'Get used to the idea' that COVID isn't going away completely, says doctor

WASHINGTON (SBG) - “I don’t think we’re going to ever eradicate this virus,” said Dr. Jeffrey Singer of the CATO Institute to The National Desk’s Jan Jeffcoat Friday morning.

“We’ve only eradicated one virus against humans in history, and that's smallpox, and that took 200 years.”

Dr. Singer says we “need to get used to the idea” that we’ll continue to see COVID-19 and related variants at endemic levels.

“We’ll have seasons, just like we have with the flu, and our vaccine makers will have to continually update their vaccines to adjust to the new variants and strains, but it’s not going away,” said Dr. Singer.

Dr. Singer is optimistic about the single-dose vaccines that have been recently announced by Johnson & Johnson.

“While it seems to not be quite as effective against the South African and the Brazilian strain it still is effective, it confers a fair amount of immunity, so that even people who catch it get milder cases, and it seems that with time, your immunity grows,” said Dr. Singer. “This is good news.”

Concern over these new variants reported out of the U.K, South Africa, Brazil, and California has been growing as cases remain high. Dr. Singer says he’s taking the new variants seriously, but to keep in mind that previous infection or vaccination could still mean partial immunity against these new variants.

“Getting reinfected with a new variant seems to be a much milder version of the infection,” said Dr. Singer. “There are at least 27 million people who've been infected in this country with confirmed cases, and the CDC tells us that actually maybe four to five times that amount, and then we already have 27 million people who've gotten at least one dose of the vaccine We might be up to 40% of the population that already has some degree of immunity.”