Covid19 – Fiction and Facts

HNY 2020 started with panic. Social media was abuzz with macabre videos of people gasping for breath and dropping dead like fish on the roads of Wuhan, China. Soon the news was confirmed by the respectable and responsible media around the world. Arrival of the Novel Corona Virus, SARS CoV-2, was announced. The world trembled with the sense of déjà vu of Spanish flu of 1919.  Initially slow but later an over-reaction sent the world reeling into strict quarantine followed by a total lock down and mass hysteria. 

Living in the age of information diarrhea (often lies) has its own woes. Billions of people connected on various social media platforms got spooked by the news. Heads of states sprang into action bringing down all airlines and closing their doors and sealing their borders  for the foreign travels in an animated move. Some countries went on to impose total lock down instantaneously causing unprecedented inconvenience and harassment to local public and loss of employment and businesses. Media was adding fuel to the fire by its 24X7 (mis)reporting every silly aspect of the pandemic. Social media was going berserk with quackery. Most of the deaths can be attributed to the remedies prescribed on whatsapp and facebook. 

People scrambled for Oxygen cylinders, remdesivir, Cortisones, antibiotics, antivirals & immunity boosters, Oximeters, steamers or whatever treatment was prescribed by the whatsapp institute of medical sciences. Hospitals were flooded. So were the graveyards. The frenzy and fear were unprecedented.  

After two and half year of the onset of the Covid19 pandemic, when there is not even a murmur of the virus on the social media and business is as usual around the world, I lookback in the history to read about the previous episodes of the pandemics. 

Eversince the outbreak of Spanish flu in 1918, medical biologists have been seriously working on ways to control any pandemic from happening. But despite their best efforts the impish viruses have struck at regular intervals with impunity and crossed borders viz, 

• Asiatic Flu (H2N2) in 1957, 
• Hongkong Flu (H3N2) in 1968, 
• SARS COV1 in 2003, 
• Swine Flu (H1N1) in 2009 
• MERS-CoV2 in 2012.

But in the past no one panicked. People died in plenty but there was no commotion, no lock downs or loss of jobs. Business went on as usual despite the heightened mortality. In all the cases the virus shook hands with humanity after one or two years of hostility without any invasive intervention.

I wondered if the overload of information and technology has helped us in our fight against the Covid19 pandemic this time. To find an answer I dived into the Google sea(rch). 

I am not a biologist but I do have elementary knowledge of bio sciences. And what I found was as follows:

Every animal species hosts unique viruses that have specifically adapted to infect it. Over time, some of these have jumped to humans – these are known as ‘zoonotic’ viruses. When viruses jump to a new host, the process is called zoonosis. Because every virus has evolved to target a particular species, it’s rare for a virus to be able to jump to another species. Whenever this does happen, it’s by chance, and it has devastatingly morbid consequences. 

In comparison, malwares (computer Viruses) which are designed for Windows OS won’t work on Linux OS or a Windows virus won't harm devices running on Android or Mackintosh systems. Sounds logical as they are designed to screw the OS DNA.

Out of all the  viruses corona & Avion Influenza viruses are highly adaptable due to their rapid mutations. This is probably due to this property, Zoonosis is observed in these viruses.  

Avian influenza (HxNy) viruses are classified by a combination of two groups of proteins: hemagglutinin or “H” proteins, of which there are 16 (H1 to H16), and neuraminidase or “N” proteins, of which there are nine (N1 to N9). Many different combinations of “H” and “N” proteins are possible. Each combination is considered a different subtype and can be further broken down into different strains.  

On the other hand Corona virus is a common cold virus. SARS COV1 & 2 were crossovers from other species having a single-stranded positive-sense RNA.

These viruses have persisted from the time of origin of life on earth. It is their ability to mutate, adapt and fox the host’s immune system which make the host cough and sneeze and fall sick season after seasons. Zoonosis is once in blue moon event when the zoonotic mutants crossover to the new host species and the events take an ugly turn leading to morbid  pandemics. But at the same time these killer mutations don’t last long and the kinder variants follow as the parasite knows well it can’t thrive on the dead bodies.

However, what we saw in response to the spread of virus was a gross over-reaction, which caused more harm than good to the mankind. This overzealous game plan had been incubating in the researchers mind for a very long time. Start of this century, the researchers had their first go at it with SARS CoV1 in 2003. The story was hatched about how the virus was produced in a Chinese Lab and transported to HongKong and subsequently to Canada. After SARS CoV1 failed to takeoff, in 2009, Swine Flu was declared as a pandemic which was widely publicized by media. The idea was also promulgated by The Contagion, a movie released in 2011.

However, in January 2010, Wolfgang Wodarg, a German deputy who trained as a physician and chaired the health committee at the Council of Europe, claimed that major firms had organized a "campaign of panic" to put pressure on the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare a "false pandemic" to sell vaccines. Wodarg said the WHO's "false pandemic" flu campaign is "one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century. 

In June 2010, Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the BMJ, published an editorial which criticised the WHO, saying that an investigation had disclosed that some of the experts advising WHO on the pandemic had financial ties with drug companies which were producing antivirals and vaccines. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the WHO, replied stating, that WHO's decisions to raise the level of pandemic alert were based on clearly defined virological and epidemiological criteria. "It is hard to bend these criteria, no matter what the motive".

After 2009, the resurgence of non-respiratory virus epidemics, including Zika, Chikungunya and Ebola raised extreme concern for human public health authorities and hit the news headlines. These fetal viruses couldn't kick start a pandemics because they were far less contagious. But finally the moment of truth arrived in March, 2020. BINGO!! the alarm went off and the social media assisted Covid19 scare gripped the world. Finally Corona virus vaccines were quickly rolled out. They were made mandatory by the governments worldover in what was to become the biggest immunization program. By end of 2021, the cases and mortality dropped considerably and world resumed laissez-faire. 

The two years of chaos have left me with the following observations and doubts:

1. Covid19 deaths were mainly in the second phase of the disease ie 7-10 days after the symptoms when the virus entered into the lungs and kicked the auto immune response in host, with uncontrolled levels of cytokines released in so-called storms that killed the patient. This information was released much later after the world went on to consume Chloroquine, zinc, antibiotics, antivirals, remdesivir, immunity boosters etc. 
2. More deaths occurred in stage 3 due to black fungus formed in the lungs.
3. Many people died due to wrong line of treatment or by fear itself. 
4. My biggest doubt is on the efficacy of the Covid19 Vaccines. With Corona virus mutating so quickly, its hard to keep up with it. Considering the vaccine takes six to eight months to roll out after the first outbreak, its effectiveness on the persisting variants is highly doubtful.
5. There were many cases where people died of the disease after taking single and double doses of the vaccine. The exceptions were one too many to doubt the efficacy of it.
6. After two and half years, the mortality and morbidity due to covid19 has reduced considerably but the virus is still thriving in its benign forms as was the case in all of the previous episodes of pandemics. So how on earth could we credit the vaccine for the control of this flu related pandemic.
7. These pandemics are triggered by the zoonotic viruses. To stop the zoonosis, animal farming is looking up for reforms. Or the practice must be stopped. Staying vegan is an option.
8. Human population needs to be controlled in more humane ways.
9. On a positive note, social distancing, use of face masks and sanitization proved to be the best policies. The countries where people practiced these three rules with strictness did better than those which did not.
10. We learnt to use mobile phones to track the infection down and control it. 
11. Clusters based lockdown was more prudent approach than blanket lockdown.
12. We learnt to work from home (WFH). It has become a culture now. 
13. It showed if there is a will, tough decisions can be taken by the governments sacrificing the economic interests in larger interest of mankind.
14. Humans are today capable of moving logistics at mega scale at short notice.
15. While we saw the greedy side of the humanity, on the other side was helping approach of many who assisted others going out of the way.

Finally, we may have seen off the Covid19 pandemic but the social media pandemic persists. It’s a queer place out there with plenty of dumb forwarders and followers. They have no time to think or question. But I hope, like these highly adaptive viruses, we shall evolve and overcome someday.