Looking back
The first time ever we heard about the current corona virus pandemic was at the end of January 2020 when the World Health Organisation has declared the outbreak a public health emergency on international concern.
Going back trying to trace the routes of this infection would probably lead us to Hubei province in central China where the real first person was infected. It was a person aged 55 years who was one of Wuhan city residents, and that was the first known victim of COVID-19 viral infection, and that was on 17 November 2019. The first official announcement by China was on 31 December 2019, when health authorities in China reported to the WHO a cluster of viral pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan in Hubei region. The WHO then declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020. At that very time 7,818 cases were identified world wide affecting 19 countries in five WHO regions.
Let us try to go back a bit to understand where we are now. It is probably fair to say that within the corona category of RNA viruses, there are 4 subgroups named alpha, beta, gamma, and delta based on their genomic structure. Alpha & beta coronaviruses infect only mammals causing usually respiratory symptoms in humans and gastroenteritis in the other animals. Until December 2019, only 6 coronaviruses were known to infect humans, four of them they caused mild common cold type of symptoms in immunocompromised people, and the other two have caused pandemics in the past two decades (SARS CoV in 2002-3, with 10% mortality; and MERS CoV in 2012, with 37% mortality).
That was not just a piece of history in our life, but it could be the key towards knowing more and more about how that mysterious viral pneumonia has happened and where from. Obviously that “mysterious” strange kind of pneumonia would never come from nowhere, and it can only tell us openly and frankly that, the “zero” case is still on the run !. The first source of COVID-19 clearly needs to be found, and if we manage to get that very piece of information honestly and sincerely, we may learn much more about the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Looking around
Since December last year, life has gone forward, events have changed, and people in the whole world have learned, adapted, accustomed and moved on. That is the nature of us humans. We were born with adaptable, progressive, and self-upgrading software. We are flexible, though few may not be, and those are the ones who always resist the changes in the world, and the changes around them. At the end of the day, even those who resist changes will eventually submit when they find themselves standing at the end of the queue and find nothing to grab.
Every country has developed its own system of accommodating to live with the new unexpected comer. Every country has managed to keep life going with a lot of success. On the other hand, COVID-19 as well has proved to all of us that it was not just an ordinary virus. It has managed to reshape itself, to resist every trial to contain it, and proved to be a very clever and strong contender. COVID-19 managed to stay with us – against all our previous expectations – until today, and will probably force itself for longer. We have learned to live together as long as it’ll take us.
On Friday, the 9th. of October 2020 we observed the highest ever number of COVID-19 infections per day totalling 358,354 persons, but luckily this was not accompanied by the highest number of deaths, which was so far on 17 April 2020 when a total of 8,515 people died in 24 hours from COVID-19 infection complications. The second peak of deaths was on 22 July 2020 reaching 7,308 in 24 hours.
Few related matters might be looked at here to make things clear and updated for my dear readers. A question about, are we witnessing a second peak?. My best reply to that is “no”. I don’t think we are witnessing a second peak of Covid-19, but probably a nicer and more thorough look around us and back. I am very much aware that countries in East Europe, South-East Asia, and south America did probably with some surprise find themselves becoming late victims of this pandemic, why?. I don’t know, but obviously it is an area for epidemiologists to have a deep look at trying to find an explanation.
My second interesting is Dexamethasone, and whether it was really a breakthrough?. My sincere answer to that is very simple: No, it was not a breakthrough at all. It was not a breakthrough because we knew dexamethasone for decades, it was and still is around us and available for anywhere in the world to be used. We knew very well that steroids are used in acute respiratory distresses from acute bronchitis, to exacerbation of bronchial asthma to other respiratory acute conditions. We knew that steroids do work in these conditions, and they can be life saving if we use them rightly. Dexamethasone has nothing to do with Covid-19, but they were used for the respiratory inflammatory changes cause by the infection. They are anti-inflammatory but obviously not anti-viral treatment. Hence, I quiet honestly did not see any breakthrough in connection with dexamethasone, but on the contrary, I might blame the researchers for not considering dexamethasone to alleviate respiratory distresses from the beginning. On the early days of seeing victims of Covid-19 in ITU or on the media and the terrible status there were in, I thought at that very early time that intravenous methyl Prednisolone could be used to safe life.
What about the Russian new vaccine?!. I have nothing to say more than that the Russian president Vladimir Putin himself was the first person to advertise the new vaccine, and that he called it Sputnik v indicating that here we are purely talking about politics, but not medicine. The Russian vaccine as we knew has not gone through phase 3, and just passed phase 2, and that on itself is enough to make it questionable. I think, we need to be very careful, and at the end of the day, we are here dealing with prevention but not a therapeutic option, and from my point of view doesn’t warantee any rushing. We can protect ourselves and waith for a better choice of vaccination.
What about corona virus dreams?. I guess, Covid-19 has shown to the whole world that it was for a high price, and it was not just infecting people with no descreminations. Everyone infected so far was just found in its way while it is aiming for a high ranking people.
The virus has managed to reach many people in their high ranking positions such as the prince of Wales, Boris Johnson(UK prime minister), Matt Hancock(UK health minister), Jair Bolsonaro(Brazilian president), Michel Barnier(EU cheif negociator), Prince Albert II of Monaco, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau(wife of Canadian prime minister, Peter Dutton(Australian home affairs minister), Pierre Nkurunziza(Burundi president elect), Iraj Harirchi(Iran’s deputy health minster), Rand Paul(The Republican law maker), and many members of parliment in different countries. Covid-19 was for a big hunt, and lately of course managed to reach Donald Trump and his wife. Is it now time for the virus to leave us and fly to another planet?.
In connection to us people or humans, we need always to remember and acknowledge that, we can never ever be ideal, and we can never be the best at all times. We do behave through our instinct sometimes, and listening to our desires other times. We are human, and we can never be ideal. We must not think that we are ideal. We can only do what we think is right, and sometimes what our inner-senses desire without much thinking, and without much consideration.
We can be the best at our time, but we need to know that someone will come and that one will be better than us. That is very natural and must be expected, as we are for sure much better than our ancestors and life is just like that.
Life will go ahead, and we will survive despite what faces us and what might stand in our ways. We are humans and we are able to progress. That was the way we were created with. It is in our software, and we are able to develop and upgrade our human software every time we are faced with a challenge.
The top 10 countries of the world with the hieghest number of cases is shown on the picture below, with USA on the top and India seconde on line. The United Kingdom is holding position number 12 worldwide, with 590,844 total reported infections, and 42,760 deaths.
On the corner of the heighest infections per million populations, Qatar stands on the top of the world, with Bahrain next. The other top 8 in the world are: Aruba(3), Andora(4), French Guiana(5), Israel(6), Panama(7), Kuwait(8), Peru(9), and Chile on number 10.
Finally in this area, I heard lately that the UK is now probably wittnessing some changes in the behaviour of Covid-19 among people. There might be an aparent rise in the number of cases proven to be infected, but it seeked over the last few days that probably more younger people (teenagres & early twenties) are infected in comarison to the previus trend of elderly and the vulnerable. The second oibservation they were talking about today was that the disease severity and the need for ventilation has become significantly less over the last few weeks. No one was able to explain those obsrvations more than by saying that the number of those tested has increased, hence, more picking up of those asymptomatic or with mild symptoms who would never otherwise need to go to hospital or even mention their illness to anyone as they either never knew about it or never thought of any need to do so. That was also a kind of partial explaination to the relatively increased numbers of young infected people. On this area in particular, I was a bit different in my thinking about it. My subconscious mind is telling me that by now, we have been exposed directly or indirectly to the virus, and by now, we have immunologically responded to it by developing a level of anti-bodies depending on each one’s of us internal immune system efficiency and ability. At the end of the day, Covid-19 is nothing but an RNA virus, and it has to be within the influenza virus families. My thinking was, as we have responded to previous flu infections by developing anti-bodies to beat them, we are now doing exactly the same thing against Covid-19. The passage of time is in our favour, and the more exposure for all of us is for sure more chance for us to develop a natural sepsfic vaccination via our own immune systems…. you can call it “herd immunity” if you wish!!.
Looking forward
The poor virus is trying hard to survive, and we are certain to beat it and thrive !
Tens of attempts to contain the virus so far, but none has proved to be fruitful. A team of researchers in China lead by prof. Li Lanjuan at the Zhejiang University has found that COVID-19 has mutated into at least 30 different genetic variants, affecting different parts of the world, some of them are clearly more variant than the others. The Chinese researchers have found that within a small pool of patients many mutations not previously reported. These mutations include rare changes that scientists had never imagined could happen. That nature of virus modulating itself to resist elimination has already made anti-viral treatment very difficult to ascertain, and vaccination against this virus became realistically more difficult to obtain.
Much more to follow later !!