I think the covid maiming issue will become more prominent in the media when people are vaccinated and the pandemic is brought under limited control in industrialized nations. As for now the focus is on vaccine roll out, cause folks need some good news too and Joe is providing it.
When we talk about long haulers the vast majority of them have damage from the infection and this is spectral, ranging from the barely perceptible to the life altering, many are re admitted to hospital, but the virus is cleared. The second bunch of long haulers are more insidious and dangerous, these are people who never fully clear the virus and become variant factories, it is suspected many variants originate there. Hopefully antiviral treatments and vaccines will help there too. The other source of variants will be the global unvaccinated population, which is why it must be a global effort and perhaps include some domestic animals too, but this virus is probably in wild primate species as well by now.
I figure in America most adults who want it or are required to have a vaccine should be covered by the end of June. 37 -40% of the US adult population have had at least one shot and most of the elderly, the impact on hospitalization demographics lately is making an impression, they are younger and unvaccinated.
This will be an issue moving forward, but apparently tweaking an existing vaccine is a lot quicker process than starting from scratch, perhaps boosters will be required. Also there are new therapeutics coming online, antivirals and newer more effective antibodies that are not affected by variants much if at all. We have several vaccines in less than than year that are in the 90% efficacy range and several antibody treatments, that is astounding in of itself.
