When will coronavirus end?

Many other viruses have emerged and never ended

Question: When will coronavirus end?
Position‹4 of 4: The coronavirus pandemic may never end
Argument1 of 5›: Many other viruses have emerged and never ended

Many other viruses that emerged a long time ago are still around. They might be, at times, more dormant or less spread in society, but they are never fully removed from the environment.

The argument

Many other viruses that emerged a long time ago are still around. The coronavirus, similarly, may decrease over time but will not completely end. The Ebola virus is an example. Transmission of Ebola between humans eventually ended in the West African epidemic in 2016, but the virus was still around. The virus spread again in 2018 between humans in Congo. Countries can contain Ebola through strict isolation, vaccines, and contract tracing, but they cannot eradicate it. Another example is malaria. Malaria circulates and kills over 400,000 people every year. Malaria is never gone and kills a number of people annually. Drawing on the examples above, the coronavirus will not fully end and may show up later. The H1N1 strain is another example. H1N1 caused an infectious disease that remained in the world for a long time but at less severe levels. It circulated for 40 years after its outbreak as a seasonal virus. It took another pandemic—H2N2 in 1957—to extinguish most of the 1918 strain. Some scientists expect the coronavirus to have a similar fate: to become an endemic. An endemic is caused by a virus that shows annually like the flu season. Due to these trends in viruses and infections, the coronavirus may never end.

Premises

[P1]Many viruses persist long after emerging — Ebola returned in 2018 after the 2016 epidemic ended, and malaria still kills over 400,000 a year. [P2] The 1918 H1N1 strain circulated as a seasonal virus for 40 years until another pandemic displaced it. [P3] Scientists expect the coronavirus to follow suit and become endemic, recurring annually like the flu. [C] Therefore, because many other viruses have emerged and never ended, the coronavirus pandemic may never end.

Counter-arguments

The world may fully end the virus. There are a few viruses in the world that did not become endemic and were almost fully removed. Examples include smallpox and rinderpest. The world was able to manage and remove such diseases with the help of vaccines and other regulations. Drawing on examples of some diseases that humanity successfully eradicated, the coronavirus may end.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The examples are selected: smallpox and rinderpest were eradicated, so persistence is a tendency of some pathogens rather than a rule — and Ebola and malaria differ from a respiratory virus in reservoir, vector and transmission in ways the premise does not address. [Rejecting P2] The 1918 comparison undercuts the position it is offered for. A strain that circulated seasonally for decades is a virus that persisted while the pandemic ended, which is exactly the distinction the question turns on. [Rejecting P3] Becoming endemic is what most forecasts described, and endemicity is the end of a pandemic rather than its continuation; the premise equates the survival of a virus with the persistence of an emergency.