Photo By Thomas Balfour | Dr. Anthony Fauci, current director of the National Institute of Allergy and...... read more read more
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There is likely no end to COVID-19, but there is hope to get the virus to a level that does not disrupt society, returning life to something resembling a pre-pandemic normal, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to the President of the United States.
Fauci, current director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) at the U.S. National Institutes for Health, visited the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) as the speaker of the faculty senate-sponsored 2022 David Packard Lecture on April 11 in front of a crowd consisting largely of the military’s future healthcare providers, faculty, and researchers.
Fauci spoke about the current state of the virus, research, whether it could ever be eradicated and what the post-pandemic world meant for future healthcare providers.
“I’ve been the director of the institute for 38 years, so I’ve seen HIV, Ebola, Zika,” Fauci said, “and undoubtedly people are going to be talking about what all of us have gone through historically a hundred years from now; just the way we talk about the 1918 pandemic that was historically one of the worst scourges on humankind in recorded history.”
Fauci added COVID-19 was the worst virus of its type in more than 100 years, and it was unprecedented, in part, because scientists continue to learn something new and unexpected about it as time goes on.
“Who would have thought you would see multiple variants that were so different that previous infection did not protect you against reinfection? It may protect you… from severe disease, but it doesn’t prevent you from getting infected,” Fauci said. “Which is the reason why there are so many breakthrough infections of people who have been vaccinated. Already we’re seeing BA.2 come back up and have surges in the U.K. and in Europe.”
‘MEASURE OF CONTROL’
Fauci says it was unlikely that the world will ever be rid of the COVID-19 virus, but steps could be taken to reduce its impact on day-to-day life.
“Can we eliminate it? It’s not a ‘no’ but it’s an ‘I really don’t think so,’” Fauci said.
He said smallpox was a virus that could be destroyed because no animal reservoir could continue to feed the virus the way bats and other animals do with COVID-19.
“(Smallpox) was phenotypically stable, and that’s the thing you’ve got to realize — the smallpox of 100 years ago is the same as the smallpox of 50 years ago. It didn’t change,” said Fauci, adding, by comparison, that COVID-19 has mutated several times since the pandemic started.
“(Also) we had a widely accepted global vaccination campaign,” he said. “And … immunity from infection, or vaccination, was lifelong. A perfect setup for eradication.”
COVID-19 acts differently than smallpox in many ways.
“The problem is there are established animal reservoirs; we know that. Deer are getting infected, bats get new viruses that are Coronaviruses — the evolution of genotypical and phenotypically different variants … (and) there’s a lack of a wide acceptance and effective vaccines,” Fauci said. “Ninety-nine percent of the kids would get vaccinated against measles … but now we have a lot of anti-vax situations. And then we have waning of vaccine and infection-based immunity.”
Fauci said there is hope for control of the virus at a level that does not disrupt society.
“That’s really what we’re looking at — but the levels have got to be low enough that we’re not always looking over our shoulder, that we’re going to get into trouble if we get infected,” he said, adding the virus needs to be at the level of other viruses such as influenza or the common cold.
“Those viruses don’t disrupt society,” Fauci said. “They cause us some degree of morbidity and mortality but they don’t disrupt everything.”
According to the NIAID director, attention to ventilation, the possibility of yearly vaccinations as well as the availability of antivirals will be needed to get to that point.
“I would hope that when this is in the rearview mirror we will not have a very short corporate memory and will remember all of the lessons that we have learned over the last three and a half years, so that we never get into a situation that we’re in right now,” Fauci said.
WHAT MEDICINE AND SCIENCE CAN DO
During the question and answer portion of the lecture, Fauci spoke to how he thought the pandemic has changed medical education and what students should look for going into the future.
“In a number of ways, I think it has probably inspired more people to want to go into public health and medicine because they realize how much of an impact you can make; what you can do — all of you — when you get challenged with a public health challenge like this,” Fauci responded.
He added that it isn’t likely that everyone would have to go through as cataclysmic an event as another pandemic to choose to pursue a health care career.
“What I think it does, is it calls attention to how exciting the field of medicine and public health is,” Fauci said. “It’s not surprising that there are so many applications to medical school … so I think it is just showing you what medicine and science can do.”
Fauci said a decade ago it would have taken five or six years to get a vaccine out and now one can be developed in 11 months.
“It means the technology that you students are seeing now -- by the time you get through your internships, residency and fellowship, whatever you go into -- the technology is going to be mind-boggling,” Fauci said.
Fauci said when he was in medical school and later, during his infectious diseases fellowship, he could never have imagined what is possible today.
“So you’re going to have a lot of excitement ahead of you,” Fauci told the audience. “It’s terrible that so many people have suffered and died — but it tells you the importance of biomedical research and patient care.”
| Date Taken: | 04.12.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 04.12.2022 10:53 |
| Story ID: | 418324 |
| Location: | BETHESDA, MARYLAND, US |
| Web Views: | 324 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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