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“How long will Covid last? The Spanish flu lasted about two years and caused between 50 and 100 million deaths, especially among young people. If the drugs did not exist today and the vaccine trials were not under way, the time of the phase The acute phase of this pandemic could not be different. Therapies and research give us hope of a much less dramatic development. ”The HuffPost features Barbara Gallavotti, biologist, writer, science journalist and author of television programs, in particular Superquark me Ulisse.
And, speaking of the vaccine, Gallavotti stresses that “it will be a tool to protect the most fragile as soon as possible, but this will not allow the virus to circulate freely among the rest of the population. Without containment, even the smallest could contract the disease in a more serious way ”.
Speaking of virus circulation, there is a lot of discussion about herd immunity. Is it a viable path?
Without a vaccine, but without running the epidemic: this is agreed by the majority of the scientific community. Some have pointed out that in history there has never been an attempt to deal with an epidemic by voluntarily following this path. We don’t even know how many people should be infected. Perhaps 50%, but some say 20%, others 70%: the truth is that this percentage can only be understood later, once immunity has been achieved. And usually this is accomplished by a vaccine, certainly not at the table. Another question mark concerns the actual duration of immunity that follows contact with the virus: it is clear that if people can get sick again, as has already happened in some cases, the discussion loses its value. Then we think of places like Bergamo where Covid-19, which circulated a lot during the first wave, caused many victims in a relatively limited territory: this cannot be allowed to happen on a national scale. And let’s also think about Manaus, a city in Brazil that has been hit hard in recent months: it is estimated that 66% of the approximately 2 million inhabitants have been infected by the virus and it is believed that they have achieved a kind of herd immunity . Instead, in September the cases of the second wave appeared.
Will the vaccine be the solution?
It will be, if and when it arrives. We have many vaccines in an advanced testing phase and this bodes well, but there are many elements to consider. For example, it will be necessary to take into account the duration of the vaccination campaign: Germany had estimated around one year for the entire population. The vaccine will be a tool to protect the most fragile as soon as possible, but this will not authorize the virus to circulate freely among the rest of the population. Without containment, even the very young could contract the disease more seriously.
You wrote “The great epidemics” (Donzelli, 2019), a book that, before the explosion of this virus, traced the history of contagious diseases that have threatened and threaten our species. What does history teach us? When will the Covid-19 pandemic end?
We know that, for example, the Spanish flu lasted about two years, causing between 50 and 100 million deaths, especially among young people. If drugs did not exist today and vaccine trials were not ongoing, the timing of the acute phase of the Covid pandemic might not be much different. The support provided by therapies and research gives us hope for a much less dramatic development and in a much smaller number of victims. Never in history have we faced an epidemic of this magnitude with the tools available to us today. Trivially, in 1918 surgical masks didn’t even really exist. Not to mention the current possibility of remote work and activities, which constitutes an additional method of protection and distancing.
Restrictions, closures, containment: are we heading in the right direction?
It’s hard to say who made the right decisions on a global scale. Surely a winning approach was that of Oceania and the Far East, which, however, are two realities very far from us: in the first case, the specificity is given by the low population density and by the geographical characteristics; in the second case, there were probably restrictions and compliance with a discipline that would be difficult for us to apply. If we look at countries homogeneous to Italy, which are more similar to us, I would say that during the first wave we did very well.
And the second wave?
It is too early to tell, but I think a crucial factor will be the degree of spread that the virus exhibited when the first steps were taken. Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland and England have imposed restrictions, but at a time when the spread of the epidemic was different. The Germans intervened when there was one new positive case per week for every thousand inhabitants, we when there were two, the other countries followed. If I had to say who did the best, I would focus on who intervened first, even if we will have to wait for the data.
During your participation in DiMartedì in La7 he cited a study carried out by MIT in Boston, which reveals how when someone coughs and is asymptomatic, the sound they make when coughing is different from the sound made by a person who has not been infected: it is a difference that the human ear cannot distinguish, but that an artificial intelligence program can capture. Will AI be the sustenance of our future?
In general, this type of technology helps us “find the needle in the haystack”, to capture small revealing details. Artificial intelligence programs, for example, are used to analyze radiological examinations and find outbreaks of cancer cells that would escape the human eye. The support they can provide for science is tremendous.
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