Since then, the lives of others around the world have been dramatically replaced and, in some cases, beyond recognition.
Wearing a mask now is not an unusual place, the way we socialize and teach our population has changed, words we have not known in the past, such as ‘contact tracking’, ‘blocking’ and unusual global vocabulary.
And above all, there’s the human cost. Nearly one million more people have died as a result of the new coronavirus disease, COVID-19, and countries around the world have suffered unprecedented economic damage.
The pandemic has posed immense and demanding situations for governments, fitness systems and families around the world.
With the United States surpassing 200,000 deaths recorded through COVID-19, here’s a look at how we got here and what it will bring in the long run to a coronavirus-plagued world.
Reports of a new coronavirus began to emerge before this year, when the Chinese fitness government showed that dozens of people in Wuhan city had been hospitalized for pneumonia of unknown origin. would replace the lives of all of us as we know it.
“The confusion at the time, I think especially in early January, how this virus was transmitted,” dr. Jennifer Bouey, epidemiologist and principal policy researcher at RAND, who in China from January 10-14 suspects that the virus could simply create an epidemic, said, however, “the official word is not soArray . . . I think the ultimate debatable component of history. “
Still, China’s history with the 2003 SARS outbreak meant that the science around understanding coronaviruses was much more advanced, he said. On January 10, Chinese scientists published genomic data on the virus, just one month after the first case shown. a day later.
The government has provoked outrage in China after allegedly covering the first reports of the new coronavirus. Li Wenliang, a doctor who rebuked through the local Wuhan government for sounding the alarm, later died of COVID-19.
Despite initial confusion around the virus, Bouey said early action may not have prevented a pandemic yet.
“The debate is whether there is a prior understanding of the virus, would it be contained in China?I very much doubt that this will happen, because of the nature of the trip, the globalization and the nature of this virus,” he said.
At the end of January, China took a normal step, a measure that at the time was drastic, but is now being experienced through billions of people around the world: the government has to block a city of 11. 8 million more people, with the rest of the surrounding province, Hubei, soon sticking to its needs. Public shipping is suspected of being over, department stores have been closed, and others have been told to stay in their homes for the foreseeable long term to involve the spread.
Because of these incredibly strict measures, China has reported virtually no domestic cases in a few months. On May 4, when the pandemic erupted in the United States, China recorded one case and 0 deaths for the third consecutive week.
“After that, there were perhaps 3 small teams in Xinjiang, Beijing and one in northeast China. But that’s it. I think China is probably the only country that had a network transmission, a wonderful network transmission [when the transmission can’t be traced back to a single source], but it fell to zero . . . I attribute it to his rather dramatic blockade, ” said Bouey.
Over the next few weeks and months, the new coronavirus has spread to the United States and Europe, driven by air travel abroad. The first case shown in the United States recorded in the United States on January 21: a Washington state boy who had traveled to Wuhan.
However, according to WHO, the epidemic was not yet a “pandemic” until 11 March, just over six months ago. When asked if this had happened too late, WHO spokeswoman Dr. Margaret Harris told ABC News that there were a number of misconceptions about the use of the term.
“It’s something other people don’t understand,” he says. We did not claim a ‘pandemic’, we demanded a public fitness emergency of foreign interest” and we did so on January 13. Now, on March 11, the spread of the epidemic was so great, so widespread, and there was a widespread transmission network in more than two regions, thus meeting the epidemiological definition of a pandemic. But it was a matter of characterizing her, it was not a matter of pointing it out.
The public aptitude emergency means that all states parties to the IHR have been warned about the possibility of coronavirus and, according to Harris, “there has been a difference in how they take it seriously. “
As China flattened the initial epidemic curve, the rise in Europe and the United States forced governments to act.
“Europe and the United States had their heads in the sand most often in February,” said Dr. Charles Clift, principal investigator of the Global Health Program at Chatham House, a group of experts. “Ideally, drastic measures similar to restrictions and social estating deserve to have been taken in February to mitigate the screw-ups that would occur in March.
“But governments, to some extent and rightly so, underestimated the threat they faced and were reluctant to settle for the political and economic prices that would be incurred to compensate for a threat that many (e. g. the UK) in February would be moderate. “
The eyes of the world temporarily turned to Italy, which crowned the death toll in China in March. The exponential accumulation of cases and deaths has raised fears that other fitness systems may be overwhelmed. With scenes from the floor showing extensive care units, drastic social estification measures and an increasing number of people, governments have to look to Italy, where they can also end up without taking serious action.
The stage in Italy “at the heart of people’s minds” at this level of the pandemic, according to Sarah Reed, expert in the UK National Health Service at Nuffield Trust, an independent British expert group.
“I think it’s probably fair to say that when there were still so many unknowns about how this would unfold, we were looking for more complex countries than us,” he told ABC News. “We’ve noticed places like Italy where hospitals were crowded and it’s a transparent goal, how can we keep you from going down here. “
Health systems around the world have followed a remarkable path to cope with potential tensions, including those with other degrees of sophistication.
“We have noticed that many fitness systems do things like temporarily recruit inactive staff and staff, move staff to new roles, to acute care facilities, countries build hospitals to meet increased demand, countries are universally moving more appointments online. I think it shows that it’s a challenge, even for maximum capacity fitness systems, to be able to do that,” Reed said.
But while South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan have favored a verification and traceability approach, the blockade has the preferred approach to preventing the spread of coronavirus for peak governments in Europe and parts of the United States. The most striking example came here in India, where On March 24, through Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a “total ban” was announced to 1. 3 billion people leaving their homes.
WHO itself has never advocated directly for a lockout policy, according to Harris, and has encouraged governments to strengthen their detection capacity and put social esttachment measures into force.
“In fact, it’s attractive because when Wuhan did it, well, we thought, wow, you know, you have a company that accepts strict measures to be able to do it successfully,” he said. culturally, socially very, very others in Wuhan did and did so successfully. “
Still, he followed a series of dark and overly familiar milestones: the first COVID-like death 19 reported in the United States in late February, and three months later, the death toll exceeded 100,000. exceeded one million, an increase of ten times in cases compared to last month. It took less than two weeks for that number to double. Right now, the scope of the new coronavirus is almost incomprehensible, with more than 27 million cases recorded and about 900,000 deaths internationally, according to knowledge compiled through Johns Hopkins University. The United States remains the most affected country, with more than 196,000 deaths and 6. 6 million cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The effects of the new coronavirus on nursing homes and service apartments have been devastating in the West. In May, research through the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) revealed that the percentage of deaths in nursing homes in Europe as a result of several from Germany, with 37%, to Spain and France, with 66%.
Last month, an ABC News investigation into public fitness awareness revealed that nursing home deaths persisted even as the total number of COVID deaths declined, accounting for roughly 40% of virus-like deaths.
In addition to the fact that countries have taken WHO’s initial statements, the “epidemic memory” of countries, the concept that countries that have experienced SARS and MERS outbreaks have reorganized their preparedness for long-term epidemics, i. e. in Asia, where there are fewer deaths than in the United States and Europe , has played a roleArray according to Harris. In this sense, Africa also stood out, he said, even where there have been “very giant epidemics”.
“One of the theories why they seem to have done more than the maximum in more evolved countries or more evolved regions is that they also have a very strong public fitness infrastructure,” he said. “They have infectious disease epidemics. They have very new memories of what infectious disease epidemics can do and they take it seriously.
By one point in April, according to an Agence France-Presse database, more than 3. 9 billion people, roughly part of the world’s population, were in some form of blockade.
A notable exception, however, Suecia. Si the Scandinavian country banned public meetings of more than 50 people, chose to keep bars, clubs and restaurants open to the pandemic. His strategy has been internationally praised and criticized, he has had a much more consistent death count than his Scandinavian neighbors, however, in the last two weeks he has recorded only 0. 1 deaths through COVID-19 consisting of 100,000 inhabitants, according to the ECDC.
In 12 of the 20 most affected countries lately, the number of cases shown in line with the day is increasing, based on a two-week moving average compiled through Johns Hopkins University. India, the world’s largest democracy, which was also the most affected country in the Spanish influenza pandemic of a hundred years ago, has been noteworthy in this group, since it made the decision to lift its blockade, the instances have increased exponentially, recently surpassing Brazil as the most affected country at the time with more than five million instances. India is on track to fit into the hardest-hit country, with schools and society now in a position to reopen.
This week, WHO recorded the greatest accumulation of cases, and governments have continually warned of the dangers of a “second wave” and a return to the first months of the pandemic. This framework, according to Harris, is not necessarily useful.
In the United States and around the world, corporations have eased their closures, encouraging their populations to return to painting and return to school. In Europe, cases are constantly expanding with the opening of the company, although this may not have resulted in the same number of deaths as in the early stages of the pandemic, Harris said that to weigh a balanced approach, having learned classes from the next six months, will be over the next winter.
“We’re just saying that he runs a society in a way that prevents a virus like this from destroying his high-productivity net paints and cutting the center of his net paints,” Harris said. “But continue your activities safely. It’s not easy. It takes a lot of negotiation. It takes a lot of understanding. It takes a lot of paintings and a lot of commitment to change. But it’s possible. “
Very few diseases have been eliminated with absolutely one vaccine, Harris said, and while an effective vaccine would reduce transmission, “that alone is not going to prevent it. “
In addition to coronaviruses, WHO remains “very concerned” about restrictions on access to physical care, i. e. for the treatment of noncommunicable diseases such as cancer, Harris said. Humanitarian agencies have also warned that emerging rates of child malnutrition can lead to an additional 12,000. deaths consistent with the month due to “emaciation” (a severe form of malnutrition) this year. “In fact, a lot of what we’ve said and one of the reasons transmission is as low as imaginable is that the fitness formula isn’t just about COVID,” she said.
“Several people like you wonder ‘what’s changed’ since we called it a pandemic,” Harris says. And I would say precisely our knowledge. We know a lot more about this virus».
With this knowledge, the next six months would possibly seem very different, with the delight and classes learned from dealing with the world’s largest fitness emergency in a hundred years. Still, the long-term effects of more than six months have not yet felt, and perhaps it is to make a judgement on how the global has responded successfully.
“The long-term effect of the pandemic will be profound, economically, socially and politically,” Clift said. “These long-term effects will exceed immediate fitness prices; it would probably not be imaginable to say which of the paths followed in the early stages of the pandemic were most productive to minimize fitness prices and livelihoods until 2030, if any. “