I guess that most news people are averse to calling the pandemic an "extinction-level event. However, I do have the liberty to call it a potential extinction-level occurrence. My premise is based on the fact that when the vaccine was first developed we had less than 1 billion infections. As we know only 1 in 1,000 mutations is a survivable one (roughly) and of those that are survivable mutants, only 1 in 1000 of them is a "useful" mutation.
Okay, since we know that this disease mutates readily, we can figure that the more people infected the more mutations the disease will be able to make. Since we had the vaccines and there were less than 1 billion infections, logically we should have attempted to wipe it out entirely by producing and placing as much vaccine as possible. Of course, that would have meant that our pharmacy companies would have had to give up or at least share their patent rights with other producers. That they fought vigorously against and that left us with the next theoretical assumption.
Because the disease has morphed into delta which is even more contagious than the original, we are having to deal with another surge in infections. Even worse is that within this first year we now have the lambda variant which is a mutation that is not only as increasingly infectious as the delta it is also able to elude the protections afforded by the vaccines. Meaning that we actually now have a new disease for all intents and purposes.
Meanwhile, we have been unable to vaccinate ahead of the disease fast enough to disable it's ability to mutate ahead of our defensive efforts. Thus I can project that, without the ability to stay ahead of this disease enough to stop it from mutating away from our ability to control it (especially for financial and/or political reasons), we are setting the stage for it to eventually morph into a more deadly and more infectious "satan bug" (a virus able to kill all it infects as well as able to infect all it comes into contact with and for which we will not be able to deploy a cure in time to defeat).
If that occurs, and we are heading in the direction needed to cause such a disaster to unfold, then we are heading towards an extinction-level event. I say this because someone needs to start thinking about matters like this in a very serious fashion now, while there is still hope that something might be done and not later when all hope is well on its way to being lost forever.
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Just keep it civil.