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.
