How this COVID 19 Pandemic could End ????

 

Nine out of ten people are thinking today how this COVID 19 pandemic will end. 

• Will it end after taking billions of life!!
• Will it end on its own!!
• Will it end with the vaccine!!
• Or It won't end and becomes another flu-like illness; and will persists with us for life!!

On 11 -12 January 2020, the World Health Organization(WHO) received detailed information about the COVID 19 outbreak from China; although the outbreak began beforehand.

Within a span of a few months, it became pandemic and current growth is still exponential uprising affecting billions of population in every aspect of life. i.e Socially, Mentally, Health & Wealth, etc.

The exponential growth is because this virus is highly pathogenic and contagious. It has a varied range of symptomatology going from none at all to an extent that it has disrupted the world.

How does it have affected the lives of people??

COVID 19 thrashed life of general living being globally in terms socially, physically, mentally.

It has created fear and anxiety in the minds of the mortal being.

It has devastated the life of small & middle-class families economically because of issues like unemployment, poverty, etc.

It has increased incidences of suicides, depression, unwanted crimes- a global psychological pandemic.

The count doesn't end here!!! It has flailed the economy of various countries. It has made us understand that we are still incapable of managing a pandemic. It has made us realized the labile relationship between humankind and nature.

Now the question comes, how it will end??

There are two different ways by which this pandemic could end:- 

1. With human intervention
2. Without human intervention.

With Human intervention : 

• Containment: If we make the virus contained in the place of its outbreak or trying to limit its spread. Now the point of containment is out of the question!! As it has spread globally like anything.
• Public health response to curtail the infection: This is the one way which is been tried in the past via various national & international lockdown. The motive was to ensure limiting the spread, making the resources available to handle & overcome this situation, and also in the meantime treating the patients with appropriate treatment available. Also, promoting measures like Social distancing, Hand sanitization & hygiene, Masks & Face shields, etc. as a preventive measure to the infection.
• Antiviral treatments & Other relevant therapeutics: The majority of countries are promoting pharmaceutical companies & scientists for research & development. To come with drugs antivirals & other medications which can manage and treat patients affected by SARS COV2 to treat all aspect of the disease: mild, moderate & severe forms.

Many drugs are currently being used for treatment like Hydroxychloroquine, Chloroquine, Ivermectin, Fabipravir, Remdesivir, anti-inflammatory - tocilizumab, Itolizumab, glucocorticoids, etc.

• Vaccine: Vaccine is a substance that can stimulate our own immune system & provide immunity against the disease. It can be of two types: Active & Passive immunity. Therapeutic use of the concept of passive immunity is currently being used- Plasma Therapy i.e extracting plasma from recovered patients & giving to patients with active disease to support the patient's immune system to fight with the disease. Our scientists & researchers are currently in search of a vaccine that can induce active immunity. This can be a hope to fight the pandemic effectively. But the development & execution is not as simple as it looks. Many issues linked with the development of the COVID 19 vaccine i.e Safe, Efficacious, Potent, Live/Killed, to be taken as a single dose or it might have to be taken on a yearly basis akin influenza vaccine due to the mutational state of the virus. As the disease & the virus, both are relatively new entity; its complete natural history is still incompletely understood.

Without Human Intervention:- 

• Natural trickle off- As SARS COV2  has 30000 aminoacid genome and is mutating. The continuous mutation might or might not make the virus non or less virulent. Some environmental effect which was previously thought of like other viral infection prevalence might fall in warm weather doesn't hold true.
• Herd Immunity - Herd Immunity refers to a buildup of immunity in a population due to natural immunity or the administration of vaccines. It is also known as community immunity. It develops only when many peoples in a community becomes immune to concerning infection. Herd immunity isn’t the answer to stopping the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19; until the effective vaccine has been developed.
• Social Ending: i.e Learn to live with the disease. This is a fascinating concept and essentially implies that the population (or a large section of it) are no longer afraid of the virus, or tired of the disruption to their lives, and get back to business as usual. Such a phenomenon was seen in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, with people desperate to get back to normalcy after the combined trauma of World War 1 and the outbreak (the latter killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.

This is all just a prediction, but nature doesn't go in a linear fashion; so no one knows what curve this COVID 19 will follow; how much life it will take, or it will end up becoming another flu.......