside of the public service because multinationals can always just up and leave and SME's in general, can't cope with high wages. Unless there is an end to globalisation, unions will remain weak outside of the public sector. If there is an end to globalisation, Ireland as we know it is done, we have been a major beneficiary over the last 40 years.

Wanderer78

snotboogie wrote: »

Unions are weak outside of the public service because multinationals can always just up and leave and SME's in general, can't cope with high wages. Unless there is an end to globalisation, unions will remain weak outside of the public sector. If there is an end to globalisation, Ireland as we know it is done, we have been a major beneficiary over the last 40 years.

globalisation isnt gonna end, it might change, but it wont end

Wibbs

CinemaGuy45 wrote: »

That is what people are not getting things will never go back to the way they where before all of this.

Yes they will. And likely better than the way they were before. The 1918 flu a good example. It killed tens of millions worldwide, decimated some communities, and happened in the middle of a world war that that changed the maps and yet things got back to normal afterwards in most places. WW2 was an even bigger hit in many ways and again things got better for most places not so long after it was over. The trick is to survive such calamities.

seamie78

what you will see after this is a much higher demand from the electorate in relation to state provided services such as healthcare and housing, this sentiment was already growing the current situation will accelerate it, to pay for it tax loopholes for the wealthy will be closed. Because every country has been affected it may end up with a wider tax harmonization across the globe removing the risk of capital flight

Wanderer78

seamie78 wrote: »

what you will see after this is a much higher demand from the electorate in relation to state provided services such as healthcare and housing, this sentiment was already growing the current situation will accelerate it, to pay for it tax loopholes for the wealthy will be closed. Because every country has been affected it may end up with a wider tax harmonization across the globe removing the risk of capital flight

or is this just wishful thinking of some of us

bennyineire

Yurt! wrote: »

Some sort of wage restraint on executives and an adoption of German style collective bargaining between workers and the C-Suite would be a good outcome. For wealthy countries with strong social cohesion (not I'd Ireland I'd argue, we're far too beggar thy neighbor to be first movers), universal basic income starts to make more sense.

The free-wheeling global tentacle 'f*ck you' capitalism started under Thatcher and Regan is on life support since the Great Financial Crisis, and this could be a knockout blow. This has shown how weak the growth at all costs agenda economy really is.

Germany has more billionaires than America and has a far higher proportion of the population working at the minimum wage level than most European countries

Sweet.Science

Once the treatment gets better and these anti viral drugs get the go ahead things should start getting back to normal.
We are a couple of months away from them being used i would guess

Kivaro

bennyineire wrote: »

Germany has more billionaires than America and has a far higher proportion of the population working at the minimum wage level than most European countries

Jesus, that's distressing.
Maybe that's why they were so eager to allow so many millions into the country (and therefore the rest of the EU) 5 years ago .......... seeking out even cheaper labour.

threeball

seamie78 wrote: »

what you will see after this is a much higher demand from the electorate in relation to state provided services such as healthcare and housing, this sentiment was already growing the current situation will accelerate it, to pay for it tax loopholes for the wealthy will be closed. Because every country has been affected it may end up with a wider tax harmonization across the globe removing the risk of capital flight

Our health issues are being exposed by this virus but not in the way you'd expect. Its fairly obvious now that whilst top heavy management is a big issue, the real issue is the amount of wasters that show up to A&E for next to nothing and also the referrals from GP's who are afraid to be GP's because of insurance companies that aren't happening.

IMO the biggest change that needs to come after this crisis is to insurance. They have turned the world upside down. GP's can't offer medical advice, Kids can't play, employers and businesses are liable for virtually every action an employee or customer takes no matter how stupid. They are worming their way out of paying out on policies for floods, business interuptions and health care. They are currently a scourge on the world and radical reforms are needed.

Wanderer78

threeball wrote: »

Our health issues are being exposed by this virus but not in the way you'd expect. Its fairly obvious now that whilst top heavy management is a big issue, the real issue is the amount of wasters that show up to A&E for next to nothing and also the referrals from GP's who are afraid to be GP's because of insurance companies that aren't happening.

IMO the biggest change that needs to come after this crisis is to insurance. They have turned the world upside down. GP's can't offer medical advice, Kids can't play, employers and businesses are liable for virtually every action an employee or customer takes no matter how stupid. They are worming their way out of paying out on policies for floods, business interuptions and health care. They are currently a scourge on the world and radical reforms are needed.

a large proportion of the insurance industry is based on a parasitic model, it probably wont change, it certainly didnt after the last recession

yourdeadwright

I think the governments of the world will surprise people ,

This is something that politics will get in the way off I expect this to be dealt with swiftly enough and people to be really surprised at how well they do ,

BUT I expect the people to get screwed over more than ever once its gone and the treat of death no longer faces the wealthy as well as the poor,

threeball

Wanderer78 wrote: »

a large proportion of the insurance industry is based on a parasitic model, it probably wont change, it certainly didnt after the last recession

Probably not but it should. Its turning our world on its head. Theres no right and wrong anymore.

Sweet.Science

Sweet.Science wrote: »

Once the treatment gets better and these anti viral drugs get the go ahead things should start getting back to normal.
We are a couple of months away from them being used i would guess

You would guess?

All the experts are saying at least a year.

yourdeadwright

Aegir wrote: »

You would guess?

All the experts are saying at least a year.

There saying a year for the virus will not effect anyone but look at Wu Han there already starting on the road back to normality already ,

Wanderer78

threeball wrote: »

Probably not but it should. Its turning our world on its head. Theres no right and wrong anymore.

of course it should, but its now a complex mess, you d have to wonder, what the hell would change it

deathbomber

Aegir wrote: »

You would guess?

All the experts are saying at least a year.

they are saying a year for a Vaccine not anti virals, there are anti virals already out there i.e. for hiv and malaria etc which have been used and studies are being done of how effective they were, also i think there was 1 developed for SARS which is now being revisited and a clinical trial underway, i have no doubt there are many others on the way. Huge money to be made for the pharmas