What a tragedy is happening in such an era right? We used to get scared from the news on tv about world war 3 to begin soon and suddenly this showed up our nowhere... thousands of people dying everyday worldwide and nobody can help it... people are not even getting to say their last goodbyes to there loved one and how it might be affecting think just makes me sad I just pray everyday to wake up and find there's no more coronavirus anymore it just vanishes suddenly like it came suddenly. My heart goes out for the people on this forum who or whose family member have been quarantined in the hospital❤
Warnings of a new unstoppable disease jumping across from animals have been regularly around for a long time but as they haven't generally reached Europe, they kind of have slipped under the radar. We are very good at blending things out that are right in our face and an immediate danger...
Ebola has been perceived as a localised African problem even though it is now obvious that it has started mutating and adapting to humans by becoming less deadly but more contagious. It is going to turn into something that is going to stay with us for a long time.
Other coronaviruses have made the jump before in recent decades (SARS and MERS) but because they were more deadly, they didn't transmit as easily and could be detained much more quickly. What distinguishes Covid-19 is its high transmission factor and the fact that it can be transmitted before the outbreak of symptoms as well as by people who have it so lightly they are not aware that they are carriers. It is by far NOT the most deadly of things that have jumped in recent times but the most infectious; what makes it so dangerous is that it is more infectious than flu and that it has a larger percentage of serious cases that need hospitalisation and can lead to death from serious secondary complications or combine with underlying illnesses. The number of people dying directly from the virus seems to be actually only a very small percentage of all fatalities. In that it is very similar to flu - you do not die from a flu virus directly but from secondary complications.
It is a sobering thought that pretty much all of our infectious human diseases have originated since we became farmers and started living in close contact with animals since the Neolithic; the first wave was always the most devastating.
Some, like the bubonic plague, have been far more deadly but when you read up on it, you will suddenly find that the stockpiling, the rush to safe 'out of the way' places (bringing the illness with you, of course) that currently see many older people move to their secondary homes by the sea or in the country or moving their camper vans into rural areas, and even total lockdowns are nothing new at all!
Since then, of course our population has exponentially multiplied and become a lot more connected, so the spread is a lot faster and more far-reaching. So is our contact with animals and the potential for species jumps.
What makes Covid-19 so dangerous is not so much the virus itself or an extremely high rate of fatalities but the challenge the high percentage of high need hospital support care that it poses for our health systems and the high risk that it can overwhelm them.
Medical advances have given us this deceptive idea of total safety - this has been a very rude wake-up call indeed!
