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“It’s serious”: On March 18, the chancellor issued an urgent warning about the corona pandemic. At the same time, an unprecedented scientific career began. Six months later: What are the findings?
By Janne Kieselbach, tagesschau.de
Never before in her time as Federal Chancellor has there been anything like this: On the night of March 18, Angela Merkel addressed people in Germany in a televised speech. The corona pandemic has now hit Germany hard as well. Exit restrictions and contact bans come into force. “It’s serious. Take it seriously,” said the chancellor.
It’s not just empty toilet paper shelves and ransacked vegetable departments that clears up the general uncertainty these days. The threat is immediate, but invisible and unknown: the pathogen, named Sars-CoV-2 by the International Committee for the Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), was discovered only two and a half months earlier in China.
Fast pacing and broken taboos
Virologists, epidemiologists, infectologists and other scientists begin their research on the new virus faster, in an international network and under high pressure than ever before. Research funds are approved at short notice and the first results are published digitally in so-called pre-prints without prior scrutiny by the scientific community. The big science publishers are breaking a taboo and making studies available online for free. In this way, fundamental knowledge about Sars-CoV-2 can be collected at extremely high speed.
Researchers are suddenly in the spotlight
And yet, for many laypeople, research is not moving fast enough in the spring. The fact that researchers repeatedly emphasize uncertainties, contradict each other, and sometimes revise their statements, causes public irritation and sometimes frustration that is expressed too loudly. The tabloids confront virologists Christian Drosten and Hendrik Streeck, their work is criticized in the media, Drosten even receives death threats.
It’s a learning moment: Researchers are suddenly in the limelight, and sometimes better, sometimes worse, dealing with excessive attention. Politicians, the media and the public, on the other hand, have to learn in the crash course that scientific knowledge cannot be acquired in a few days, even in times of crisis, and that contradiction is not a sign of weakness, but a central tenet of scientific work.
“Why did you tell us so much nonsense?”
This conflict of expectations and principles becomes particularly clear when it comes to the meaning or nonsense of a mask requirement: Germany’s highest epidemic authority, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), is obliged to wear oral and nasal protection for people who have no symptoms until early April. People advise against it, but then change their attitude. The supposed change of course is commented with amazement and rage: “Why did you tell us so much nonsense?” Asks the “Bild”. “Yeah, now what?” He says in a comment tagesschau.de. The clamor may be plausible when compared to the usual standards of political operations. But is it also from a scientific point of view?
Hardly with this radicalism. Because in March, in reality, there were only very few meaningful studies on the effectiveness of plain cloth masks; perhaps the most serious came from Nepal and concluded that textile protection could only keep virus droplets away to a very limited degree. However, professional protective masks were not widely available. And at that time the RKI also made another, namely a psychological calculation: the use of a protective mask could lead to measures such as keeping distance and washing hands are no longer strictly adhered to. Anyone on public transportation or shopping today might get the idea that the RKI was right about this fear.
Masks alone are not enough
Meanwhile, the mask requirement has become established in retail, as well as buses and trains. In many federal states, it also applies to a limited extent in schools. From today’s scientific point of view, it’s a useful addition to other measures, because everyday masks keep some of the virus droplets away as well. However, experts from the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) remind you that only professional masks offer reliable protection. Also, masks only have an effect in combination with other measures, such as keeping your distance.
A look at the findings on the routes of transmission of Sars-CoV-2 shows how important these minimum distances are: Researchers are sure from the outset that the so-called droplet infection, as with cold viruses, is likely to play An important paper. Liquid particles that contain viruses that arise from breathing, coughing, talking, or sneezing fly directly onto the mucous membranes of the other person. According to a “Science” study from the end of June, these droplets can be catapulted more than twenty feet when sneezing.
On the other hand, the concern that such particles may also be absorbed through deflection of contaminated surfaces, for example by touching door handles or keyboards, is still considered less justified. The RKI simply states that such a smear infection “cannot be ruled out, especially in the immediate vicinity of the infected person.”
Unventilated rooms are dangerous
The second main route of transmission, in addition to droplet infection, is only used in the course of the pandemic: these are the so-called aerosols. Over and over again, events are reported in which the participants are massively infected, despite respecting minimum distances. At the beginning of March, around 80 members of a choir gathered to sing in the Berlin Cathedral Choir; later, 30 musicians will test positive for Sars-CoV-2. Researchers discover that tiny suspended particles that contain viruses can linger in the air in closed rooms for a long time. Especially for the cold season, this is likely to be one of the most important and momentous finds of the last six months: Where there is no good ventilation, large crowds are risky.
The possibility of minimizing this risk will depend, among other things, on how the testing procedures for the new coronavirus are developed. Until now, so-called PCR tests have been used for direct detection of the pathogen, the results of which will take up to two days to arrive. Antibody tests are also used, but can only test for a past infection. Hopes are currently being placed on so-called antigen tests: they do not detect the genetic material of the virus, but its proteins. Antigen tests are still being tested, but if developed successfully, they could produce very fast results within an hour.
180 vaccine development projects around the world
However, the highest hopes largely rest on the development of drugs and vaccines against the Covid-19 disease caused by the new coronavirus. While many people do not develop cold symptoms or only have mild symptoms despite an infection, others with severe shortness of breath must be treated in intensive care units. For many drugs, the drug Remdesivir has proven to be suitable for shortening the duration of hospital treatment. It inhibits the replication of the genome of RNA viruses, which also include Sars-CoV-2. Other research approaches, for example, pursue the goal of finding a remedy for the life-threatening inflammatory reaction of the immune system.
A return to social normality should only allow vaccines that create artificial immunity against Sars-CoV-2: according to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are currently around 180 vaccine development projects underway, 35 candidate vaccines they are already in clinical studies (phase I to III). In Germany, the BioNTech company from Mainz and the CureVac company from Tübingen have started clinical trials in humans.
However, it is open if and when a vaccine will be available to the general public. Because despite the very high rate of development, the same applies here: science can and must be wrong. Only when doubts have been minimized through numerous independent tests is it a practical result in the end. Today only one thing can be said with certainty: Germany awaits an autumn that will bring new uncertainties and challenges. The pandemic is not over.
