--:-- Jackie Leonard: This is an extra coronavirus edition of the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: In this podcast, published on Tuesday the 21st of December, we'll be taking stock of where we are with the pandemic just now and asking what we should expect next.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: We can't promise you that everything will be all right, but we can promise you no drama, no fuss and no fear mongering. Just the facts as we know them right now, along with some educated reflection and prediction.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: It's slightly longer than usual. There's a lot to get in. So let's begin.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: It's been quite long. We're getting frustrated, but at the same time, I wouldn't mind another lockdown.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: I think it's better for the world right now. Puts a pause on the world.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: I feel like everybody's just been desensitised to it, to be honest, because it's been going on for so long.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Yeah, it's just a normal thing now, you know? We just have to live with it, you know?
--:-- Jackie Leonard: We need a bit of the truth about if these restrictions are working or not.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: My daughter had a very complications for COVID.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: For us, the life is different now. It's a bit boring.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: I guess you just have to be patient and follow rules.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: I'm just living my life and I'm keeping myself safe.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: I'm just living my life and I'm keeping myself safe. I can't worry about the government. always changing their mind.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Getting on for two years into the pandemic and now battling a new variant, Omicron.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: How do you feel about it all? Tired? Fearful? Fed up? Or just taking it in your stride?
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Well, here's the message from the man in charge of steering us through this crisis, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Arhanom Ghebreyesus.
--:-- Tedros Arhanom Ghebreyesus: No region, no country, No community and no individual is safe until we are all safe.
--:-- Tedros Arhanom Ghebreyesus: The emergence of the highly mutated Omicron variant underlines just how perilous and precarious our situation is.
--:-- Tedros Arhanom Ghebreyesus: Indeed, Omicron demonstrates just why the world needs a new accord on pandemics that will inevitably land on their shores.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: I've been speaking to our health and science correspondent James Gallagher and our global health reporter Naomi Grimley.
--:-- Naomi Grimley: And I put it to Naomi that although the World Health Organization has set targets for vaccinations around the world, the picture is still pretty uneven.
--:-- Naomi Grimley: Just coming up to the end of the year, they do have this goal for 40% in each country being vaccinated.
--:-- Naomi Grimley: But actually, there's still 100 countries in the world which haven't met that target.
--:-- Naomi Grimley: And then when you look about across the world at continents, it's really noticeable.
--:-- Naomi Grimley: So in the case of Europe, you've got vaccination rates often of around 70%.
--:-- Naomi Grimley: Whereas if you look at Africa, it's more like 7%.
--:-- Naomi Grimley: So there's still a lot more to do, I think, before we even get to the point of having an equitable situation.
--:-- James Gallagher: Not a lot, actually, because we managed to figure out a huge amount of things in the first year.
--:-- James Gallagher: Since then, lots of the big questions are still unanswered.
--:-- James Gallagher: Where did the virus come from? It's still a raging debate that we don't have a definitive answer to.
--:-- James Gallagher: But scientifically, we've got better at understanding how the virus is mutating, what it's kind of doing, and kind of like, I know we're going to touch on that later, but also coming up with new tools and tricks for defeating it.
--:-- James Gallagher: So things like antiviral drugs.
--:-- James Gallagher: So we've kind of got better at understanding it and finding new ways to deal with it.
--:-- James Gallagher: And it's mutating and we're getting better at following it.
--:-- James Gallagher: But in terms of our fundamental understanding, we're kind of where we were 12 months ago.
--:-- James Gallagher: And forgive me if this sounds like a slightly stupid question, but we've had various variants.
--:-- James Gallagher: We've had the Delta variant and now we've got Omicron.
--:-- James Gallagher: And some of the symptoms of the illness sound a little bit different now.
--:-- James Gallagher: Is the illness that people are getting from the Omicron variant still COVID-19?
--:-- James Gallagher: It is still COVID-19.
--:-- James Gallagher: So COVID just stands for coronavirus disease and it emerged in 2019.
--:-- James Gallagher: That's where the name comes from.
--:-- James Gallagher: And it's all still that disease.
--:-- James Gallagher: And remember that the reason why some of the symptoms might be subtly shifting is probably as much to do with us as the virus.
--:-- James Gallagher: So if you've been vaccinated or you've caught COVID a couple of times before you end up with a quite mild infection, well, that's because your immune system is better at dealing with it rather than the COVID-ness has changed.
--:-- James Gallagher: What do we actually know about this new mutation, Omicron, and how serious is it? because some of the symptoms do seem more mild, don't they?
--:-- James Gallagher: With a new variant Omicron, what we've got is something that we know scientifically spreads very quickly.
--:-- James Gallagher: So it spreads more quickly than any of the other variants and it would do that anyway.
--:-- James Gallagher: It also has a trick in its toolbox that allows it to escape some of the immunity you've already got.
--:-- James Gallagher: So you can still get infected even if you've had past cases of past infections with coronavirus, with different variants, or in some cases if you've been vaccinated, if you only had one or two jabs, then you can still catch the Omicron variant.
--:-- James Gallagher: So we know it's doing that.
--:-- James Gallagher: In terms of, is it milder? Well, we don't really know if this variant itself is milder.
--:-- James Gallagher: And this is where there's so much confusion all the time about this, because if you compare this variant with all the previous variants, just line them up and infect people that have never been infected before, who have never been vaccinated, we don't know if the virus itself is any milder.
--:-- James Gallagher: But it is spreading in a world now that has been exposed to coronavirus before.
--:-- James Gallagher: So we have built up protection against these kinds of viruses.
--:-- James Gallagher: Millions and millions of people have been vaccinated.
--:-- James Gallagher: So when it goes into those people, it is going to be milder because you've already got some protection.
--:-- James Gallagher: Does that make sense?
--:-- James Gallagher: The virus itself might not be any safer, but we're just better at dealing with it.
--:-- James Gallagher: So, James, vaccines. Are vaccines actually keeping up with the way that the virus itself is mutating?
--:-- Dame Sarah Gilbert: As a virus spreads to more and more of our cells, and those cells stop doing their normal jobs, we start to get symptoms.
--:-- Dame Sarah Gilbert: However, at the same time as the virus is infecting us, it is also being detected by our immune system, which has evolved to be able to detect intruders and then destroy them.
--:-- Dame Sarah Gilbert: In the process, laying down a memory so it can respond quicker next time.
--:-- Dame Sarah Gilbert: Our immune systems are generally very good at this.
--:-- Dame Sarah Gilbert: The reason viruses can nevertheless still make us ill is that they act so quickly.
--:-- Dame Sarah Gilbert: A viral infection can take hold before the immune system has had time to mobilise.
--:-- Dame Sarah Gilbert: This is where vaccines come in.
--:-- Dame Sarah Gilbert: Vaccines give your immune system the memory of what a virus looks like, but without you having to get sick with that virus in the first place.
--:-- Dame Sarah Gilbert: And vaccines all work on the same basic principle.
--:-- Dame Sarah Gilbert: They all present your immune system with some kind of harmless mimic of the virus.
--:-- Dame Sarah Gilbert: So what we know is that two doses of the vaccines aren't quite enough preventing you from catching Omicron because the vaccines were designed to attack and train your immune system to attack the original form of the virus and it has mutated quite a lot since then.
--:-- Dame Sarah Gilbert: So you can still get infected after two doses.
--:-- Dame Sarah Gilbert: A third booster dose, which kind of improves and matures your immune system, well, that seems to be really important and can still prevent you catching it.
--:-- Dame Sarah Gilbert: But even if you've only had two doses, even if you've only had one dose, Jackie, I still think you're going to get a significant amount of protection against what really matters.
--:-- Dame Sarah Gilbert: And that's severe COVID that lands you in hospital and potentially kills you.
--:-- Dame Sarah Gilbert: Because if you're giving your immune system any head start, any training on how to tackle coronavirus, then that is going to be a massive, massive thing in terms of preventing the really severe outcomes that you can get from this infection.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: So in terms of infection a little bit weaker but in terms of severe disease we still anticipating they going to be incredibly important incredibly powerful
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Omicron was first identified in South Africa in November.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Since then, it has spread to many other countries, all of which are still trying to work out just how serious the impact of the new variant is.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: But how much can they learn from South Africa, where the average age is 27 and less than 40% of the population is fully vaccinated?
--:-- Namsa Maseko: Well, at first, when South African scientists backed by the South African government announced the discovery of the Omicron variant, there was a lot of fear, a lot of concern, confusion, because people wanted to know about the severity of the Omicron variant in comparison with the Delta variant, because it was a lot more deadly.
--:-- Namsa Maseko: There were many more people who died due to the Delta variant than there are, whereas Omicron is concerned.
--:-- Namsa Maseko: However, scientists here in South Africa have said that they believe now the worst is over.
--:-- Namsa Maseko: The Gaudeng province, which is the most populous province in the country, also the economic hub of the country, was the epicentre of the Omicron variant.
--:-- Namsa Maseko: They are saying that infections have now peaked and that the number of daily infections is expected to decrease.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Coronavirus was first identified in the Chinese province of Wuhan in December 2019, and there is still controversy about where it came from.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: A World Health Organization team concluded earlier this year that it almost certainly began in bats and was transmitted to humans either directly or via an intermediary animal.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: But others still believe that the virus was leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, and the WHO is still officially investigating that possibility, despite repeated Chinese denials.
--:-- Michael Bristow: Whenever there's been an outbreak anywhere in China, they've responded swiftly with mass testing, mass lockdowns, restrictions on the movements of people.
--:-- Michael Bristow: That's working in the sense that they've managed to keep a lid on COVID.
--:-- Michael Bristow: The number of cases daily are very, very few.
--:-- Michael Bristow: The economy is still trundling along quite well.
--:-- Michael Bristow: People were able to move around if there were no COVID cases in that particular area.
--:-- Michael Bristow: So they've been, to some extent, quite successful.
--:-- Michael Bristow: The difficulty for China, as every other country in the world has found, is how do you move out of that initial stage of zero COVID?
--:-- Michael Bristow: There has been some rumblings in China of dissatisfaction because of the toll this strategy obviously takes on people who aren't able to do and go about their ordinary business when there's only one or two cases.
--:-- Michael Bristow: But at the moment, China is staying. It's still going to take this approach.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: What about elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region?
--:-- Michael Bristow: Elsewhere in Asia, there were countries who were taking the same approach as China.
--:-- Michael Bristow: I'm thinking specifically of Australia, New Zealand, Singapore.
--:-- Michael Bristow: They had very low cases and they looked to have very strict lockdowns.
--:-- Michael Bristow: But all of those three countries have moved out of that strategy and moved into an area of kind of living with COVID and opened up their borders to a certain extent.
--:-- Mark Lowen: I'm Mark Lowen in Italy, the first country in the West to be crushed by the pandemic in 2020.
--:-- Mark Lowen: And now with the second Christmas under Covid, it and much of the rest of Europe are tightening restrictions again amidst surging cases.
--:-- Mark Lowen: Proof of vaccination is needed for pretty much all venues here and for employees in several professions.
--:-- Mark Lowen: France, too, is considering the passes at work and has banned non-essential travel from Britain due to its rapid rise in Omicron.
--:-- Mark Lowen: Germany doing the same.
--:-- Mark Lowen: The Netherlands has become the first in Europe to re-enter full lockdown, and Austria is the first to impose mandatory vaccinations from February.
--:-- Mark Lowen: The picture on vaccines is mixed.
--:-- Mark Lowen: While Portugal has more than 90% of people fully vaccinated, at the bottom of the list is Bulgaria, with only around 30% double-jabbed and lots of vaccine disinformation.
--:-- Nomiya Iqbal: I'm Nomiya Iqbal in Washington DC.
--:-- Nomiya Iqbal: This winter is starting to feel like a blast from the past when it comes to the pandemic.
--:-- Nomiya Iqbal: The Omicron variant of the coronavirus has been spreading.
--:-- Nomiya Iqbal: All but six states have cases.
--:-- Nomiya Iqbal: In some cities like New York, The numbers have doubled in 24 hours, and so the prospect of a holiday season surge means we're seeing a return to policies of last year.
--:-- Nomiya Iqbal: Things like indoor mask mandates, remote classes, cancelled theatre shows have all made a comeback.
--:-- Nomiya Iqbal: But some leaders in different states are calculating their approaches because they know that so many people are fatigued by restrictions and may not stick to them.
--:-- Nomiya Iqbal: Americans simply do not want Christmas 2021 to be a replay of Christmas 2020.
--:-- Nomiya Iqbal: But the country's top infectious disease expert, Dr Fauci, said that people just need to get vaccinated.
--:-- Nomiya Iqbal: Many Americans still haven't got their jabs.
--:-- Nomiya Iqbal: He says get boosted, keep wearing your masks, avoid gatherings if you aren't sure what everyone's vaccination status is.
--:-- Nomiya Iqbal: He says this new variant is extraordinary, but if people use the guidance they're familiar with to keep safe, then most people will be protected.
--:-- Will Grant: I'm Will Grant in Mexico City to give you a picture of what the pandemic has looked like in Latin America.
--:-- Will Grant: It has been a decidedly mixed picture with reliable statistics very hard to come by.
--:-- Will Grant: Here in Mexico, for example, some analysts believe the true total of those who have died from COVID is almost double the official estimate.
--:-- Will Grant: What we do know, of course, is that many parts of the region, particularly in South America, have been very badly hit.
--:-- Will Grant: Certainly by the middle of this year, more than half a million Brazilians had died of COVID.
--:-- Will Grant: That's the second highest death toll worldwide after the United States.
--:-- Will Grant: Certainly one thing that the entire region has in common is the economic impact, particularly for those economies which rely heavily on tourism in Central America and the Caribbean.
--:-- Will Grant: Many have seen their economy shrink significantly over the past two years and have made very modest economic projections for 2022.
--:-- Nomsa Masego: I'm Nomsa Masego in Johannesburg.
--:-- Nomsa Masego: The number of COVID-19 cases in Africa have exceeded 9 million, and more than 220,000 related deaths have been reported.
--:-- Nomsa Masego: Countries reporting the most infections each day include South Africa, Zimbabwe, Eswadini, Kenya, and Nigeria.
--:-- Nomsa Masego: South Africa, which has the most sophisticated genomic sequencing facilities on the continent, was the first to announce the detection of the Omicron variant after four diplomats tested positive in Botswana.
--:-- Nomsa Masego: The travel bans which were imposed on 11 African countries have since been lifted.
--:-- Nomsa Masego: The focus now is to vaccinate key populations across the continent.
--:-- Nomsa Masego: Many countries appear to be struggling to reach their population immunity targets due to unavailability or slow uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine.
--:-- Anbaras Nettirajan: I am Anbaras Nettirajan from Colombo Sri Lanka.
--:-- Anbaras Nettirajan: South Asian countries have been closely watching the coronavirus situation around the world
--:-- Anbaras Nettirajan: They are worried about the new Omicron variant the way in which it is spreading very fast in countries like the United Kingdom.
--:-- Anbaras Nettirajan: And countries like India have placed a number of restrictions, those coming from what they describe as at-risk countries, for example, countries from Southern Africa and the UK.
--:-- Anbaras Nettirajan: And the travellers from these countries have been asked to undergo self-isolation for a week and after which, if they are negative following a PCR test, then they can go out of the residence.
--:-- Anbaras Nettirajan: And the government is also urging its residents to take the second dose of the vaccine as early as possible.
--:-- Claudia Hammond: Claudia Hammond is the presenter of Health Check on the BBC World Service.
--:-- Claudia Hammond: What is interesting in a way is how resilient we are.
--:-- Claudia Hammond: You know, life completely changes. It's very different. We're stopped from doing a lot of the things that help us cope with life.
--:-- Claudia Hammond: Seeing other people which is how people get through in times like war is by talking together about it
--:-- Claudia Hammond: That what we often been stopped from doing in person anyway
--:-- Claudia Hammond: Amazingly most people are resilient about it
--:-- Claudia Hammond: I mean, there was a study during lockdown in Israel and one in Wuhan where 73% of people in Israel showed complete resilience, 84% in Wuhan.
--:-- Claudia Hammond: So most people cope, but an enormous amount of people don't.
--:-- Claudia Hammond: It is estimated that there are an extra 53 million cases of depression in the world as a result of the pandemic, and an extra 76 million cases of anxiety.
--:-- Claudia Hammond: And some people are much more affected than others.
--:-- Claudia Hammond: It has been worse for younger people.
--:-- Claudia Hammond: It's been worse for women in general.
--:-- Claudia Hammond: It's been worse for people who live alone, and people with low incomes.
--:-- Claudia Hammond: Then there's this slightly weird thing where for a few, things have improved some people find life easier during lockdowns and I've been speaking to some people with very serious mental health problems that they had before who've actually found it some of them slightly easier when other people suddenly didn't expect them to go out anymore and weren't trying to get them to do things and of course people who hated their jobs and going into work if they were able to work from home they've escaped straight away from the place that's difficult
--:-- Claudia Hammond: So there is this minority for whom it's better
--:-- Rob Watson: Rob Watson is the BBC's political correspondent.
--:-- Rob Watson: COVID-19 has undoubtedly presented both the most global and the most profound challenge since the end of the Second World War.
--:-- Rob Watson: Almost universally, politicians have struggled in the face of the pandemic, as have the various political models they represent.
--:-- Rob Watson: Rather strikingly, neither the political system involved, democracy versus authoritarian, nor even national income, rich versus poor, have been good predictors of how a country has fared in dealing with COVID-19.
--:-- Rob Watson: Also striking is how this most global of crises has produced the least global of responses.
--:-- Rob Watson: Despite the call of multinational organisations such as the UN and the WHO for cooperation, particularly, for example, over the sharing of vaccines, COVID-19 has shown that when a crisis hits, it's the nation-state that still rules.
--:-- Rob Watson: In other words, political leaders the world over have prioritised protecting their own populations and economies over working with others.
--:-- Rob Watson: Not, of course, that doing even that has been easy.
--:-- Rob Watson: Everywhere, leaders have struggled, as they have throughout human history, with what's known among policy advisors as the precautionary principle, namely how to make decisions to prevent harm when the scientific evidence is uncertain or incomplete.
--:-- Rob Watson: Throughout 2022, those twin challenges look set to remain.
--:-- Rob Watson: Politicians will still struggle to cooperate beyond national borders and will still have to make policy without all the data they'd like.
--:-- Rob Watson: Is there anything at all these leaders can learn from the pandemic so far?
--:-- Rob Watson: Perhaps that in countries where trust in government is high and where the political system is flexible and open to innovation, the outcome is better.
--:-- Rob Watson: But even so, no leader, no system has yet produced the silver bullet.
--:-- Rob Watson: Maybe, of course, there just isn't one.
--:-- James Gallagher: Oh, yeah, 100%.
--:-- James Gallagher: I mean, there's shades of grey within what that actually means.
--:-- James Gallagher: But in terms of are we going to see the end of Covid, that we're going to be able to put, you know, the genie back in the bottle? No.
--:-- James Gallagher: I mean, it is out there.
--:-- James Gallagher: It's spread far too wide we knew this 12 months ago to be perfectly honest it's it's too everywhere for it to ever end unless we manage to do a smallpox but we've only managed to do a smallpox once where we vaccinated so many people that you know you just didn't give the virus anywhere to go and that was the end of it if we if that happens it will be decades and decades and decades in the future
--:-- James Gallagher: What we still don't really understand is how it's going to settle down is it going to settle down into something that's just you know it's completely irrelevant as the common cold or will it's settled down into something that's more like a seasonal flu where you know it still puts pressure on hospitals every year still kills a lot of old and vulnerable people every year
--:-- James Gallagher: Where it settles down to when we live with it we don't exactly know yet but each new wave of covid each new variant that we come across is kind of getting a bit milder because our immune systems are building up we're more experienced with dealing with it and so that's the general trajectory of where we're heading milder and milder and milder but we don't know where that ends
--:-- James Gallagher: And we've talked a lot about vaccines?
--:-- James Gallagher: Are we still anticipating having to get a booster every year?
--:-- James Gallagher: Some people say that yes, you're going to need a booster every year.
--:-- James Gallagher: I think it might end up being more nuanced than that.
--:-- James Gallagher: So, you know, with flu, we vaccinate vulnerable people every year.
--:-- James Gallagher: And at the moment, we're vaccinating against COVID.
--:-- James Gallagher: Absolutely everybody, you know, countries like China went down to like two and three year olds really, really quickly in terms of who they wanted to get vaccinated.
--:-- James Gallagher: So I don't think we're going to end up in a place where we think that everybody needs to be boosted every year.
--:-- James Gallagher: But I think boosters are going to be a fixture of some people's lives for a long time to come.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: So is coronavirus just something we're going to have to live with?
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Back to our health and science correspondent, James Gallagher.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Oh, yeah, 100%.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: I mean, there's shades of grey within what that actually means.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: But in terms of are we going to see the end of Covid, that we're going to be able to put, you know, the genie back in the bottle? No.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: I mean, it is out there.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: It's spread far too wide we knew this 12 months ago to be perfectly honest it's it's too everywhere for it to ever end unless we manage to do a smallpox but we've only managed to do a smallpox once where we vaccinated so many people that you know you just didn't give the virus anywhere to go and that was the end of it if we if that happens it will be decades and decades and decades in the future
--:-- Jackie Leonard: What we still don't really understand is how it's going to settle down is it going to settle down into something that's just you know it's completely irrelevant as the common cold or will it's settled down into something that's more like a seasonal flu where you know it still puts pressure on hospitals every year still kills a lot of old and vulnerable people every year
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Where it settles down to when we live with it we don't exactly know yet but each new wave of covid each new variant that we come across is kind of getting a bit milder because our immune systems are building up we're more experienced with dealing with it and so that's the general trajectory of where we're heading milder and milder and milder but we don't know where that ends
--:-- Jackie Leonard: And we've talked a lot about vaccines?
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Are we still anticipating having to get a booster every year?
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Some people say that yes, you're going to need a booster every year.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: I think it might end up being more nuanced than that.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: So, you know, with flu, we vaccinate vulnerable people every year.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: And at the moment, we're vaccinating against COVID.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Absolutely everybody, you know, countries like China went down to like two and three year olds really, really quickly in terms of who they wanted to get vaccinated.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: So I don't think we're going to end up in a place where we think that everybody needs to be boosted every year.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: But I think boosters are going to be a fixture of some people's lives for a long time to come.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: And just finally, James, we've talked a lot about vaccines, of course.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: What about other treatments for people who have become ill?
--:-- Jackie Leonard: There's been some really, really cool stuff, actually, because there's the whole field of antiviral drugs.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: And what they do is they, rather than training your immune system, they just go after the virus itself.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: They find ways of tapping into the virus's fundamental biology in order to limit its ability to replicate make copies of itself inside our bodies and those have been shown that if you give them really early on in somebody's infection they can dramatically reduce the risk of you needing hospital treatment and the reason that is it keeps the amount of virus lower in your body gives your immune system time to build up and learn how to attack it and that basically is buying you time again
--:-- Jackie Leonard: So we've got far more tricks and tools in the box this year than we had last year, Jackie.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: So we've heard a lot, good and bad, about the progress of the pandemic and responses to it, but coronavirus is still very much with us.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: And there's little to suggest that will change any time soon.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: So how are people feeling about the future?
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Let's hear again from some of those people we spoke to in our completely unscientific survey in central London.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: You will recognise some of the voices from the top of the podcast and we'll let them have the last word too.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: I think it's going to go on for longer than we think it is at the moment.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: It will always be here.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: I think there will be a new vaccine soon that will make us immune to it.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: The future for the people that lost their loved ones with this pandemic will be always different.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: It's going to move online, maybe let's say transportation.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Now everybody's going to have to put masks from now on.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: We will be back.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: We will definitely be back.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: But it's all about like everyone, not the single one.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: I think we're going to be hyper vigilant and aware of germs and things like that.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: The power of our life now, it's been two years.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: I believe that things will change for the better.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Yeah, it will go back before COVID.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: Yeah, I'll be very happy.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: We'll be right back.
--:-- Jackie Leonard: percent at LG.com with code FALL25. Bring the boom. X-Boom.
