Predictions???
Out of context: Reply #103
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- kingsteven2
Some big ol' guesses to pass the time:
Testing will confirm that Covid-19 patients are no longer infectious in the decline phase... The virus is currently still detected for up to several weeks by tests but will be found to have been rendered inactive by antibodies. More accurate testing will be developed that will allow patients to be released from ICU/ isolation earlier.
Estimates on the timing and original location of the first transferal from animal to human are skewed because the virus had mutated back on itself in loops resembling earlier strains meaning it was spreading in Europe undetected in early December.
Viral testing will be required for all outbreaks of influenza-like illnesses in Schools, Hospitals, Care homes.
Serology testing will confirm antibody profiles which greatly increase the chance of serious illness/death (ie. if you've developed antibodies for certain viruses in the past you will be at far bigger risk of dying from lower respiratory issues/ cytokine storm when your immune system attempts to fight Covid-19)
This will develop in to serology tests being introduced for combinations of antibodies... combined with other tests for general immune maturity this will be the 3rd type of testing rolled out (after Covid-19 detection and Covid-19 antibody detection) to identify further at-risk patients who haven't yet had the disease. This will cause many people to isolate until a vaccine is available and we'll forget they exist except for occasional articles "How some are coping 1 year in to SARS-Cov2 isolation." ... They may be the only people to ever receive the vaccine.
Headlines like "a cold you had years ago may kill you yet" and further popularity of tests like the above will create a boom in 'immune fingerprinting' (i thought i just invented that term but its a thing) people will pay to send swabs to private testing companies to find out their infection risk and get an 'Ancestry DNA' style profile of diseases they have had (and may have not even realised) and sign up to alerts that notify them of their risk to new viruses. This may even end up as a credit-rating style service for immune defence.
Studies will show that mass chronic stress, lack of sleep and malnutrition caused by social distancing and isolation measures contributed to the ease of spread of the virus by lowering the immune response of the populous and in some individual cases made the difference between mild and severe symptoms.