system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: COVID-19 isn't something we "snuff" out or stop.


A lot of people, from my understanding, seem to think that to stop COVID-19, we need to "snuff" it out, meaning stopping the spread entirely by eradicating the disease. This isn't how viruses or diseases work. You don't "eliminate" a virus, its just not possible, you teach your body to defend against it. You can eliminate from your body sure, but to destroy every last instance of a viruses is impossible, someone will always have it and even if you were able to magically eradicate it from every person, many animals can still host viruses and pass them to humans. We shouldn't be looking at the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the virus that leads to the COVID-19 diease) as something to eliminate, but as something new that we have to train our bodies to defend against.

Thats where vaccines come in, that's what a vaccine is for. It's not to stop the spread, or to slow it, that is not the purpose of the vaccine, the purpose is to help your body detect and eliminate threatening viruses. Many previous viruses and diseases like the Bubonic Plague and the influenza virus are still around, even though they are hundreds of years old. This is because we developed a vaccine or treatment to help our bodies defend against them.

TL/DR - You don't kill viruses, you learn to defend against them.

Edit: Coming back after 3 months since I wrote this post, it is clear to see that this is exactly the direction the world is going now, especially with the current administration saying it isn't something to eliminate and to prepare to live in a Covid world.
gpt
> You don't "eliminate" a virus, its just not possible

> to destroy every last instance of a viruses is impossible

We did it with smallpox and two types of poliovirus, with the third getting close. Okay, to be fair, we didn't *completely* eliminate them; some labs are currently allowed to keep samples for research purposes. But they are eliminated outside those samples and if we stop keeping them, that would be absolute elimination. Looking a bit less globally, several other virus types have been eliminated in various regions and/or are getting close to it, as well.

Where you're right is that we don't currently have viable methods for eliminating *every* virus, and it's looking very unlikely that COVID-19 will be one of them. We had a chance and we blew it.