It’s not fantastic, but I would point out we already have better vaccines against this than the notoriously slippery influenza lineages.

Moderna is working on a combination virus that would cover influenza, COVID-19 and RSV (which is also dangerous to the elderly). Other scientists are working on a pan-coronavirus vaccine which would also reduce the number of colds we get.

As COVID-19 becomes more established, most of the elderly people will already have been vaccinated and likely also infected multiple times, building strong immunity and resulting in mild symptoms.

So it’s not a disaster. Other human coronaviruses, including one which may well have caused a past pandemic, are nuisance viruses that are only a risk to the most fragile, whom we should be protecting by…ya know, not hanging out with them when we’re sick.

Improved ventilation systems installed to deal with COVID will also help with other viruses (this was a lasting legacy of the Spanish flu too).

We were never going to eradicate SARS-CoV-2. The end game was always going to be endemic stability, unfortunately. But we can live with that.