Community Spread of nCoV2019: Is Endemicity Possible? Tracking Zebra
Lately, one of the questions I ve been asked is how I see the novel coronavirus outbreak ending. It is a complicated question that is hard to answer. One outcome that I think is worth exploring, as a thought experiment, is that the novel coronavirus outbreak ends with the virus become one of the coronaviruses we deal with perennially (i.e. it becomes endemic as a human viral respiratory virus). The trajectory of the virus has demonstrated its capacity for sustained human-to-human spread at a rate higher than SARS. As such, I believe this virus is spreading akin to a community-acquired coronavirus such as OC43, 229E, HKU1, or NL63. With those coronaviruses, a winter/spring seasonality is present. Thus, I wonder if this virus absent control efforts currently underway that may dampen the seasonality or smooth it would exhibit this type of seasonality. It has clearly no need, currently, for whatever animal reservoir(s) it jumped to humans from.