When will Covid-19 end?

JAI DUGGAR

 Hello! Toh kaise hain aap sab? Chaliye shuru kartey hain...... 

Now that the coronavirus has taken over our lives, I want to answer the one question that’s on everyone’s mind. When will this nightmare finally end? The ongoing pandemic is exerting the whole world both physically and mentally. In U.S., half of the adults report high levels of anxiety due to the COVID-19. We all want things to go back to business as usual, but the virus won’t just miraculously go away. It’s here to stay, and we’re only at the first inning in terms of fighting this thing. 

Before a vaccine is even possible, we have many months of struggle ahead of us, while we learn about this new virus and set up treatment protocols. That’s why we need to flatten the curve. Many people heard this term for the first time in recent weeks. It’s the reason why we have to stay at home and isolate ourselves. Without this social distancing, COVID 19 could spread like a wildfire, overloading healthcare systems, causing mass numbers of excess death. But while we flatten the curve, we don’t just spare our crumbling healthcare systems, we’re actually gaining time for ourselves. Since a vaccine is far off on the horizon (maybe early next year), first we need treatment protocols to save as many lives as possible. And for that we need time to learn about the pathological background of the coronavirus. Physicians and researchers are already gathering data and information about this new virus and how it affects people. That’s happening every day on the frontlines, and there’s a global collaboration behind it.

 Back in February, Chinese scientists were the first to sequence and share the virus’ genome, and now we’re at the patient level, learning about how infected patients respond to treatments. In the next few months, we’ll have that data from millions of patients and we’ll be able to treat people more efficiently. If we can come up with drugs and treatments to stop the illness to become severe in patients, we can proceed to free up the burden on hospitals and medical professionals and start to get back to our lives while we learn to live with the virus. Clinical trials are already underway for many potential treatments, like Gilead’s remdesivir, or Japanese drugs that proved to be successful against the seasonal flu.  But there are factors where we’re simply still in the dark. We know people develop antibodies against the virus but while the antibodies are at least partially protective, a recent South Korean study showed that more than a hundred people caught the disease for a second time after they recovered and we don’t yet know why. 

We need to monitor this closely, as the effectiveness of the antibodies won’t just affect treatment plans, but national strategies, like Sweden’s where the current plan is to let the virus go through the population to develop herd immunity, the way it works with the regular flu. If we learn that we don’t build up immunity against COVID 19, the same way, then Sweden is actively jeopardizing its citizens, while the UK and the US have been flirting with an absolute disaster in the pandemics’ first weeks. There are other important questions too. How long will the antibodies protect us? Will the spread of the virus be affected by warm weather? For how long do we have to practice social distancing? When and how can we go back to schools, work and our lives in general? When will we watch FC Barcelona play again? And when can we hug our loved ones without fear? Of course, we have been doing and looking at forecasts about the possible scenarios. Let’s look at the most popular three.

Scenario #1

First, we could follow the Chinese path. After the outbreak overwhelmed Wuhan and it became clear how serious the situation is, the Chinese quickly implemented a series of strict lockdowns and restricted people’s movements. By March, the rate of new infections started to fall, and if we can believe the numbers, China is now a case study on how to bring this virus under control. If we remain focused, self-isolate and keep strict lockdowns, we can slow down this virus enough that our struggling healthcare systems will be able to pull through. This way we’ll be able to implement successful treatment plans to limit mortality. It means we could go back to life in the coming weeks or so.

Scenario #2

A slightly less optimistic version is that only a handful of countries will follow China’s path, while others will be overwhelmed by the virus. In those other countries, there will still be months of high numbers of new infections every day and a lot of people will die. We will be under lockdown during the summer and life might go back to partially normal by the Fall with flights operating again from the summer months and us (but the elderly for sure) practicing social distancing for the rest of the year. Or at least, until the vaccine arrives and we start vaccinating people globally. You can imagine, that will take some time. This scenario is probably the most likely, meaning that the majority of this year will be dominated by our fight against this pandemic.  

Scenario #3

The least likely scenario is really bad. In this version most countries would fold under the pressure, the virus would not just survive the summer, but could start a second wave during the cold months and perhaps even the herd immunity is out the window. That would mean hundreds of millions of people getting infected, and with collapsing healthcare systems, the mortality to skyrocket to 8-10% or even higher, which would mean tens of millions dead. In this scenario we would probably suffer the consequences until a vaccine could stop its spread. 

A new Science paper just predicted that the US, for example, might have to keep social distancing well into 2022! So how are we standing today? One of the most positive examples we have had so far, is the case of Germany. They have one of the highest numbers of COVID 19 cases, yet the number of fatal cases is just merely a fraction of it. The German mortality rate has been consistently lower than that of those nations sharing a similarly high number of confirmed cases like China, Italy and Spain. Even experts are a bit puzzled about their success rate, but we’re learning that there are several factors at play, that other countries can and should adopt. Early testing, transparent communication from their leaders, a well-prepared health IT infrastructure and good digital health policies differentiated Germany’s approach from that of others with a high death toll.  Another country like that is South Korea. Despite a sudden spike in infections, South Korea is getting closer to beating COVID-19. Their strategy was simple: by April they already tested four-hundred-thousand people. 

One of the biggest advantages of this virus is that it moves fast and it’s highly infectious. But South Korea managed to be faster. The ability to do that, all stems from their previous experience with the 2015 MERS outbreak that led to 185 confirmed cases. So when COVID-19 hit South Korea, they moved fast, set up drive-thru testing stations, and were extremely transparent with the public about crisis management.  But even countries that are the most affected, like Italy and Spain, will see the curve go down. According to predictions, a lot more people have been infected than the numbers we see in the reports. If we do build up immunity against COVID 19, when you go over 50% or so, the epidemic will come down naturally simply because the virus has fewer people to infect.  That's what happened in all the previous epidemics too. So when will all this finally end? 

The simple answer is that the real end of this pandemic will be the implementation of a successful vaccine. But it’s not going to be an easy road. Traditionally, it takes years to develop, test and manufacture a vaccine. The one that worked in Congo against Ebola was under development for a decade. But one factor is giving science a head start against COVID 19 is that the whole genome of the coronavirus was sequenced and shared rapidly. 70 different types of vaccines are currently being researched. With clinical trials on patients coming shortly after the summer. But scientists warn us that the soonest possible date for a vaccine could be early 2021.  Obviously we can’t wait that long. It’s going to be a challenging year for the global economy, and for all of us. In the meantime, we will slowly learn to fight this thing and to live with it, until the day comes when we can finally defeat it. Have no doubts, we will defeat it, with the power of science, medicine and biotech, there will be a vaccine and effective treatments. However, even if we can lift restrictions soon, the life we go back to will not be the same we used to have. So, the big question is what the world will look like after the crisis ends. How will healthcare, work, and most importantly everyday life will change? So, That's all for today......

THANK YOU.