On January 10, 2020, China announced the first death from a previously unknown coronavirus. The WHO was previously informed by the Chinese authorities about cases of respiratory infection in the province of Hubei.
This was also the first mention of what was later recorded as Covid-19 and caused a global pandemic with dramatic consequences for humanity.
Five years later, according to official records, there have been 7,1 million deaths and over 777 million infections.
However, the actual numbers far exceed these figures, with the WHO estimating that the dead have exceeded 20 million.
Global life expectancy fell by about a year and a half during the early stages of the pandemic.
The corona virus has brought to light in a macabre way the inequalities between rich and poor states but also the inequalities within developed countries.
He also highlighted the importance of public health systems which, although tested hard, managed to stand up, despite their constant discredit and underfunding.
Although the conditions were unprecedented, science made leaps and managed to produce vaccines in a short period of time, thus reducing mortality.
The Chronicles
Chinese officials reported to the WHO on December 31, 2019, that more than 40 cases of pneumonia of unknown cause had been identified in the city of Wuhan.
By mid-January, people infected with the virus had been identified in several countries.
The CDC reported a laboratory-confirmed case in the US on January 21, 2020.
SARS-CoV-2 continued to spread. Countries around the world have begun implementing travel restrictions.
The World Health Organization declared it COVID-19 pandemic on March 11, 2020. Schools, restaurants and bars closed. Working from home has become the norm for many people.
Lockdowns were imposed and the big cities were deserted.
Health systems could not handle the volume of cases. The health workers paid a heavy blood tax by shouldering the responsibility of treating patients unprotected, without the necessary protective measures, without infrastructure and initially without training.
Just one year later, around 2,5 million people worldwide had already died.
Where did the SARS-CoV-2 virus come from?
Scientists believe the most likely scenario is that it emerged in bats, like many coronaviruses. They believe another species, likely a dog, raccoon, cats or rats, was then infected, which in turn infected people who handled or slaughtered those animals at the market in Wuhan, where the first human cases appeared in late November 2019.
This is a known route for disease transmission and likely sparked the first outbreak of a similar virus, known as SARS. But this theory has not been proven for the virus that causes it COVID-19. Wuhan is home to several research laboratories involved in collecting and studying coronaviruses, fueling debate over whether the virus may instead have leaked from one of them.
It is a difficult scientific puzzle that is made even more difficult by rivalries between powerful states that have repeatedly put the collective interest of humanity second, as their priorities are determined by short-term political expediency.
The true origin of the pandemic is not yet known and may not be for many years.
The coronavirus is still with us, but less dangerous
Today the number of new cases and deaths per week is low. About 50.000 cases and 500 deaths were reported by the WHO during the first week of December 2024.
The coronavirus has not been eradicated but has become endemic, without excluding waves of outbreaks.
The evolution of SARS-CoV-2
The SARS-CoV-2 virus has changed over the past five years, like all viruses that show a high rate of mutation.
Variants of the virus usually have some selective advantage and dominate by overpowering previous variants. For SARS-CoV-2, these selective advantages include increased transmissibility, enhanced immune evasion, and increased disease severity.
The original form of the virus was quickly replaced by the Alpha and then Delta variants. The Omicron variant was first detected in late 2021 and has remained the dominant variant ever since.
Each variation was more infectious than its predecessors. Subvariants of Omicron, such as JN.1, have arisen, but no significant divergence from the Omicron variant has been identified.
Vaccines against COVID -19
The trajectory of the pandemic changed on December 11, 2020, when the FDA issued an emergency use permit for the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine. A week later, an EUA was issued for the Moderna mRNA vaccine. In large clinical trials, both vaccines have been shown to be highly effective in preventing severe illness and death from COVID-19.
In addition, both vaccines were shown to be very safe.
Later research showed that the immunity provided by these vaccines declined over time. In addition, mutations that appeared in the virus reduced the effectiveness of the original vaccines.
For the coronavirus, as for the flu, repeated doses are recommended, especially in vulnerable groups.
Despite the significant scientific success, vaccines were available mainly in the developed countries of the West with the aim of covering the entire population and not only the vulnerable.
Companies and states have blatantly ignored calls from the WHO warning that if vaccines are not available across the globe there will be no effective wall of immunity.
It is worth noting that the scientific community's understanding of COVID-19 and the development of mRNA vaccines was based on decades of research.
The coronaviruses that first infect humans were identified in the 1960s. Although these human coronaviruses were only associated with the common cold, they have been studied extensively. Coronaviruses that infect mice, such as murine hepatitis virus, have also been extensively studied.
This basic research helped scientists better understand fundamental aspects of the virus's pathogenesis. And this research prepared them for SARS-CoV, MERS and SARS-CoV-2.
Decades of basic research also preceded the development of the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines. We've never had human vaccines using the mRNA platform before, but the idea has been in development for many years. Indeed, Drs. Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman were awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work leading to the development of these safe and effective vaccines.
But their seminal work was published in 2005, well before the pandemic COVID-19. And their research depended on experiments done by other scientists even earlier.
Stigma and misinformation made the situation worse
During the early days of the pandemic, media reports typically associated the virus with a particular place and by extension an ethnicity. The Chinese coronavirus. The Wuhan virus. Former President Trump used derogatory, racist and inflammatory terms.
Another feature was misinformation and fake news. During Spring 2020, for example, former Trump and others repeatedly advocated the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment against COVID-19.
Accordingly, fake news accompanied the vaccination campaigns and triggered conspiracy theories that sometimes started from very high up.
This was also contributed by the harsh separation policies imposed by governments between vaccinated and unvaccinated, the severe restrictions on civil liberties such as harsh lockdowns that reached the point of curfews (as happened in Greece) in combination with misguided or provocative actions by the rulers .
The theory of individual responsibility, which over time was presented by the dominant narrative as the only tool to deal with COVID, the economic crisis that mainly affected the lower classes, and policies that intensified social divisions were common features of this period in more countries.
Societies emerged more polarized from his pandemic COVID-19 but the political elites seem not to have learned the necessary lessons.
Ο COVID-19 showed that pandemics are neither a thing of the past nor a science fiction scenario. How prepared is humanity now for the arrival of a new pandemic? To this question the head of the WHO answered "yes and no", simply mentioning some improvements that have been made mainly at the institutional level.
But huge gaps remain.
Source: in.gr Fillia Politis
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