Ever since Covid emerged in 2019, it’s taken the world by storm.

It’s now January of 2022, almost two years after the first reported case of COVID and the virus only continues to spread. Now with multiple variants and vaccines needed, it raises the question, will COVID ever go away?

Originating from a Chinese sea food market, the virus began to spread across the world via trading and trade routes, eventually reaching everywhere. COVID 19 is a virus caused by SARS-CoV-2; a respiratory illness in humans. The CDC states that COVID 19 can spread from person to person mainly in three ways, these three ways being breathing the same air as an infected person, being in contact with water droplets emitted from them that come in contact with your eyes, nose, or mouth, and touching your eyes, nose, or mouth when your hands have the virus on them.

SARS-CoV-2 carried by bats had infiltrated Wuhan, China at a sea food market. Days later China had identified an unknown virus that had infected dozens of people in Asia. Shortly after, on January 11 of 2020 the disease had claimed its first known death, a 61 year old man that was a regular at the sea food market. Then, not long after that on January 20, the virus started appearing in other countries such as Thailand, Japan, and South Korea. The first known case in the U.S  appeared on January 21, when a man in his 30’s had returned from Wuhan, China on a trip to see family.

Since then, the virus began to spread more despite the efforts of the World Health Organization International Health Regulation Emergency Committee. The virus spread to just about every part of the world and the number of cases and deaths it amasses continues. The virus can affect everyone, no matter their age or their position, an example of this would be America’s own president Donald Trump contracting the virus.

COVID-19 has forced many people to change their way of living. Many people have lost their jobs to the virus, and many companies find themselves also overwhelmingly understaffed, damaging and sometimes even killing the business. Impacting everyone including schools and students that were forced to learn virtual which many students find hard to do, thus inhibiting their learning. Though, all the suffering wasn’t for nothing because many medical experts were working tirelessly to secure a vaccination.

And finally, after long wait the first vaccine was produced to the public around December-January 2020-2021. Many people were finally able to get the vaccine they had waited so long for, however this didn’t come without its set of issues. Some people were expecting the vaccine to completely nullify any chances of getting COVID, however that’s not how it had worked out, instead the vaccine does minimize your chance of obtaining the virus, however the real good thing about the vaccine is that in case you do get the virus it lessens the effects it has on you. Though this may not be the most ideal scenario and a 100% full proof way to not get the virus would be amazing, it just doesn’t exist (at least as of yet).

Now COVID has begun to spike up again and again. When COVID had started all people were concerned about was the initial virus, however the virus now has duplicated into several new variants including the delta variant and omicron variant, and this should only be expected to continue. Through each of the different variants the virus has amassed 1.6 million deaths, and over 76 million people getting sick because of it.  There is no real way to kill a virus, so that raises the question will COVID ever go away? At this point in time, it seems unlikely that COVID will ever go away, it seems like something that people are just going to have to learn to deal and live with similar to the flu. Only time will tell if the virus gets better or worse.