As the death toll from the health crisis rolled on past 1,000, World Health Organization gave it a new name. Covid-19 certainly rolls off the tongue easier than International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses’ SARS-CoV-2. Today, we wonder how Covid-19 will roll out in history books, what will future generations say.
We Are Still Unsure How Covid-19 Will Roll Out
The world was not well-prepared for the outbreak of a new virus. Although China tried to isolate it after a few days, the virus is microscopically small and slipped through to the outside world. We should not stigmatize this situation as earlier generations did with the so-called Spanish Flu in 2018. The world must pull together on this one.
Covid-19 is an abbreviation of corona, virus, and disease followed by the year of the outbreak. It’s becoming a little clearer how Covid-19 will roll out, now there are 42,000 confirmed cases in China so far. We don’t have a vaccine to prevent it, and when we do this will require months of testing. However, we do have proven methods for treating the symptoms and the vast majority will survive.
Two Things We Have Learned from This
Chinese authorities ignored early warnings by a young doctor and went as far as summoning him for a middle-of-the-night reprimand. Alarmed, Li Wenliang kept his thoughts to himself, after he signed a statement denouncing his warning as ‘an unfounded and illegal rumor’, according to New York Times.
Li Wenliang subsequently contracted the virus from patients he was treating. Before he died in an isolation ward in the Central Hospital of Wuhan, he said “If the officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier … it would have been a lot better. There should be more openness and transparency.” His life and death have taught us two things. Citizens have a right to know what is happening around them and governments must tell them the truth.
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Preview Image: Wuhan in Happier Times
