Bijal P. Trivedi is a National Geographic editor and the author
of Breath from Salt, which chronicles the quest to cure children
with cystic fibrosis—and the dawn of personalized medicine.SARS-COV-2 MOST
LIKELY WILL EVOLVE
AND CIRCULATE FOR
YEARS. AS LONG AS
MANY OF US ARE
UNPROTECTED,
NONE OF US IS SAFE.
lethal than any of its predecessors,
Delta swept through the world’s second
most populous country with relent-
less ferocity, overwhelming health-
care workers, packing hospitals with
feverish, oxygen- starved patients, and
sending bodies to crematoria where
funeral pyres blazed around the clock.
By July, Delta was becoming thedominant variant worldwide, and by
September, it had pushed U.S. deaths
past the toll from the 1918 Spanish flu,
making COVID-19 the deadliest pan-
demic in the nation’s history. More
than 750,000 Americans had died by
early November. But the coronavirus
has hit some communities harder:
Indigenous, Hispanic, and Black Amer-
icans have died at the highest rates.
The pandemic laid bare anotherglaring health disparity, the global
vaccine divide: an abundance of doses
in countries where people didn’t want
them and a shortage, or absence, in
those where people did.
Nine months after the first COVID-19 vaccine was authorized, more than
80 percent of all the shots had been
given in high- and upper-middle-income countries. While people
in poor nations were still waiting for a first one, wealthy nations
were approving boosters for vaccinated individuals.
The result: Millions around the world have died from a disease
that in most instances can be prevented with a single injection or
a two-dose regimen.
Even as vaccines are distributed, we may never be completely
rid of this virus. The four coronaviruses that cause the common
cold are endemic, as are the viruses descended from the one that
sparked the Spanish flu, which killed 50 million people worldwide.
Experts say the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus most likely will hang
around, evolving and circulating for years. But as people develop
immunity, outbreaks will be smaller and the virus will cause less
acute illness.
We will be stuck not only with the virus but also with a little-
understood and harrowing legacy: Ten to 30 percent of the
hundreds of millions infected may suffer from lingering and
potentially debilitating symptoms. So-called long COVID—which
includes ailments from brain fog, memory loss, and fatigue to
erectile dysfunction and menstrual changes to loss of smell and
taste—will require new treatments and therapies.
In the meantime, as long as many of us are unprotected, none
of us is safe. Unvaccinated people provide a reservoir for new
variants to arise. It’s imperative both to persuade those who are
hesitant to get a vaccine—which provides greater immunity than
getting COVID-19—and to deliver vaccines to even the most remote
communities. COVAX, a multinational initiative to make COVID-19
vaccines available everywhere, expects to reach the two-billion-
dose milestone early this year.
That’s a step in the right direction. But as 2021 showed us, and
as Delta has taught us, the virus doesn’t care about our timeline
or our rules. jYEAR IN PICTURES: COVID