New York Times - More stuff about the coronavirus thing. My two cents: Don't go anywhere FFS.

Fauci describes the virus as his ‘worst nightmare’ and discusses possible vaccines.

The top U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, delivered a grim assessment of the devastation wrought around the world by the coronavirus, describing Covid-19 on Tuesday as his “worst nightmare” — a new, highly contagious respiratory infection that causes a significant rate of illness and death.

“In a period of four months, it has devastated the whole world,” Dr. Fauci told biotech executives during a conference held by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization. “And it isn’t over yet.”

His discussion with a moderator was conducted remotely and videotaped for conference participants. Although Dr. Fauci said he had known that an outbreak like this could occur, one aspect surprised him: “how rapidly it just took over the planet.”

An efficiently transmitted disease can spread worldwide in six months or a year, but “this took about a month,” Dr. Fauci said. He attributed the rapid spread to the contagiousness of the virus and extensive world travel by infected people.

Vaccines are widely regarded as the best hope of stopping or at least slowing the pandemic, and Dr. Fauci said he was “almost certain” that more than one would be successful. Several are already being tested in people, and at least one is expected to move into large, Phase 3 trials in July.

But much is still unknown about the disease and how it attacks the body, research that Dr. Fauci described as “a work in progress.” Another looming question, he said, was whether survivors who were seriously ill would fully recover.

Dr. Fauci said that he had spent much of his career studying H.I.V., and that the disease it caused was “really simple compared to what’s going on with Covid-19.”

The differences, he said, included Covid’s broad range of severity: no symptoms at all to critical illness and death, with lung damage, intense immune responses and clotting disorders that have caused strokes even in young people, as well as a separate inflammatory syndrome causing severe illness in some children.

“Oh my goodness,” Dr. Fauci said. “Where is it going to end? We’re still at the beginning of it.”

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GRIM ASSESSMENT

The nation’s leading infectious disease expert tells biotech executives that the pandemic is far from over.