In what could potentially be the best bit of Coronavirus-related news I've heard in a while, researchers have published results from trials of a vaccine that could protect not only against any CoVid-19 variant, but also against any future SARS-like coronavirus that might emerge.
As the lead scientist involved, says:
New Vaccine Offers Protection Against a Variety of SARS-Like Betacoronaviruses
It's a bit early in the morning to be trying to understand that, but seems very promising.
My unqualified take from an immunology point of view, but reasoned mathematical point of view is that I'm not sure if that problem might have already been semi-solved by the current virus itself mind, as Delta, Omicron, BA2, BA5 etc are extremely transmissible and becoming more transmissible each wave, and each wave/ new variant offers a massive amount of protection from death/ hospitalisation from future variants, as well as previous ones. It could be a year or two before this vaccine comes out, and another year to vaccinate everyone we intend to, and within that time nearly everyone's going to have had it, or been exposed, numerous times.
Effectively each new strain just seems to hoover up more and more of the stragglers that the other strains missed, which makes sense as they have a higher transmissibility and need a higher HIT for the population.
Looking at the recent wave of hospitalisations, they've had zero effect on the deaths trending down since early April, even though this new wave came in mid/ late March. Deaths are still trending down in a straight line. We're on like ~90 deaths a day from nearly 2000 hospitalisations this wave, yet the last waves of ~2500 hospitalisations peaks from Omicron and BA2 caused deaths peaks of ~300. There may be some lag in that, but I would have thought we would have seen something, it's had a month to start to show on the deaths.
Of course this new vaccine may protect from other coronaviruses, but the way C19 has evolved it's likely that this virus could also offer good protection from C25, C40 or whatever comes down the line later. I'm not sure if it works like this but C19 coverage could get that broad, it might effectively make other coronaviruses extinct (in humans at least), or from getting a foothold where they turn into a pandemic.
C19 seems to now have blended into the Flu level of IFR, due to vaccinations/ previous infections etc, so may be best to soon shift attention to eradicating Flu (I assume immunologists are doing this already mind), as we could be heading for some bad flu years in the near future.
There's no way on earth that enough people would get vaccinated with this new covid vaccine to make coronaviruses extinct mind, it may not even get used in 10% even if it worked 100%, but if you only do those 10% then you're not really stopping coronaviruses from circulating, you're just offering protection and over time those coronaviruses might just develop to evade the vaccine coverage. There would be the combination of new vaccine protection and C19 circulation offering a wider coverage though.
It looks to me like we're very much in the exit wave/ phase now, and Omicron was the big one which effectively put C19 on the path to end itself (albeit still takes time).
Below is for the world, cases are far higher in real terms, as there's less/ no testing, but those death numbers will be more accurate than they've ever been, places are still lying about the number of deaths, but certainly no worse than they were in 2020 + 2021, and probably far, far better.