If no attempt is made to eradicate SARS-CoV-2 it will eventually become endemic, ineradicable, at a high never-ending cost to world in terms of economic growth, human health and lives. The current strategy adopted by most governments is to impose restrictive measures when the virus threatens to overwhelm hospital services and to relax these restrictions as this danger recedes. This is short-sighted. It cannot eliminate the highly infectious delta variant, which has an estimated R0-value of between 6 & 9. Periodic lockdowns will be hard to avoid in the future.
However, eradication is possible, herd immunity can be achieved quickly worldwide, reducing the R0 permanently to below 1, which will lead to the disappearance of the virus. Critical in achieving this is Ivermectin, a medicine that is cheap, readily available and can be manufactured by most countries. A recent meta study has shown that Ivermectin, prophylactically employed, can prevent infection with the virus by 86 % on average – very similar to the efficacy of vaccines. Eradication will require employment of all the instruments shown in the graph: future generations do not have to live with this plague.
