Two years later, back to square A
The latest coronavirus variant may be causing milder illness, but the danger it poses is no less
By Hari Kumar
It was in January 2020 that China notified the World Health Organisation about the outbreak of a viral infection of an unknown nature in the city of Wuhan in its central region. But it was a few weeks too late. The novel coronavirus had, by then, spread – unbeknownst to anyone – to faraway places in the world, becoming the first pandemic of the new millennium.
Epidemiology experts had warned in 2020 that unless vaccines are not developed and distributed across the globe, the virus – by then labelled Sars-Cov-2 – will continue to spread and inevitably mutate as newer, deadly versions.
No one is safe until everyone is safe, they had warned.
Such warnings fell on deaf ears. Rich countries that hoarded the vaccine for millions of jabs for safeguarding their population now face repeated rounds of social distancing and a high hospitalization rate as the Omicron variant emerged in the southern part of Africa – a continent with a very low vaccination rate.
One consolation is that the rapidly spreading Omicron seems a milder version than Delta. Some predict that the coronavirus, which terrorized the world for the past two years, claiming nearly six million lives, could eventually mutate into milder versions and remain with us as an annoying but persistent illness like the flu.
This prediction has a downside. The optimism it exudes leads to a general lowering of the guard in many societies. Moreover, as the pandemic stretches into the third year, fatigue of lockdowns, travel restrictions, and economic chaos fuels resistance to containment measures.
The hypocrisy of those in power who party, dance, and celebrate in private while dictating strict rules for the general public, is not helping a bit.
Pandemic historian Howard Markel says the desire to break the rules and go outdoors is an aspect of almost every quarantine he has studied. In The Wired magazine essay, he cites how officials struggled to rein in infections.
“In 1892, the New York Commissioner of Health complained to the press how immigrant Russian Jewish children quarantined for typhus fever were climbing out the windows and fire escapes to play with their friends, potentially spreading a deadly disease and prolonging the outbreak.”
What the Russian children did then is being taken up adults of our time.
In London, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his friends partied after imposing strict restrictions on the public. In Hong Kong, a Chinese Communist Party official invited over 200 guests, including top ministers, for his birthday party at a hotel, breaking several local regulations.
In Kerala, ruling party supporters organized a choreographed mass dance to praise the chief minister when the daily count of Covid cases exceeded 4,000. It was in clear violation of the rules his government had promulgated. Meanwhile, many states are getting ready for political rallies and elections in other Indian states.
Those bristling at the hypocrisy of the powerful in India should look at the crowds at popular shopping venues and places of worship. It is almost like a significant section of the public has chosen to ignore the health warnings.
Some groups actively oppose preventive measures and campaign against everything from social distancing, masks, and vaccination. Even those who think the warnings should not be ignored roam around with the facemask pressed down to their chin.
The milder nature of Omicron is making more people brave, and some even claim we should have a “get-it-and-get-it-over-with” approach like how some societies greet chickenpox with a party to expose kids at an early state.
The problem here is that chickenpox usually gives you immunity to resist the virus for the rest of your life. But Covid doesn’t. According to some reports, the breakthrough infection rates during the Delta surge were around 50 percent.
As more and more people get infected with Omicron, it opens up another possibility – that of another variant coming along. The prediction that the virus will mutate into less virulent forms is precisely that – just a prediction. There is no absolute science about it. A future variant could become deadly and override the protection of all vaccines.
Experts don’t know what the next variants will be like, or how they might shape the pandemic. However, as both Delta and Omicron are spreading together, some warn there is a chance that someone could get both and spew out a “Frankenvariant”, combining characteristics of both. It may be one in a million cases, but the current surge points towards such an occurrence turning from an outside chance into a possibility.
As the virus keeps reproducing, it could also cross over to some animal species and then bounce back into human beings, posing another dangerous problem. Some researchers say they have found evidence to indicate that the “progenitor of Omicron jumped from humans to mice, rapidly accumulated mutations conducive to infecting that host, then jumped back into humans.”
Despite such possible scenarios, many are throwing caution to the wind while conspiracy theorists continue to claim that this pandemic was created by a bunch of evil people to control humanity. Expert opinions often end up resembling the warnings of Cassandra in Greek mythology, muddled and ignored by the people.
Maybe the quick arrival of vaccines knocked us into complacency. But as Dr Larry Brilliant, a key player in the smallpox eradication campaign, said in an earlier interview, universal vaccination has never stopped a virus. Instead, it was always the preventive measures like tracking and isolation that helped control viruses, from smallpox to polio.
A study that historian Markel and others published in 2007 concluded that American cities that implemented social distancing and quarantine during the 1918 influenza pandemic fared better than the cities that didn’t, though there was no known medicine available then.
Comparing the situation between then and now, Markel said in a recent interview that it is difficult to see things clearly when we are in the middle of a pandemic.
“The thing about pandemic then, as now, when you are in the middle of it, you are literally in the fog of war. You can’t see all the results, and you don’t have all the data,” he said. “It’s almost human nature to not think about a disaster until it is in front of your eyes.”
It explains precisely what must have happened in Wuhan in December 2019. Two years later, many societies are taking very similar paths and arriving at the same point: letting the virus gain the upper hand.
Very well written Hari💐