Story of virus which can disrupt our life
There are different types of living organisms on our planet earth such as humans, animals, plants which we consider part of our ecosystem. We need to consider bacteria and virus also a part which is not visible to our naked eyes but can make everyone sick or even create pandemics like situations such as ongoing COVID-19 2019, MERS in 2012, SARS in 2002, and many more in history — Influenza H1N1 1918 and plague which are most deadliest among all which killed over 50 million people, HIV, Ebola 2014, swine flu 2009, smallpox 1520, etc. Although the effect of each outbreak is different they visit us very often in various forms or by evolution. As we are not used to it or we don’t know much about other parts of the world/earth (wildlife, sea animals), we can’t predict the future. Although we have sufficient data and efficient resources it’s hard to handle it/researchers need more time to dig deeper. Unlike H1N1 1918 and plague, where we need to also blame resource constraints for millions of deaths, that’s not the situation in the 21st century.
So What is Virus and how its showing tremendous impact in our lives ?
A virus is a microscopic/nanoscopic organism that cannot reproduce itself to replicate, rather hold a cell to multiply in other living organisms. The cell it holds in this scenario is called the host cell. A virus is made of genetic material either DNA or RNA which will have a protective coat called a capsid and around it, another spiky coat called the envelope. It will latch on to the host cell and gets inside them and with the help of the host cell, it starts replicating its genetic code. Once the viral particle starts replicating, the initial particle will either leave the host cell or latch on to another cell. Followed by viral replication, it will infect a new host (called transmission). In this process, the virus starts eating the cells and most cells eventually die. Most of the virus which our body is used to will get caught by our antibodies whenever it enters our body and prevents us from getting harmed. But other viruses which we are not used to, enters our body, our antibodies can’t read its genetic code and it can’t work against it and eventually, we will get infected. So only vaccines can help us from such type.
Why Corona-virus outbreak different from others?
In ancient times people used to live in small groups without any relation with other communities. If one got the disease in a community eventually the spread stays within that group.
Days gone, people started connecting and even the virus/disease spread increased to a new level.
In the 21st century, People are more connected than ever before. Traveling and visiting countries became more common for anyone.
China also became one of the hot spot travel destinations and some thousands of people visit China every day. When the virus spread started in Wuhan and doctors figured out it’s a new coronavirus, the government might have alerted everyone in the world so that spread might have been controlled faster but they delayed it until the last min. Every day some thousands of people travel in and out of china/Wuhan . And because of the delay visitors might have already carried the virus outside Wuhan and even outside China. Now, this virus is in every country, spreading like there is no other day and is unstoppable. Countries imposed lockdown’s everywhere, hoping the curve will be flattened someday. Trading, business, jobs everything got effected and still, we don’t have a clear picture, what will happen next. Countries Italy, USA, Iran are worst effected and still counting (at the time of writing this article), Italy has the worst fatality rate of all countries, healthcare workers are working day and night to save peoples lives and with cases going up day by day, they are also running out of ventilators and medical supplies.
So how can we stop it?
Why we don’t have a vaccine for COVID-19 yet? why it takes too long for any vaccine to come out? first of all, what is a vaccine?
Edward Jenner invented the vaccine in 1798 for smallpox, the idea of a vaccine is when a virus/disease infects our body that means our antibodies/immunity is not able to work against it, so we need a different defense system. So, Edward found that the smallpox virus cannot infect a person infected with cowpox virus( a virus which is much milder than smallpox and belongs to the virus family vaccinia). So, he used vaccinia as immune to cure people infected with smallpox and the method is named as vaccine then. So, a vaccine is an immune virus/a type of antibody that can protect us from unknown/more dangerous viruses. So, When a new virus creating trouble for us, scientists/researchers always look for patient ZERO to figure out the exact source to find its immunity.
Although, If a vaccine is invented it takes a minimum of a year for it to come out. The reason for this is, every medicine/drug has side effects, and when it's newly invented it has to go through a lot of trials on animals and human to prove that it will not behave differently and it needs to be approved by drug control agencies where they perform all tests to make sure it works as expected. That’s why most vaccines/medicines will even take 12 years to get ready and available in the market.
So, in the COVID-19 case scientists thought differently and started searching for pre-existing drugs, different countries tried different drugs and most of the results look positive. Some of the drugs that worked are Remdesivir an experimental drug to cure Ebola created by Gilead Sciences, a combination of Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine which is an anti-malarial drug, Ritonavir/lopinavir which is used to treat HIV Infection, Ritonavir/lopinavir and interferon-beta combination are available and several doctors in the world said they were able to recover much patience by treating them with these drugs. Still, these drugs are in the stage of trials and there is no evidence these will 100% work.
Even though these drugs work, it cannot slow the spread, and for all the infected people to recover it will take a sufficient amount of time. So, if people without relying on the drugs/vaccines practice social distancing and self-isolate will help flatten the curve until we recover from this mess.
Fake news
We are in the 20th year of the 21st century and everyone has access to news, social media via smartphones, and televisions. We are more connected than ever before. But where it is good, there is bad. Fake news/content became more non-sense, people are more confused to figure out which one is legit and which is not and in today’s world of internet anything can spread easily to millions of people super fast.
So, for everyone who is getting messages in messenger apps(like WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, etc.,) and shared content in social media website, before anyone forward/share, it's better to check the source and facts.
There are several ways to do so.
One, There is plenty of information available in Wikipedia which I trust the most and you can also find how legit is the website you are sharing or content.
Two, We can also search on google, experts around the world write about it to tell us which one is genuine, which is not.
Three, www.snopes.com is one of the facts check websites(I believe there are more such sites) that tells us true and false news which we might have seen and read recently. I believe their team is putting a lot of effort into finding the facts and doing a marvelous job in protecting us from the fake world.
Four, If the news is spreading mostly it will be on all websites, even in legit sites/TV channels like BBC, CNN, Washington Post, Newyork times, Reuters, al Jazeera, etc.,(I don’t say everything they are saying is true but most of them are accurate). So, check if the news is available on any other website.
My point is, unnecessarily don’t forward the messages where the source is not legit, that will create worse than good. We have not yet invented the right way to solve this problem. Hope we might get it sooner but until then we need to do our own judgment.
Who is responsible for this massive destruction?
Before even thinking about whom to blame , there is clearly lack of governance in the first place.
When SAR’s 2002 happened china might have responded quickly so they are able to control it in initial stage only ,also SARS by nature will not survive in high temperatures .So, that might be reason, it did not created a big impact at that time . But COVID-19 is purely negligence of chines administration .Even though they figured out the virus earlier in 2019 they delayed the news spread until 21st January 2020 which is the major reason for this massive outbreak.
Two, When these types of health crises happen all countries in the world look at the world health organization(WHO) and it has to play a major role in fixing these problems. But if it fails to perform the role of what it is meant for, countries lose trust in it. Experts say WHO ‘s is very irresponsible and their slow response might have lead to these crises.
Three, with a huge amount of positive COVID-19 cases coming to hospitals daily in Italy, administrations not able to figure out between emergency vs non-emergency, and because of lack of medical supplies and ventilators, the fatality rate went to a new level, even though an average fatality rate in other countries remained low.
so on…
What we can learn from these crises and what needs to be improved?
One, leave the wildlife alone and let them live along with us on this planet.
In our evolution process back from 4 billion years(beginning of life on earth) many living creatures came a long way till the current day along with humans crossing a lot of Extinctions, they have an equal right on this ecosystem. But now we became a major threat to them.
Also, unnecessarily we are bringing the treat to ourselves. At least from now, all the legal/illegal wildlife tradings need to be banned full-fledged and impose punishments on illegal traders. Countries have to put 24/7 hours watch on these activities.
Two, Countries need to work together to fight these types of crises. We need more global solutions than thinking independently.
Three, Healthcare needs to be everyone’s top priority. Like we are spending billions of dollars on defense every year, healthcare also needs an equal priority. Particularly, developing countries need to put healthcare infrastructure as their top priority.
Four, spending needs to be increased in research and learning on our own planet than other parts of space. We are not familiar with our own planet yet.
Five, everyone needs to learn to increase their immunity and hygiene. Washing hands and face regularly(even after we got settled from the outbreak) might help to stay safe from any bacteria/virus. Learn to be responsible.
