The current coronavirus outbreak again shows that the world is not prepared to deal with a pandemic. Governments and companies are scrambling to diminish the impact of SARS-CoV-2. Societies and the economy are ill prepared for such a crisis. Since there is no drug or vaccine at hand, a sense of panic is spreading, which makes things a lot worse.
We do not know how this pandemic will develop. Some people hope that with increasing spring temperatures the infection wave will decline as it usually happens with the seasonal influenza epidemics. However, numbers in Iran and in several African countries indicate that SARS-CoV-2 infections are not slowing down in warmer regions.
Astonishingly, the first SARS outbreak in 2003 did not prompt any precautionary actions. Now, the second major outbreak of a related virus is showing us that such events do occur at random and will do so in the future.
What are the lessons we learned?
- Educate the society and communicate the facts. People need to know how to deal with such a situation. This needs to be done as soon as a pandemic shows up on the horizon.
- Basic hygiene needs to be taught at kindergarten level already.
- Governments need to regularly update their pandemic plans and need to cooperate transnationally. In a globalized world, a global pandemic plan is necessary.
- Ramp up funding of and investments in research of infectious diseases. This is done best by supporting those researchers and companies that are best suited to do that. A broad funding with small amounts for many will not do the job. This kind of research cannot be done with little money. This is a multi-billion Euro endeavor. If this sounds like a lot of money to you, please recall the amount of money lost in 2003 and make an estimate of the current economic loss by SARS-CoV-2!
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Yours,
Sabine and Joerg