Hi, Iím Dr. Bertalan Mesko, The Medical Futurist,
and today I want to explore how we screwed
up the COVID-19 pandemic so badly.
I already talked about the many ways of how
the pandemic can end, I covered what to expect
from the second wave, and I talked about the
conspiracy theories that captured way too
many peopleís imagination.
Conspiracy theories represented the thoughts
and actions of an irrational minority. But
even the slow and misguided actions of the
rational majority further escalated and worsened
the crisis. Letís see why!
6 months have passed since the beginning of
the pandemic, and with COVID 19 dominating
our lives for the foreseeable future, itís
paramount that we take a look back and see
what we screwed up at the start of it. Because
the only way to learn from our mistakes is
to acknowledge them first.
With that said - and itís hard to admit - but
it was part of the scientific community that
failed us miserably at first.
In December, Taiwanese health authorities
sent their medical teams to Wuhan and confirmed
human-to-human transmission of the virus.
They alerted the WHO but as they are not part
of the organization, this warning was not
passed on to other countries.
On January 4, Hong Kong health authorities
announced that they suspected human-to-human
transmission too. And on January 13, a woman
who had never been at the seafood market got
sick when she travelled to Thailand, strongly
suggesting that the virus was already spreading
within Wuhan. And there were numerous whistleblower
doctors in Wuhan who were threatened with
jail time. This was all already reported to
and known by the WHO, when a day later, on
January 14, they tweeted that Chinese authorities
found no clear evidence of human-to-human
transmission for the virus. And this remained
to be their official position even tillí
late January.
In those early days, the places that were
able to contain the virus were Taiwan and
Hong Kong that were actually defying the WHOís
official position. They ramped up their domestic
mask production, while the WHO were insisting
that they were ineffective. Taiwan even closed
its borders while the WHO insisted that travel
bans were ineffective. And both Taiwan and
Hong Kong screened travelers aggressively.
If we understand the relationship of Taiwan
and Hong Kong with mainland China, and know
how influential China is in the WHO, we understand
why the leaders of these two outliers in particular
decided not to listen to the official positions.
Hong Kong and Taiwan remembered the cover
up of the SARS virus in 2003, when the world
didnít learn about the new virus until it
spread outside of China and we barely managed
to stop it. Back then, the WHO openly criticized
China. This time around they were parroting
their cover up, and they were praising China
for its transparency, while in reality, Beijing
was trying their best to hold up information.
Whatís disturbing is that the WHO had all
the information to understand the depth and
seriousness of the situation in time, and
in retrospect they couldíve put out the fire
early on. When independent access was denied,
the WHO had a chance to strong arm China,
and alarm the world, based on the numerous
confirmations that human-to-human transmissions
are taking place. They couldíve stepped up
at the same time when Taiwan closed its borders,
and stopped the virus even before the first
confirmed COVID death. But they didnít want
to confront China, and waited tillí January
22, to confirm human-to-human transmission.
Only after China didÖ And after that, the
WHO also waited another two months, up until
more than a hundred countries had reported
cases, and thousands of people died, to finally
declare a pandemic. Looking back, researchers
estimate that with clear global guidance - that
the WHO was created for - and by acting even
a week or two earlier, we could have reduced
cases by 50 to 80 percent.
This was our first mistake.
But of course China wasnít the only country
trying to ignore whatís needed to be done
to keep the economy going and to save face.
The UK had an infamously thoughtless and slow
response at the early stages of the pandemic
too. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson
was already in the middle of one crisis with
Brexit, when the COVID pandemic hit, and he
was not ready to shutdown the economy. Experts
thought the UK might try to aim for herd immunity
like Sweden, but that wasnít exactly true.
But they simply were not up to the task. Lockdown
measures were imposed too late, the testing
and protective equipment were not widely available
quickly enough, and they failed to protect
the care homes. All that led to mounting case-
and death numbers, while the NHS was crumbling
under their weight. Experts say if Johnson
had introduced lockdown measures just a week
earlier, death numbers couldíve been halved.
In Brazil and the US, boooyyyy, anti-science
politicians like Trump and Bolsanaro were
the ones with the task of safe-keeping their
countries. They both downplayed the impact
of the virus and opposed measures that could
hit the economy. In return, the US and Brazil
have the world's first and second-highest
case numbers, as the outbreak in these countries
show no sign of slowing down. In Brazil, two
health ministers had to leave their job after
disagreeing with the President over the seriousness
of the virus. Now, the position has been filled
by an army general with no experience in public
health. As you do.
In the US, Trump refused to wear masks for
months, let republican states go amok with
their crisis response, and tried to blame
even his own crisis management on China.
He was fueling outright stupid and dangerous
ideas like taking hydroxychloroquine, or injecting
disinfectant into the lungs as a treatment.
And donít forget that it was the Trump administration
and John Bolton in particular that disbanded
the pandemic preparedness unit in 2018, as
they burned down everything that was tied
to the previous administration.
Bad leadership was our second mistake.
And all this misinformation, ignorance, and
general lack of guidance spilled over to how
individuals, and how we as a society responded
to this crisis. Weíve failed to acknowledge
the gravity of the issue, since even our leaders
and the scientific community had no agreement
over it. In the US, irresponsible people have
politicized the issue of wearing masks, which
partially contributed to how the US became
the world leader in case numbers.
Our own ignorance was the third mistake.
As we faced even the simplest requests to
change our way of lives, many of us have failed
miserably. Many of us are still not wearing
masks, donít care about social distancing
and donít think globally. I mean itís simply
unbelievable how many of the people I know,
and the celebrities I follow are on vacations
all over the world. If we are not ready to
wear a mask in public, and canít give up
on a vacation, how are we going to tackle
other global issues like climate change that
will take a lot bigger sacrifice than that?
Maybe because we couldnít and still cannot
believe how serious a pandemic is and how
long it takes to take one under controlÖ
I even received death threats as a response
to my video back in April when I offered a
possibility that the pandemic could last for
years. I think this shows how much some of
us are not ready to accept reality.
Sadly, as a result, now weíre just as vulnerable
as we were during the first wave. And as we
usually do, weíre hoping that someone else
will solve our problems and everything will
be back to normal as soon as possible. In
this case, weíre all hoping for a vaccine.
And while the race for the vaccine is unprecedented,
itís not like we learned anything from what
got us here in the first place. Namely that
there are countries that are still willing
to put the health of their economy over the
health of their people.
Russiaís decision to go forward with vaccinations
without going through phase III trials has
drawn a global outrage. Phase III trials involve
giving thousands of people a vaccine or a
placebo injection, and then tracking them
to see whether the vaccine prevents the disease.
These tests allow researchers to confirm the
vaccineís safety and look for rare side effects
that might not have been shown in earlier
trials.
The Russian COVID vaccine has been tested
on only 76 volunteers. If thereís a side
effect that takes place in only every hundredth
people that these tests have missed, then
it could affect almost a million and a half
people if the entire population of Russia
gets vaccinated with it. As you see the stakes
are high, but carelessness prevails when science
gets politicized and the economy tanks. And
if Russia does start to vaccinate in October
that puts enormous pressure on other countries
to roll-out their own vaccines as soon as
possible. And if thereís anything wrong with
the Russian vaccine then weíll see the mainly
American anti-vaxxer movement going global,
and we can wave goodbye to herd immunity.
Obviously, there are levels of this crisis
where we simply have no input. But we can
do a lot more than most of us do now, and
we have a lot more responsibility to stop
this crisis than we acknowledge it. This is
our world war. Even if you live in a country
that managed to have some rest after the first
wave, COVID hasnít gone anywhere yet. As
a species, weíre seeing a record number of
cases almost every day, that adds up to a
mind-boggling million cases per week, and
thousands are dying every single day. If you
think I overreact, consider this: In the US
three times as many people died from COVID
at the time of the making of this video, than
how many Americans died in the more than a
decade long Vietnam War.
So, by going on vacations abroad, by not wearing
masks, by forgetting about social distancing
once in a while, by going out on the weekends
for a drink without precautions, we are all
undermining the efforts of the scientific
and medical community to stop this pandemic.
You and I can solve this, by helping each
other, by keeping the rules and accepting
that for a bit, our lives are not going back
to the way it was. For the next year or two,
this is the new normal. Get used to it, live
with it, wear your mask, and then we will
get over it. Or fight it, protest against
it and we will live like this for a decade.
