Friday 17 April

The Past Does Not Predict the Future

Coronavirus has now been with us for more than four months and it is surprising to note how little we know of its modus operandi, so far. Back in January, we hoped that similarly to SARS, it would have shown a seasonal behavior and regressed steeply as spring and summer arrived. This is not happening at the moment. Governments and medical institutions, that for a long time refused to recommend the use of masks, are now making a spectacular U-turn and masks are recommended everywhere in affected areas. Every day new studies claim new findings: COVID-19 can survive on surfaces we touch longer than we thought, can spread in the air at a longer distance than what was initially believed, can cause mortality rates that we are often unable to explain. We know very well what categories are at risk, we understood a few important things that help to organize the response, but on many aspects, Coronavirus remains obscure and deceptive. China was the first country to be heavily touched and is also being the first to recover but now some studies hint that the virus might “re-activate” in persons that already healed and should then be immunized. Is COVID-19 preparing its next move? Will we be better prepared this time? As the virus is still slowing down at the moment, this is the right time to look at what happened in Wuhan in the first three months of 2020, how China responded and how the virus regressed. We know that information disclosure from China at least at the beginning of the spread was not transparent but we may still draw some interesting insight that can come useful as we continue to fight.