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Levy: Think like a virus to understand why the pandemic isn’t over yet

This 2020 electron micrsocope image made available by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shows a Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 particle isolated from a patient, in a laboratory in Fort Detrick, Md. Coronaviruses, including the newest one, are named for the spikes that cover their outer surface like a crown, or corona in Latin. Using those club-shaped spikes, the virus latches on to the outer wall of a human cell, invades it and replicates, creating viruses to hijack more cells. (NIAID/NIH via AP)
This 2020 electron micrsocope image made available by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shows a Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 particle isolated from a patient, in a laboratory in Fort Detrick, Md. Coronaviruses, including the newest one, are named for the spikes that cover their outer surface like a crown, or corona in Latin. Using those club-shaped spikes, the virus latches on to the outer wall of a human cell, invades it and replicates, creating viruses to hijack more cells. (NIAID/NIH via AP) This 2020 electron micrsocope image made available by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shows a Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 particle isolated from a patient, in a laboratory in Fort Detrick, Md. Coronaviruses, including the newest one, are named for the spikes that cover their outer surface like a crown, or corona in Latin. Using those club-shaped spikes, the virus latches on to the outer wall of a human cell, invades it and replicates, creating viruses to hijack more cells. (NIAID/NIH via AP)

By Karen Levy / The Conversation via The Associated Press 7 min read

Kill every human on the planet.

This is the first assignment I give students in my public health classes, filled with do-gooders passionate about saving the world. Their homework is to play a game called Plague, in which they pretend to be pathogens bent on infecting everyone on the globe before humans can develop a cure or a vaccine.

Why this assignment? Because as a professor of infectious disease epidemiology, I aim to teach students to think like pathogens so they can learn how to control them.

With COVID-19, thinking like a pathogen leads to an inevitable conclusion: Getting the vaccine out to everyone in the world as quickly as possible is not just an ethical imperative, but also a selfish one.

While many wealthy countries soon will offer vaccines to their entire populations, people in poorer countries might have to wait years for their shots. About half of U.S. residents are now at least partially vaccinated. Many other countries have yet to reach 1% vaccination coverage.