I think this thread is showing the dangers of us arriving at judgements on a subject that, let's face it, nearly all of us knew buggar all about a couple of months ago. That's why I often qualify what I say with the words "I may be wrong here". And I'll do so again here.

From what I can gather, the scientific community have been caught on the hop somewhat because it was thought that the next pandemic would be a variant of the flu, hence the apparent lack of progress on the vaccines for corona viruses - they haven't been essential in the past. I'd also add a personal view here in that the fact that it is relatively rich western countries that are being worst affected will concentrate minds more than if it were the usual suspects so to speak and so I would not be surprised at all to see a vaccine available before some of the predictions in this thread.

I know there are those who, maybe justifiably, are wary of Chinese figures, but they probably are the best things we can go on for now and there seems little in them so far to suggest that you can catch the virus again after having it- I say that having also read something by an expert in the field who said that there are always a very small percentage of people who have a second bout of any pandemic virus.

Returning to my first point, the fact that so little work was being done on finding vaccines for corona viruses until recently suggests that the likelihood of Covid 21., 22, 24 etc is low historically doesn't it? Again though, I qualify all of the above by adding that they are the opinions of someone who is far, far from a specialist in this field.