Why the Covid-19 pandemic wasn't as devastating as it was

For most people, the Covid-19 pandemic, officially launched five years ago this month, marked the first encounter between case counts and N-95 masks and lockdown orders.

I was a young reporter for Time Magazine, held in Hong Kong in early 2003. This was when reports began to be received that strange new diseases were spreading across the border in southern China. On March 15th, exactly 22 years ago, today, the disease was The name was given According to the World Health Organization: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

SARS outbreaks were less noticeable in the US, as there were only a few cases in the US. However, when we returned to Hong Kong, which was the epicenter of the outbreak, we were not sure when it would end.

Looking back at this time, it feels like a dry run for what the whole world will experience with another coronavirus in less than 20 years. All of Hong Kong wore surgical masks overnight. Airports, hotels and restaurants have been abandoned.

At the city's time of day office, editors were sweating through the uncomfortable N-95 masks, discussing sending some staff from home to work to keep the magazine moving if the building is closed. I interviewed scientists about the potential vaccines and treatments, and they told me that if it was needed it would take years for it to be developed.

In the end I was lucky with SARS. The coronavirus that caused it was far less infectious than it first appeared, and the outbreak was called out, but not before More than 8,000 people have become ill and 774 have died worldwide.

Of course, with Covid, we weren't that lucky. More Seven million people have been confirmed to have died So far, there is a nearly certainly a shortage of numbers still rising from Covid. The political, social and educational side effects of the pandemic are enormous and still unfolding. It was, simply, a global catastrophe. It's one of the few events that really fit the name.

So why do I put Covid in a newsletter that should be about the good news?

The Covid pandemic before 2020 would have been much worse

I like to run thought experiments from time to time, as I have gone through and covered both SARS and Covid. How would you respond in 2003 if SARS turned out to be just as dangerous as Covid?

Think back to 2003. There was no smartphone. Even laptops were not very common. Video calls were essentially absent. When I told someone I was about to “zoom” it turned out to be a very strange look.

What makes all this sense is that remote work, remote schooling and telehealth – just as it turned out to be a problem, we continued to advance the economy, education and healthcare during the pandemic, but essentially impossible. With one estimate, without remote work US GDP would have been down twice as much Just like we did in the first year of the pandemic. These Zoom meetings and cloud documents were all literally economic lifelines.

Or take the virus itself. It was months after the first case of SARS before the coronavirus causing the coronavirus was successfully identified by scientists. I still remember visiting Queen Mary Hospital at the University of Hong Kong in April 2003 and looking through an electron microscope in the unique sun-like coronavirus of the virus. Thanks for Covid Significant improvements in genetic sequence speedthe complete genome of the virus was distributed well before the world fully realized what Covid was.

Or a vaccine. Early work in 2003 mRNA vaccine technology has just begunand BionTech – a company responsible for groundbreaking research on mRNA vaccines – will not be established Five more years..

Before Covid, that I took some 5 to 15 years – If not so much – develop a vaccine for new viruses. If we had what we needed during SARS, we would almost certainly have been waiting for a long time. However, during Covid, the first vaccine candidate was Produced by Pfizer-BionTech on March 2, 2020 – It began less than two months after work on the vaccine began. Sandra Lindsay, a nurse in New York; I received my first Covid shot December 14th, 2020, within 9 months.

And while advances in science were the first necessary step, the US government acted with impressive urgency and ambition against all its flaws.

He probably never received the vaccine quickly No genius in operation speed. Warp Speed ​​operations have a name by supporting the parallel execution of multiple stages of vaccine candidate development, and multiple stages of vaccine development and testing, and ensuring the vaccine market in billions of dollars.

Beyond science, the bipartisan relief bill continued to surge in poverty during the first, terrible months of the pandemic. in fact, In fact poverty It was dropped 2021 Child poverty has fallen by more than half compared to the years before the pandemic.

Don't forget what we have achieved

I understand that very few people want to look back at the community pandemic, and certainly not pride. Subsequent virus variants and new waves It's been avoided more and more Even our best vaccines erode beliefs about them as they continue to carry the pandemic for years. From mask requirements to school closures, the divisions over public health decisions made during the pandemic, still remains; Addictive political atmosphere. perhaps Hundreds of millions of people I have experienced the long impact of Covid. They remind us of the sacrifices of the pandemic every day. Collective trauma We were still struggling.

Still, I'm worried that all of that pain and anger will lead us to ignore the surprising results of that year. Not only scientists and officials who got those vaccines to us at record times, but also doctors and nurses who tormented endless hours at the frontline of the pandemic, or key workers who continued things while the rest of us were isolated. My fear is not only when we forget that heroism, but when the next pandemic comes – Inevitably it will be – We forget that we have shown the ability and will to fight it.

There's no shortage of articles on the 5th anniversary of the pandemic What we did wrong during Covid – And yes, looking back, A lot of things were wrong. “It could have been worse” has come to realize that after something as devastating as COVID, it is not the most exciting rallying cry.

But that is still true and we should not overlook the people who guaranteed it was not.

This version of the story originally appeared in Good News Newsletter. Sign up here!