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Opinion | Coronavirus won’t just go away. Here’s how Hong Kong can learn to live with it
- The near-certainty of Covid-19 being with us forever means officials should focus on encouraging people to protect themselves by getting vaccinated
- Doing so will require overcoming some behavioural biases – and a reframing of the case for vaccination, writes Donald Low
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With the impacts of Covid-19 stretching beyond public health, governments should consult experts other than those in hygienics, epidemiology and microbiology when determining and evaluating their policy responses to the pandemic. Professionals, especially social scientists, would be able to contribute to evidence-based discussions on how combine measures to limit the spread of the virus with efforts to provide economic relief, maintain a semblance of normality for society, and encourage people to get their vaccines.
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In the first year of the health crisis, suppression to minimise infections was probably the only prudent course of action. It is understandable that epidemiologists and microbiologists should have a dominant voice in advising governments. But it is also becoming increasingly clear that the goal of eliminating Covid-19 cannot be achieved as highly transmissible variants like Delta have been fuelling large spikes in infections across the globe.
Although vaccines offer very high levels of protection, the lack of sterilising immunity that prevents inoculated people from being infected also makes elimination of the coronavirus impossible.
In short, Covid-19 will become endemic and we must learn to coexist with the virus. It will continue to circulate at low levels in our community without crushing the health care system if immunity levels are sufficiently high.
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This scenario is not as terrible as it sounds – it is how we live with the viruses that cause the seasonal flu every year. But it does mean that achieving a sufficient degree of herd immunity will be a gradual process that involves both vaccinations and prior infections.
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