Now that the Covid 19 pandemic has turned endemic it is time for reappraisal. A few general statistics tell the story. In the U.S. Covid infected around 110M, deaths close to 1.1M. Worldwide these numbers were around 700 M and 7M which adds up to a death rate around 1%. 70% of people succumbing were over 70 years old. The virus is still with us, a longtime apparently smoldering level of disease. In the beginning we had an emergency with hospitals and ICUs filling up in NYC, and in Portugal and Italy. But overall Covid-19 had a mortality rate only slightly higher than influenza and a definite propensity to cull the very old and the very sick. It’s possible that Covid was most virulent in the beginning as often is the case with new outbreaks. Now in more immunized populations, with the most vulnerable eliminated, it is less serious. In retrospect Covid itself did not have that much impact. Yet we underwent an understadable panic with destructive authoritarianism which was costly. How should we have handled things differently?
We found that human interventions did not make much difference. There weren’t any treatments that were very effective. Some people were saved, probably not all that many, with Oxygen and ICU care. Our children and economies suffered a lot and in retrospect that was not necessary.
World population continued to increase as it has unrelentingly even after bigger disasters such as World Wars and 1918 flue epidemic. Overall the reaction to disaster seems to have little discernible positive and much negative effect. No matter what we do, however we respond to any disaster there are always more and more of us.
If we had to do it again, we might have restricted movement in NYC in the early hours, and been extremely strict in nursing homes and hospitals where mortality was high. Preventive measures should have concentrated on the frail, elderly and obese populations. Most of the rest of us could generally have been advised (not bullied) into keeping our distance and avoiding crowds and indoor venues until vaccines became available at the end of 2020. Non urban environments would have done well with public health advice and use of voluntary measures and vaccinations.
