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Since the start of the pandemic, epidemiologists and public health professionals have used mathematical models both to try to predict what lies ahead and to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
However, as sciencealert.com emphasizes, modeling infectious diseases is a complicated thing to do. Epidemiologists warn that “models are not crystal balls pointing to the future.” Even the complex versions of them, which, for example, combine different predictions or use automatic training, are not necessarily capable of indicating when a pandemic will end or how many people will die.
Nukhet Varlik, an associate professor of history at the University of South Carolina, a historian who looks at the peculiarities of disease and public health, thinks it’s worth waiting not to wait for signs, but to look back and see what outbreaks Past have ended (or not).
In what stage of the pandemic are we now?
At the beginning of the pandemic, many expected the coronavirus to simply disappear. Some have argued that the virus will simply disappear on its own when the summer heat hits. Others have argued that a sufficient number of people will develop so-called herd immunity. But none of that happened.
Efforts by public health services to manage and mitigate the pandemic, from careful testing and contact tracing to social distance and wearing of masks, have proven effective.
However, since the virus has spread to practically the entire world, the application of these measures alone cannot end the pandemic. Now all eyes are on vaccine development. The development of the vaccine is being tested at an unprecedented rate.
However, experts note that even with a successful vaccine and effective treatment, COVID-19 may never go away. Even if a pandemic is controlled in one part of the world, it is very likely that it will continue in other parts, which means that it will still be possible to infect anywhere.
Even if the coronavirus is no longer a pandemic-level threat that needs to be addressed, it is likely to become endemic, meaning the slow long-term spread of the virus will continue. The coronavirus will continue to cause smaller outbreaks; in other words, it will be very similar to the seasonal flu.
The history of pandemics is replete with such alarming examples.
The resulting diseases rarely go away.
Almost all the pathogens that have affected humanity during the last thousands of years remain with us, whether they are bacterial, viral or parasitic. This is because it is essentially impossible to completely eradicate these pathogens.
The only disease that can be eradicated with vaccines is smallpox. Mass vaccination campaigns led by the World Health Organization in the 1970s and 1970s were successful, and in the 1980s smallpox was declared the first and so far only human disease to be completely eradicated.
Such success stories are exceptional. Rather, it is an exception to the rule that when a new disease occurs, it remains alive among humans.
Malaria can be given as an example. This parasitic disease is almost as old as mankind. However, it still exists and remains a heavy burden: say, in 2018, approximately 228 million in the world. cases of malaria and around 405 thousand. deaths from this disease.
Since 1955 Global malaria programs using DDT and chloroquine in 2006 have been quite successful, but the disease is still in an endemic phase in many countries in the southern hemisphere.
The situation is similar in the case of diseases such as tuberculosis, leprosy or measles. These diseases have accompanied humanity for several millennia. Despite great efforts, its rapid improvement has yet to be seen.
The addition of relatively younger pathogens to, for example, HIV and Ebola viruses, as well as influenza and coronaviruses such as SARS, MERS, and SARS-CoV-2, which cause COVID-19, provides an general epidemiological picture.
The Global Disease Survey shows that annual mortality from infectious diseases (most of which die in the developing world) accounts for nearly a third of all deaths worldwide.
Today, as we live in an era of global air travel, climate change and ecological unrest, we are constantly faced with the threat of new infectious diseases and we continue to suffer from much older diseases that do not seem to regress.
Once it joins the list of pathogens that affect human communities, most infectious diseases remain on it.
The plague that has caused epidemics in the past is still a reminder of itself
Even infections for which we have an effective vaccine and treatment persist and continue to live among us. Probably no other disease illustrates these cases as well as the plague, the deadliest infectious disease in human history. Even today, the name of this disease is still synonymous with horror.
The plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Over the past five thousand years, local outbreaks of plague and at least three recorded pandemics have killed hundreds of millions of people. The most famous of all pandemics was in the 14th century. the Black Plague roared in the middle.
Still, the Black Death was certainly not an isolated outbreak. The plague returned every decade or even more frequently. Each time, the disease shook already weakened communities and caused suffering for at least six centuries.
Until the 19th century. all the outbreaks of the health revolution gradually faded over a period of months, in some cases years. This was due to changes in temperature, humidity, and a sufficient number of susceptible vectors and people.
Some communities recovered relatively quickly after the losses and losses caused by the Black Death. Others did not. Medieval Egypt, for example, has been unable to recover from the lingering effects of the pandemic, which has devastated the agricultural sector in particular. The overall negative effects of population decline have become insurmountable. This led to the gradual demise of the Mamelian Sultanate, which was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in less than two centuries.
The same plague bacteria that destroyed state structures remain with us today, reminding us of the resistance and persistence of pathogens.
Hopefully COVID-19 won’t live for thousands of years. But until there is a successful vaccine, we cannot feel safe. It is unlikely that we can feel this way about the vaccine.
In this case, the role of politics becomes crucial: as vaccination programs weaken, infections can reappear with force. Just look at what happens when the volume of measles and polio vaccines is reduced.
Given all the historical and modern precedents, humanity can only hope that the COVID-19-causing coronavirus will prove to be an easily surrendered and eradicated pathogen.
Unfortunately, the history of pandemics teaches us to expect otherwise.
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