Familiar means something that has been around for a while and we have gotten used to it. Many serious illnesses are common place like diabetes and heart disease to take two examples. We know what causes them, and there are ways to treat them. Could Covid-19 become a familiar part of life too, James Hamelin pondered in The Atlantic on February 24, 2020.
Could Covid-19 Become a Mainline Problem?
We already have well-established treatments for the symptoms. These work, provided the patient is otherwise reasonably healthy. The virus is not as harsh as for example avian flu. However the infected person does still urgent attention to reduce the risk of acute respiratory problems.
The problem has been the lack of a vaccine until now. Until we have one, we may need to accept there will be so many infected people we eventually get it too. There’s great breaking news that Moderna Therapeutics in Cambridge Massachusetts has shipped the first batches of Covid-19 vaccine. This is just 42 days since China released the genetic code. Human testing begins in April 2020.
Meanwhile the Pattern of New Outbreaks May Continue
It’s proving increasingly difficult to isolate an outbreak and snuff it out. This could be impossible in Africa, owing to its porous borders that are shadows of its colonial past. Could Covid-19 become something many of us catch eventually? James Hamlin thinks this is likely. He is not a journalist. He lectures at Yale School of Public Health.
What could a future with the embedded virus be like? Katarina Zimmer writing in New Scientist says 14% of confirmed cases are likely to be severe, with serious pneumonia and shortness of breath. However, only 2.3% may die. It might take a very long time to understand precisely why this is so. In the mean time the struggle continues.
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Preview Image: Novel Coronavirus Covid-19
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