It is a strange world we live in these days.
I’ve written posts/articles online and in print before, then went dormant for over a decade, busy with my career, family life, traveling the world and enjoying the great outdoors.
In January of 2020, I was about to go on a cruise when I learned about COVID-19. Prior to that, I did not know what PPE stood for, and “Corona” to me, was a beer, or just another way of saying “crown” in latin.
As I was boarding the cruise ship, I noticed weird questions about whether I had recently visited China. I have never been to China but have had China on my bucket list for a long time. For the next few days, we were having a blast on the ship, and the islands we visited, but I followed the news, and was praying I would make it back to the mainland before the borders closed.
We made it back to the mainland, and promptly thereafter, home, before the end of January, and it was over 6 weeks later that the border started any form of serious shutdowns.
I have always imagined that in case we had a serious pandemic, you would shut everything down right away, for 2-3 weeks, isolate the sick then re-open everything back up. What actually happened since early February is a very slow, and painful death to vast sections of the US and world economies, and a terrible healthcare response by the health authorities in what is considered the “free world”, including the US, Canada and most countries in the EU.
Having a lot more free time on my hands, I decided to start this blog, not to only focus on this pandemic (even though I imagine I’ll have more to opine on it in the foreseeable future), but because, well, I noticed a lot of people allegedly became “experts” on everything medical, scientific, economic, and running a country. Seriously, it seems everyone with a keyboard seems to pretend they know better than our Presidents, Prime Ministers and top Medical and Economical experts.
I would not, therefore, pretend to be an expert on anything COVID-19 related, and definitely not here, not today (because I know am not). But, I will allow myself to ask some questions, after stating some assumptions my research has showed me I can make:
- We know Coronaviruses have existed for decades, COVID-19 is just a variation/version of it
- For all those decades, we never managed to discover a vaccine to prevent those diseases. As a matter of fact, there are plenty other viruses we have known a long time that still have no vaccine (e.g. HIV), or took a long time to find a vaccine (e.g. Ebola took over 20 years…)
- We know, realistically, that even if we do get lucky and find a vaccine that can protect us against COVID-19, it probably will take us two years or much longer
- We know that like every virus, this virus mutates, a lot – it appears to mutate slower than the Influenza virus, by half, even if we get extremely lucky and find a vaccine in just years, it would probably be too late, as the virus would have mutated to something worse, needing a new vaccine, or mutated to something that is not dangerous, therefore making a vaccine unnecessary
- Testing may tell you if you have an infection today, but tests are not perfect. Some estimates claim that 1 out of 3 people who have COVID-19 would test negative. For the flu, for instance, we have had tests for a long time but still, the accuracy of rapid flu tests can be as low as 50%. Testing with higher accuracy takes time, and costs a lot more, something that may prove a major challenge to mass testing
- Testing can tell you if you are healthy today, but offer no guarantee you will be healthy tomorrow – so testing is no prevention
- You cannot force anyone to submit to a test – we live in a free country (at least in the US), not a dictatorship – there are people who will refuse, others you will miss, more who will test negative today but could test positive a week from now, others who will have the virus after travel, etc. So testing is good, but not a panacea
So, is it sane and realistic, to put most of the economy on hold, for a vaccine that may never come, and testing that may never be effective?
Would it not be more practical and sane to learn proper hygiene and PPE usage, and then get back to normal life (with minor adjustments)?
Would it not make more sense to focus on what we can more deterministically prevent versus what we cannot?
We can prevent things the lockdown is causing:
- Increased unemployment
- Increased divorces, domestic abuse
- Increased alcohol and drug abuse
- Increased crime
- Skyrocketing national debts all around
In the meantime, we should continue investing in better treatments, and more accurate testing. Testing and treatment should be available to those who fall really ill, not a daily morning routine.
This pandemic is not the first, nor will be the last. We travel a lot more than before, population numbers are skyrocketing – it is basic laws of nature that dictate that diseases would become more frequent and widespread.
We cannot shut everything down every time something like this happens. This would be self-defeating.
We have to learn to adapt, and adapt quickly. The future of our race and our mental sanity depend on it.
