Not surprisingly, “pandemic” has been declared the word of the year for 2020; other top searched terms include coronavirus, non-essential, furlough, hydroxychloroquine, and US elections! Of course, toilet paper, sanitizer, and sourdough were top hits this year also.
There have definitely been changes in society, and it will be interesting to see which ones persist into the future.
Hopefully, important social events like live sporting event, concerts and award ceremonies can return sooner rather later; we can’t have the “Pandemmys” forever! Working from home is a tricky one and apart from having led to huge increases in household rubbish, it is isolating and Zoom meetings are great from time to time, but again not always and not forever!
It has been a different year with countries struggling to control the virus using measures of various intensity and success. Celebrity Dr Gupta said it best by quoting from Charles Dickens’ a Tale of Two cities; it was the best of times, it was the worst of times… and it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. Although foolishness may play a role in the spread of the virus, controlling a highly infectious, 100 nm virus is not as easy task.
In our part of the world, Melbourne, Australia, after a protracted winter lockdown period, we managed to essentially eliminate the virus with 60 consecutive days without community acquired cases. However, the virus is back and the few cases observed in the last couple of days, could easily get out of control. It’s no-one fault, it is the nature of a highly infectious virus, and strict lockdowns do come with enormous social and economic costs. We will see if we can beat a potential surge with a vaccine or if are heading to lockdown 3.0.
Exactly one year (December 31st, 2019), after first hearing about an atypical pneumonia, COVID-19 has ravaged the world in 2020. Currently there are over 80 million reported cases with >1.8 million deaths globally (almost 20 million cases and >340 thousand deaths in the US. As we head into 2021 in a few hours there is hope with the success of Operation Warp Speed; the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are already being distributed and initial doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine are imminent. In this context, the live TV vaccinations of healthcare workers, and politicians (the latest being Vice President-elect Kamala Harris receiving her first dose of the Moderna vaccine), is important for public confidence in the programs.
Unfortunately, there are not yet enough vaccine doses to go around and the more transmissible UK variant has now spread in the US with the first case of the UK variant found in Colorado and in San Diego. The South African variant is also doing the rounds. Despite these challenges, it looks like 2021 will be the year in which we can, at least, tame the effects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and reduce the burden of the COVID-19 pandemic.
See you next year!
Until next time … Tranquilo Polymaths.