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Two years have passed since the World Health Organization officially declared the outbreak of Covid-19 a pandemic. Since then the world has changed at an incredible speed. Changes in everything from the way we work to the medical treatments available to us. Here are five things we’ve learned since the pandemic began.
Rapidly producible mRNA vaccines
As the pandemic began, researchers began efforts to develop a vaccine that could protect people against Covid-19.
Some of the pharmaceutical companies that have attempted this have decided to use mRNA technology. No vaccine developed using this technology has previously been approved for safe use in humans.
But, this brave effort paid off. Companies like Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna have used mRNA technology to rapidly develop a vaccine for Covid-19, opening doors for research into new treatments using this method.
This process is created by taking a small piece of genetic code called mRNA and attaching it to fat. This compound can be absorbed by cells.
The mRNA in these types of corona vaccines instructs our cells to produce a small, harmless portion of the Covid-19 virus. This allows the body’s immune system to learn to recognize the virus. And then maybe if we get infected with the real covid virus our body’s immune system will be ready to attack it. But this mRNA has the potential to be used in many other ways. It could be used to train the body’s immune system to attack cancer cells, in addition to developing vaccines for diseases such as HIV, the flu and the Zika virus.
It can also be used to make proteins that are missing in the cells of people with cystic fibrosis, and to teach the body’s immune system to prevent attacks on the nervous system of people with multiple sclerosis.
Research into mRNA therapies has been ongoing for decades. But the first time they have been documented to work in practice is in the Covid-19 vaccines. These results could lead to new research that could change the lives of millions of people.
Airborne Covid-19 is easier to spread than predicted
“Covid-19 is not airborne,” the World Health Organization tweeted about four months after the start of the Covid-19 outbreak. Also, experts did not advise people to wear masks.
“There is no evidence that there are any specific benefits to people wearing face masks,” said Dr Michael Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme.
“We don’t recommend using face masks unless you’re sick yourself,” said Maria Van Kerkov, head of the Covid-19 Technical Organization. But these views began to change after the pandemic began. The WHO now says “people should make wearing face masks a normal part of life”.
Because the World Health Organization says that Covid is not only caused by large droplets of saliva or mucus released during coughing and sneezing, but can also be spread through aerosols.
An editorial in the British Medical Journal states, “In a crowded space, droplets from the mouth, eyes, and nose are more likely to be inhaled and infected than to be infected by the virus.”
The research found examples of people infected with Covid infecting others more than 2 meters away.
“March [2020] During the month, people called me to ask how long they should soak a can of beans in bleach before bringing it into the house. Everyone was kind of hyper-vigilant and hyper-paranoid,” says Paula Cannon, distinguished professor of immunology.
“We found that poorly ventilated bars and restaurants are the most dangerous because the virus spreads more through poorly ventilated spaces and the air emitted when talking without a mask,” he said.
Beyond hand washing, wearing face masks and environmental ventilation have also become healthy hygiene habits.
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Can work from home
Millions of people around the world were sent home from offices and workplaces during the pandemic. Most companies have asked employees to work from home.
Many things that were not possible a few years ago have become possible in the time of covid. This period of covid has shown that things like video calls can be done easily by many people. It looks like millions of people could change the way we do work.
An announcement made by social media giant Twitter in May 2020 is the talk of the world. “All Twitter employees in a position and environment capable of working from home will now be able to work from home at all times,” the announcement said.
Following Twitter, Facebook also made a similar announcement. A survey of 1,200 companies by Enterprise Technology Research predicted that the percentage of workers working from home permanently will double by 2021.
A global survey of 200,000 people in 190 countries by Boston Consulting found that 89% of people expect to work from home some of the time. Before the outbreak of Covid this number was just 31 percent.
People who can do some manual labor also believe they can work from home. But this leaves many with less pay and job security. This can further increase inequalities in society.
An epidemic that affected the common people
A covid pandemic could make this unbalanced world even worse. In Britain, a study by the UK Biobank found that 11.4% of people living in the country’s most deprived areas were infected with Covid. 7.8% of residents in less developed areas are infected with the Covid virus. Similarly, in Britain and the United States, ethnic minorities were the most affected.
According to 2020 data, the Hispanic (Latin American) population and black population accounted for 34% and 28% of all reported Covid deaths in New York, respectively. However, their share of the total population of the United States is only 29% and 22% respectively. In many countries, accurate data on Covid cases is not recorded. Similarly, large disparities were observed worldwide in vaccination rates.
Data suggest that in high-income and middle-income countries, about 70% of the population is fully vaccinated. This drops to just 4% in low-income countries. Vaccination rates in lower-middle-income countries are only 32%. While health officials in developed countries are giving booster doses to contain the omicron strain of coronavirus, the biggest risk could be that vaccines don’t reach people fast enough in less developed countries.
The unanswered question is the end of Kovid
At the beginning of the pandemic ‘aggregate immunity’ became a buzzword. The argument was made that the threat of the virus would be reduced if a large population acquired immunity through exposure or vaccination. But it remains difficult to achieve. This is because our immune system’s ability to fight the virus begins to wane over time. That is why many countries have taken up vaccine booster programs. Immunity after infection or vaccination lasts only about six to nine months, says Shabir A. Mati, a professor of vaccines at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. “With the vaccines we have, even if the spread of the virus is reduced, the concept of ‘collective immunity’ doesn’t make sense,” Dr Salvador Biero, from the FISABIO research institute in Spain, told the BBC in an interview. Also, the virus mutates rapidly into new variants. Some of those strains are certainly fast-spreading and difficult to combat with vaccines. These new variants also highlight that we must live with vaccines by constantly updating them to accommodate new strains.
In this scenario, the highly vaccinated countries functioned as normal, as even if someone got sick with Covid it would not be a problem for health systems. But following the rise in omicron transmission, people are being advised to get booster doses even in heavily vaccinated countries. Similarly, social distancing is also advised.
There is no consensus on how to deal with Covid across the world. While some countries like Britain abandoned restrictions earlier, others like China maintained a zero-covid policy for a long time.
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