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Handling Pandemics: Next Steps
What we should be learning from the coronavirus pandemic in order to prepare for a more serious pandemic within the next two decades
We ought to count ourselves extremely fortunate. Despite endless media sensationalism and equally endless flailing by hapless politicians, the fact is that SARS-COV2 has been nearly harmless. Compared to seasonal flu, covid-19 is actually quite difficult to catch even in its new variant forms. Compared to illnesses like smallpox (variola major), marburg, hps, and ebola, it’s per-capita fatality rate is a rounding error, being no more than 0.25% in even the worst-hit countries. After more than 15 months, around 250 million people have been infected and around 2.5 million have died — almost all of them very old, very sick, or obese. If covid-19 spread like the flue we’d be looking at around 4 billion infected people by now and if it were as lethal as variola major or hps we’d have at least 900 million deaths across all ages and health categories.
Contrary to mass media nonsense which presents every new virus as a unique threat, we’re actually full of viruses all the time. Indeed, several have contributed to our evolutionary path. It’s believed that the mammalian placenta, so essential for protecting a fetus from its mother’s immune system and…
