(Lauren Pelley/ CBC News) — After billions of global COVID-19 infections, millions of deaths, and countless lives upended by long-lasting health impacts, we’ve finally hit a point in this pandemic where SARS-CoV-2 isn’t the fearsome pathogen it used to be.
Once thought to kill up to 20 per cent of those infected in the early days of 2020, COVID’s destructive potential is now being throttled by widespread immunity and regularly-updated vaccines.
Even so, this ever-evolving virus is with us to stay. It still causes rolling waves of infections, much like seasonal influenza or the common cold. It’s found across the globe, in animal populations from deer to cats to mink. And it keeps mutating to better dodge our front-line immune defences and re-infect us over and over.
We didn’t stamp it out, like many hoped. Nor did it destroy everyone’s immune systems, like some feared.
Instead, as University of Arizona immunologist Deepta Bhattacharya puts it, we’re now in a “stalemate” with SARS-CoV-2. (…)