The Next Two Years of the Virus

and it's not the one we'd like. Anthony Fauci, the country's top infectious disease expert, told Bloomberg the IRUs isn't taking summer off. That's clear from its persistent spread in US Sun Belt states like Florida, Texas, and Arizona. Dr Fauci said it doesn't look like there's any significant impact right now from the weather. Looking past this summer, a new study will make good fodder for the debate about whether to send kids back to school in the fall.

It looks like school kids don't spread the virus to classmates and teachers, at least according to a study at the French Institute pasture. The study found that children appear to show fewer tell tale symptoms than adults and be less contagious. That could provide justification to some for reopening schools. Tennis player Novak Djokovic tested positive for COVID nineteen, two days after his exhibition tour in the Balkans was cut short.

The Adria tour was cut short after several other participants tested positive. Djokovic's public relation team emailed a statement today confirming that he also had the disease. Djokovic said in a statement that he was extremely sorry for each individual case of infection. He and the event had been criticized for embracing few virus restrictions and for holding parties in Belgrade,

and now for today's main story. More than six months into a shape shifting pandemic that's killed more than four hundred and fifty four thousand people worldwide, it's clear the virus is winning. Most experts believe an effective vaccine won't be ready until well into one So how do we adjust our thinking from beating the virus to coexisting with it? I spoke with Michelle fa Cortez about the next phase of the virus and what public health professionals say we

have to do to survive it. Now that we do have a little bit more information, both for the US and globally, what are the takeaways. What do we know, What does the next six months look like? What don't we know? At this point? The virus is still winning, The virus still still spreading widely in areas where we had had some success against it. It's coming back in when we look at places like Beijing and in different

parts of Asia, we're seeing new rising cases. But the bottom line is we have learned a lot about it and the next six months are going to be critical. The virus only has one job, and that's for it to spread from person to person. We have to take care of everything. We have to figure out how the virus works, where it came from, how we can treat it, how we can prevent it, and what does that look

like on the ground. As far as you know, some states are opening up, some states are thinking about actually imposing new restrictions. What have we learned in terms of how these lockdowns work, Are they successful or what are some of the other elements that have been adopted or should be adopted that have been shown to be successful against the virus. There are a lot of things that we've learned where we've had success, and it's interesting because we know what we should be doing, we just don't

know exactly how we should be doing it. So the ability to shut the virus down through things like wearing masks and social distancing and staying inside actually worked phenomenally well, perhaps to our detriment, because in a lot of places in the country, people are saying, I haven't been infected, no one in my family has been infected. I don't even know anyone who has been affected, and so it's very hard for people to follow some of these rules

when they don't see any practical implications for themselves. But the bottom line is is that the reason why you don't see anything is because it did work. The concern with public health officials is that we're not even out of this first wave yet. They're concerned that these rising cases we have, especially in the South and in the West and in other places around the world, that we're going to get to a second peak within this first wave, and then eventually, maybe by the end of the summer,

we're going to start seeing it dropped down. The concern is is that in the fall and in the winter we're going to see another surge, a second wave again that could be worse than the first one. Even with all this experience that we have gained over the last few months, what are some still lingering uncertainties that we have about the virus and how to combat it. There's still so many uncertainties here. The biggest one is how

long is any type of immunity gonna last? And that means if you survived a coronavirus infection, how long are you protected against getting it again. Certainly everyone's hoping for the rest of your life, but existing coronavirus is sometimes only offer three to five years of protection, and there's some evidence that there are people who don't produce any neutralizing antibodies, so they could be theoretically at risk from

getting it again immediately. Because the virus is so new, we don't have really good ideas about that, so that's a massive amount of uncertainty. The other big uncertainty is with the virus itself. Public health officials don't like to talk about it much, but in truth, viruses mutate, and we have no idea how or where this virus is going to mutate. It could be good news. We saw with Stars it mutated and it became less deadly, so

we can all hope for that. But it could also mutate and become even more deadly or easier spreading among the population. So no one wants to bank on on that either direction. So we could have better results as a result of the virus moving, we could have worse results as a result of the virus mutating. And for now,

they're just keeping on keeping on. And I was wondering, maybe if you could just sketch how maybe the next six months or even a year might go in that we're not necessarily done with coronavirus, but that we might maybe be facing a say rubber band effect of loosening and then tightening restrictions. The immediate impact that things that are going to be happening over the next month or two is actually a time when we should be seeing

cases decline. This is a respiratory infection. Everyone believes that it will be like every other respiratory infection in that it's cyclical and seasonal, so it should be decreasing in the summer months in the North and Hemisphere. Every other virus works like this in a normal situation. That's how viruses work, and so it should be declining. But we saw it with swine flew and with other viruses. When

something is brand new and everyone is vulnerable. If you have people really close together, the virus's job is just to spread from one vulnerable person to the other person, and it does that very efficiently. That seasonal experience doesn't come through as strong in a situation where the entire world is exposed, so they're they're still expecting to have

a drop in the summer months. So they're thinking that because people are not social distancing right now, because there is so much proximity to each other, that we're seeing an increase right now, but in in July and August, they really do expect the numbers to come down. That's both a welcome change that's also a fear because if everybody starts getting back together, then when fall and winter come along, we're going to start having influenza season as well.

And we've seen from previous outbreaks that the second wave is worse than the first wave. The first wave just primed everybody for this virus. The second wave could be even much stronger, and even though nobody wants to hear it. There are definitely some people out there who are talking about how we're going to shut down a second time. So, you know, we're still looking at a dramatic rise in case counts. We're still looking at, you know, having this

virus with us for months, if not years. Is there is there any kind of lights um on the horizon? Is there any good news that we can point to right now? Absolutely, we have learned so much about this virus, information that we can actually use on a day to day basis to make things better. So we do have a medicine that helps people who are hospitalized rem deservie and that helps people get out of the hospital more quickly, and hopefully it will improve mortality rates. It will help

people avoid dying from this. That's still to come, but the numbers look like they're moving in the right direction and that's a psychological relief as well. Some of the concern with coronavirus is there was no way to treat it, and so it's just terrifying to think that you're dealing with something that is untreatable. Now we have a treatment. We also know that deck's a method zone, which is

a steroid also does actually improve mortality rates. So we have two treatments that have been scientifically proven to be helpful. There has been enormous progress when it comes to a vaccine. There are ten different vaccine products that are in human clinical trials now. The pace of this work is breathtaking. The most quickly they have ever developed a vaccine before is four years. They're looking at twelve to eighteen months

this time around. I'm still on the fence about whether they're going to get there in twelve to eighteen months, but they're definitely going to get there. If it can be gotten, they will get there at some point for coronavirus. So the fact that we're looking at potentially a second wave, hopefully by the time that comes around, we will have a vaccine that will offer some protection. Not only that, we have a better ppe situation where people can use masks.

Doctors and nurses have enough gowns and face masks and shields to protect them when people are coming in. They know how to separate people with coronavirus from those who don't have it, how quickly to start medications, how quickly to start ventilation. So our ability to treat people who have this is better. Our ability to stop ourselves and protect ourselves from getting it to begin with is better

and on ourselves. Everyone gets to make that decision on their own, and the long term potential to actually shut it down entirely is there. They're working on it, so there is hope, so there's there's reasons for shall we say, cautious optimism for the future, excellent way of putting it. Yes, cautious optimism is a good way to say it. With skepticism. Protect yourself, but don't be completely negative about where this virus is headed. That was Michelle Fake Cortez and that's

our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Topha Foreheads, Jordan Gospure, Magnus Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Michelle Fake Cortez. Original music by

Leo Citrin. Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesca Levi. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.