yet now, especially in europe and the western world, it feels as though the disease has passed us, even though it actually hasn t. it s as though we couldn t take all the restrictions it brought any more. life has opened up and only a minority of people are wearing masks now. in china, by contrast, the epidemic still dominates everything. i talked to fergus walsh, the bbc s medical editor, about the world s experience of this modern day plague. covid is going to be with us for years and years to come. and there was a lot of talk right at the beginning about herd immunity the idea that we d all get it once and then that would be it. well, now you can get omicron, the latest variant of concern, and you can get that again and again. so it s going to be, in a way, a little bit like flu and vaccines will be our best protection against it. they have been the extraordinary success story of this pandemic. i think the fastest ever developed vaccine was. took four years to develop an