Fighting covid

The world wants to beat the covid-19 pandemic more cooperation is required. Everybody needs to pool resources together with health institutions capable of doing the job. Understanding how any respiratory virus spreads. This group of viruses are easy to spread and difficult to stop. Spreading by hijacking water droplets created by breathing. Basic hygiene measures alone are not enough. Only been able to eradicate two viruses nothing like this, suppressing covid is the most likely outcome. Rather basic four steps to getting that outcome, but in practice on a global level difficult to complete.

First, identify the virus.
Second, contain any outbreak.
Third, limit any mutations.
Fourth global vaccination program.

Identify the virus.

Medical breakthroughs in modern times have centred around DNA sequencing. 
Letting you map out how any disease works, helping understand how it functions. 
Massive investment has flowed into DNA sequencing programs. Western nations have the expertise, majority of global testing capacity, UK hosting the majority. Building a global early warning system to identify viruses was happening. Just Covid-19 happened before the system was ready. Everybody needs to do the heavy lifting, and any system would have resilenced at the heart of it. A strong case for more funding and resources with cooperation when comes to sequencing. Finding the health problem before it gets out of control. A serious lack of communication between everybody created a disjointed response. The virus had been running wild before anybody realised what was happening. This was the first modern respiratory virus that turned into a pandemic. Failure to spot it has created a giants series of health problems, the world needs to clean up.

Creating a network of regional health institutions, linked up to the global health body. Everybody in the chain has the power and resources with built-in resilience against global supply problems.

Containment

Any outbreak needs to be contained, need preparation and resources to rapidly act. Some decry the cost involved but known costs are far lower compared to unknown. In some ways, these mirror, the climate change debate. Letting the public health crisis get out of control causes massive damage to human lives, even causing death. We don’t know the long-term health impacts caused by this virus. The early stages of any outbreak containing any health crisis are easy, just needs strong enforcement and targeting the right areas. Need to suppress the outbreak so it is easier to control. Cooperation is needed to help contain any virus. Regional institutions need to come together on a global stage. Institutions like WHO needs more bite with cooperation on a global scale. WHO needs to change, flawed by design and unable to do the job. The world did not plan around something like covid and weak links in the chain are causing huge problems in containing it.

European nations planned around flu pandemics, proving inefficient. The focus was on basic hygiene measures like hand washing using soap. Indeed most prepared have discovered a virus out of control. Asian nations had faced respiratory diseases Sars and Mers. Similar to Covid preparations were done against similar threats. Turns out respiratory virus are significantly difficult to deal with. Asian societies that coped used social distancing measures, face masks and strict quarantine practices. Bunch more measures like strict trace and tracking program designed to find outbreaks and contain it. Clear public health messages with support provided to anybody impacted. Air travel was limited and quarantine for all travellers coming in or out. Everybody is finding covid-19 hard to control. Failure to contain it has resulted in massive headache. Colossal failure was not just shutting down global air travel sooner. 

Problem confronting the world presently is virus is widly out of control how achieve you contain it? Face masks, space between people helps to cut the viral loads. Basic hygience measures all help together. Medical supplies supply chain needs to be more resilence and spare slack is needed. Gamble is vaccination programs help contain it here and worry about air travel later. 

Limit mutations

The longer the virus stays out in the wild more mutations can happen. Scientists are extremely worried about mutations, lower efficacy rate causes severe problems for vaccinations. Small percent increase means more patients in hopsital on average.  Failure to vaccinate the world in time, means living with it. Possible that it becomes more devastating, more resistant to track and cope with. Possible turn into the flu-like annual event, with unknown health impacts constant flow of infections. The concern is this helps breed unknown type of virus that even worse. Tolerating things run hot could result in even worse health outcomes. 

Global vaccination

Vaccinations are effecitve against current mutations but that won’t last forever. Letting it burn widly out of control means each mutation could limit the process of any vaccinations. All that time and energy wasted setting you back to step 1. Global vaccination program is needed now starting most vulnerable first, everybody else next. Initially assume some severe risks that could deliver massive global impacts. In the present circumstances, the world has to contain something out in the wild. Letting the virus burn like a fire all around the world and hoping vaccinates alone will liberate us is foolish. 

Complacency is what helped cause this disaster more of it won’t resolve it. Nature have a nasty way of surprising us.