Until you have a full natural history of a disease, there aren\u2019t many answers.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAt this point, Taye says, there are more unknowns about COVID-19 than there are absolutes. \u201cResearchers don\u2019t fully elucidate the mechanism of how the virus is transmitted and has persisted in the external environment. Anyone is at risk.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ll know more once there\u2019s a documented natural history \u2014 defined as the \u201cprogression of the disease without any intervention,\u201d Taye says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In some ways, COVID-19 is similar to other diseases. We can learn from them.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nCOVID-19 has a 79% genetic similarity to the SARS virus, Taye says. \u201cBoth of them jump from animal to human, and both have similar kinds of clinical presentations, [such as] flu-like symptoms. The biggest difference between SARS and coronavirus is, [with] coronavirus, people can transmit the disease while they are asymptomatic. But in SARS, people spread the virus when they are critically ill or symptomatic. So, it was simple to identify sick people and contain the SARS epidemic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOne of the biggest mistakes policy makers can learn from the SARS epidemic is that there was an effort to develop a vaccine, but it was stopped because we controlled SARS,\u201d Taye says. \u201cThat vaccine could have been used now or could serve as a good starting point to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This isn\u2019t the worst pandemic we\u2019ve seen. It\u2019s just the worst in our lifetime.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cSpanish flu is the worst pandemic on record. Between 50\u2013100 million people worldwide died. The case fatality rate is also very high for Spanish flu.\u201d The major difference with COVID-19 is that the spread may be higher because travel is more accessible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Long term, we will develop immunity through infection or a vaccine.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nStudents in Taye\u2019s course studied population attributable fraction, the proportional reduction in population disease or mortality that would occur if exposure to a risk factor, like COVID-19, were reduced by an alternative ideal exposure scenario, such as social distancing and using face masks. But those are short-term solutions to a long-term problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA lot of people are infected because COVID-19 is a novel virus and no one is immune. But after time, when the majority of people are infected, we will develop antibodies. Then the chance of reinfection is expected to be low, [as long as] there is no mutation \u2014 meaning no new strain. However, emerging evidence is not in full favor of community-level immunity (herd immunity) resulting from previous infection.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The only game changer would be developing immunity via vaccine, Taye adds. It might be similar to the flu vaccine \u2014 a slightly different formulation administered each season because new strains pop up through mutation. To prevent a rebound of the coronavirus pandemic, the population needs a vaccine. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Step inside biology professor Bineyam Taye’s spring virtual classroom and learn his understanding of the novel coronavirus\u2019s epidemiology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1222,"featured_media":4855,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[251,553],"coauthors":[168],"class_list":["post-4854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-discover","tag-biology","tag-covid-19"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-1gi","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2020\/07\/052820_Bineyam_Taye_MDD_00029.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4854"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4900,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4854\/revisions\/4900"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4854"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}