fight against covid 19 essay in english

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Coronavirus: The world has come together to flatten the curve. Can we stay united to tackle other crises?

Watching the world come together gives me hope for the future, writes mira patel, a high school junior..

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Coronavirus Pandemic

Students’ Essays on Infectious Disease Prevention, COVID-19 Published Nationwide

As part of the BIO 173: Global Change and Infectious Disease course, Professor Fred Cohan assigns students to write an essay persuading others to prevent future and mitigate present infectious diseases. If students submit their essay to a news outlet—and it’s published—Cohan awards them with extra credit.

As a result of this assignment, more than 25 students have had their work published in newspapers across the United States. Many of these essays cite and applaud the University’s Keep Wes Safe campaign and its COVID-19 testing protocols.

Cohan, professor of biology and Huffington Foundation Professor in the College of the Environment (COE), began teaching the Global Change and Infectious Disease course in 2009, when the COE was established. “I wanted very much to contribute a course to what I saw as a real game-changer in Wesleyan’s interest in the environment. The course is about all the ways that human demands on the environment have brought us infectious diseases, over past millennia and in the present, and why our environmental disturbances will continue to bring us infections into the future.”

Over the years, Cohan learned that he can sustainably teach about 170 students every year without running out of interested students. This fall, he had 207. Although he didn’t change the overall structure of his course to accommodate COVID-19 topics, he did add material on the current pandemic to various sections of the course.

“I wouldn’t say that the population of the class increased tremendously as a result of COVID-19, but I think the enthusiasm of the students for the material has increased substantially,” he said.

To accommodate online learning, Cohan shaved off 15 minutes from his normal 80-minute lectures to allow for discussion sections, led by Cohan and teaching assistants. “While the lectures mostly dealt with biology, the discussions focused on how changes in behavior and policy can solve the infectious disease problems brought by human disturbance of the environment,” he said.

Based on student responses to an introspective exam question, Cohan learned that many students enjoyed a new hope that we could each contribute to fighting infectious disease. “They discovered that the solution to infectious disease is not entirely a waiting game for the right technologies to come along,” he said. “Many enjoyed learning about fighting infectious disease from a moral and social perspective. And especially, the students enjoyed learning about the ‘socialism of the microbe,’ how preventing and curing others’ infections will prevent others’ infections from becoming our own. The students enjoyed seeing how this idea can drive both domestic and international health policies.”

A sampling of the published student essays are below:

Alexander Giummo ’22 and Mike Dunderdale’s ’23 op-ed titled “ A National Testing Proposal: Let’s Fight Back Against COVID-19 ” was published in the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn.

They wrote: “With an expansive and increased testing plan for U.S. citizens, those who are COVID-positive could limit the number of contacts they have, and this would also help to enable more effective contact tracing. Testing could also allow for the return of some ‘normal’ events, such as small social gatherings, sports, and in-person class and work schedules.

“We propose a national testing strategy in line with the one that has kept Wesleyan students safe this year. The plan would require a strong push by the federal government to fund the initiative, but it is vital to successful containment of the virus.

“Twice a week, all people living in the U.S. should report to a local testing site staffed with professionals where the anterior nasal swab Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test, used by Wesleyan and supported by the Broad Institute, would be implemented.”

Kalyani Mohan ’22 and Kalli Jackson ’22 penned an essay titled “ Where Public Health Meets Politics: COVID-19 in the United States ,” which was published in Wesleyan’s Arcadia Political Review .

They wrote: “While the U.S. would certainly benefit from a strengthened pandemic response team and structural changes to public health systems, that alone isn’t enough, as American society is immensely stratified, socially and culturally. The politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that individualism, libertarianism and capitalism are deeply ingrained in American culture, to the extent that Americans often blind to the fact community welfare can be equivalent to personal welfare. Pandemics are multifaceted, and preventing them requires not just a cultural shift but an emotional one amongst the American people, one guided by empathy—towards other people, different communities and the planet. Politics should be a tool, not a weapon against its people.”

Sydnee Goyer ’21 and Marcel Thompson’s ’22 essay “ This Flu Season Will Be Decisive in the Fight Against COVID-19 ” also was published in Arcadia Political Review .

“With winter approaching all around the Northern Hemisphere, people are preparing for what has already been named a “twindemic,” meaning the joint threat of the coronavirus and the seasonal flu,” they wrote. “While it is known that seasonal vaccinations reduce the risk of getting the flu by up to 60% and also reduce the severity of the illness after the contamination, additional research has been conducted in order to know whether or not flu shots could reduce the risk of people getting COVID-19. In addition to the flu shot, it is essential that people remain vigilant in maintaining proper social distancing, washing your hands thoroughly, and continuing to wear masks in public spaces.”

An op-ed titled “ The Pandemic Has Shown Us How Workplace Culture Needs to Change ,” written by Adam Hickey ’22 and George Fuss ’21, was published in Park City, Utah’s The Park Record .

They wrote: “One review of academic surveys (most of which were conducted in the United States) conducted in 2019 found that between 35% and 97% of respondents in those surveys reported having attended work while they were ill, often because of workplace culture or policy which generated pressure to do so. Choosing to ignore sickness and return to the workplace while one is ill puts colleagues at risk, regardless of the perceived severity of your own illness; COVID-19 is an overbearing reminder that a disease that may cause mild, even cold-like symptoms for some can still carry fatal consequences for others.

“A mandatory paid sick leave policy for every worker, ideally across the globe, would allow essential workers to return to work when necessary while still providing enough wiggle room for economically impoverished employees to take time off without going broke if they believe they’ve contracted an illness so as not to infect the rest of their workplace and the public at large.”

Women’s cross country team members and classmates Jane Hollander ’23 and Sara Greene ’23 wrote a sports-themed essay titled “ This Season, High School Winter Sports Aren’t Worth the Risk ,” which was published in Tap into Scotch Plains/Fanwood , based in Scotch Plains, N.J. Their essay focused on the risks high school sports pose on student-athletes, their families, and the greater community.

“We don’t propose cutting off sports entirely— rather, we need to be realistic about the levels at which athletes should be participating. There are ways to make practices safer,” they wrote. “At [Wesleyan], we began the season in ‘cohorts,’ so the amount of people exposed to one another would be smaller. For non-contact sports, social distancing can be easily implemented, and for others, teams can focus on drills, strength and conditioning workouts, and skill-building exercises. Racing sports such as swim and track can compete virtually, comparing times with other schools, and team sports can focus their competition on intra-team scrimmages. These changes can allow for the continuation of a sense of normalcy and team camaraderie without the exposure to students from different geographic areas in confined, indoor spaces.”

Brook Guiffre ’23 and Maddie Clarke’s ’22 op-ed titled “ On the Pandemic ” was published in Hometown Weekly, based in Medfield, Mass.

“The first case of COVID-19 in the United States was recorded on January 20th, 2020. For the next month and a half, the U.S. continued operating normally, while many other countries began their lockdown,” they wrote. “One month later, on February 29th, 2020, the federal government approved a national testing program, but it was too little too late. The U.S. was already in pandemic mode, and completely unprepared. Frontline workers lacked access to N-95 masks, infected patients struggled to get tested, and national leaders informed the public that COVID-19 was nothing more than the common flu. Ultimately, this unpreparedness led to thousands of avoidable deaths and long-term changes to daily life. With the risk of novel infectious diseases emerging in the future being high, it is imperative that the U.S. learn from its failure and better prepare for future pandemics now. By strengthening our public health response and re-establishing government organizations specialized in disease control, we have the ability to prevent more years spent masked and six feet apart.”

In addition, their other essay, “ On Mass Extinction ,” was also published by Hometown Weekly .

“The sixth mass extinction—which scientists have coined as the Holocene Extinction—is upon us. According to the United Nations, around one million plant and animal species are currently in danger of extinction, and many more within the next decade. While other extinctions have occurred in Earth’s history, none have occurred at such a rapid rate,” they wrote. “For the sake of both biodiversity and infectious diseases, it is in our best interest to stop pushing this Holocene Extinction further.”

An essay titled “ Learning from Our Mistakes: How to Protect Ourselves and Our Communities from Diseases ,” written by Nicole Veru ’21 and Zoe Darmon ’21, was published in My Hometown Bronxville, based in Bronxville, N.Y.

“We can protect ourselves and others from future infectious diseases by ensuring that we are vaccinated,” they wrote. “Vaccines have high levels of success if enough people get them. Due to vaccines, society is no longer ravaged by childhood diseases such as mumps, rubella, measles, and smallpox. We have been able to eradicate diseases through vaccines; smallpox, one of the world’s most consequential diseases, was eradicated from the world in the 1970s.

“In 2000, the U.S. was nearly free of measles, yet, due to hesitations by anti-vaxxers, there continues to be cases. From 2000–2015 there were over 18 measles outbreaks in the U.S. This is because unless a disease is completely eradicated, there will be a new generation susceptible.

“Although vaccines are not 100% effective at preventing infection, if we continue to get vaccinated, we protect ourselves and those around us. If enough people are vaccinated, societies can develop herd immunity. The amount of people vaccinated to obtain herd immunity depends on the disease, but if this fraction is obtained, the spread of disease is contained. Through herd immunity, we protect those who may not be able to get vaccinated, such as people who are immunocompromised and the tiny portion of people for whom the vaccine is not effective.”

Dhruvi Rana ’22 and Bryce Gillis ’22 co-authored an op-ed titled “ We Must Educate Those Who Remain Skeptical of the Dangers of COVID-19 ,” which was published in Rhode Island Central .

“As Rhode Island enters the winter season, temperatures are beginning to drop and many studies have demonstrated that colder weather and lower humidity are correlated with higher transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,” they wrote. “By simply talking or breathing, we release respiratory droplets and aerosols (tiny fluid particles which could carry the coronavirus pathogen), which can remain in the air for minutes to hours.

“In order to establish herd immunity in the US, we must educate those who remain skeptical of the dangers of COVID-19. Whether community-driven or state-funded, educational campaigns are needed to ensure that everyone fully comprehends how severe COVID-19 is and the significance of airborne transmission. While we await a vaccine, it is necessary now more than ever that we social distance, avoid crowds, and wear masks, given that colder temperatures will likely yield increased transmission of the virus.”

Danielle Rinaldi ’21 and Verónica Matos Socorro ’21 published their op-ed titled “ Community Forum: How Mask-Wearing Demands a Cultural Reset ” in the Ewing Observer , based in Lawrence, N.J.

“In their own attempt to change personal behavior during the pandemic, Wesleyan University has mandated mask-wearing in almost every facet of campus life,” they wrote. “As members of our community, we must recognize that mask-wearing is something we are all responsible and accountable for, not only because it is a form of protection for us, but just as important for others as well. However, it seems as though both Covid fatigue and complacency are dominating the mindsets of Americans, leading to even more unwillingness to mask up. Ultimately, it is inevitable that this pandemic will not be the last in our lifespan due to global warming creating irreversible losses in biodiversity. As a result, it is imperative that we adopt the norm of mask-wearing now and undergo a culture shift of the abandonment of an individualistic mindset, and instead, create a society that prioritizes taking care of others for the benefit of all.”

Shayna Dollinger ’22 and Hayley Lipson ’21 wrote an essay titled “ My Pandemic Year in College Has Brought Pride and Purpose. ” Dollinger submitted the piece, rewritten in first person, to Jewish News of Northern California . Read more about Dollinger’s publication in this News @ Wesleyan article .

“I lay in the dead grass, a 6-by-6-foot square all to myself. I cheer for my best friend, who is on the stage constructed at the bottom of Foss hill, dancing with her Bollywood dance group. Masks cover their ordinarily smiling faces as their bodies move in sync. Looking around at friends and classmates, each in their own 6-by-6 world, I feel an overwhelming sense of normalcy.

“One of the ways in which Wesleyan has prevented outbreaks on campus is by holding safe, socially distanced events that students want to attend. By giving us places to be and things to do on the weekends, we are discouraged from breaking rules and causing outbreaks at ‘super-spreader’ events.”

An op-ed written by Luna Mac-Williams ’22 and Daëlle Coriolan ’24 titled “ Collectivist Practices to Combat COVID-19 ” was published in the Wesleyan Argus .

“We are embroiled in a global pandemic that disproportionately affects poor communities of color, and in the midst of a higher cultural consciousness of systemic inequities,” they wrote. “A cultural shift to center collectivist thought and action not only would prove helpful in disease prevention, but also belongs in conversation with the Black Lives Matter movement. Collectivist models of thinking effectively target the needs of vulnerable populations including the sick, the disenfranchised, the systematically marginalized. Collectivist systems provide care, decentering the capitalist, individualist system, and focusing on how communities can work to be self-sufficient and uplift our own neighbors.”

An essay written by Maria Noto ’21 , titled “ U.S. Individualism Has Deadly Consequences ,” is published in the Oneonta Daily Star , based in Oneonta, N.Y.

She wrote, “When analyzing the cultures of certain East Asian countries, several differences stand out. For instance, when people are sick and during the cold and flu season, many East Asian cultures, including South Korea, use mask-wearing. What is considered a threat to freedom by some Americans is a preventive action and community obligation in this example. This, along with many other cultural differences, is insightful in understanding their ability to contain the virus.

“These differences are deeply seeded in the values of a culture. However, there is hope for the U.S. and other individualistic cultures in recognizing and adopting these community-centered approaches. Our mindset needs to be revolutionized with the help of federal and local assistance: mandating masks, passing another stimulus package, contact tracing, etc… However, these measures will be unsuccessful unless everyone participates for the good of a community.”

A published op-ed by Madison Szabo ’23 , Caitlyn Ferrante ’23 ran in the Two Rivers Times . The piece is titled “ Anxiety and Aspiration: Analyzing the Politicization of the Pandemic .”

John Lee ’21 and Taylor Goodman-Leong ’21 have published their op-ed titled “ Reassessing the media’s approach to COVID-19 ” in Weekly Monday Cafe 24 (Page 2).

An essay by Eleanor Raab ’21 and Elizabeth Nefferdorf ’22 titled “ Preventing the Next Epidemic ” was published in The Almanac .

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How the world is combating the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic

| September 30, 2020 | Leave a Comment

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Author(s): Gioietta Juo

Since the beginning of 2020 every aspect of our world has changed in an unrecognizable way. Over 200 countries have been affected with the COVID-19 virus. It is in every continent with the exception of the pristine Antarctica. It is now 8 months, what have we achieved? What progress has been made?. It is now time to take stock of the present situation. Are we slowly getting out of the pandemic?? What can we expect the future to look like??

DATA ON CORONAVIRUS WORLDWIDE

So far, as of September 19, 2020, the. pandemic has caused 30,906,084 cases of coronavirus disease with 959,630 deaths [1].

Figure 1 Active Cases in 2020 in millions

Figure 2 Daily New Cases in 2020 in thousands

It is interesting to note that only 6% of death come from the death of otherwise healthy people. The rest come from those with pre-existing conditions like diabetes, heart and organ weakness and mostly seniors in close contact in places like nursing homes.

Yes, Every aspect of our lives have changed drastically. In order to slow the spread of this highly contagious virus, countries have resorted to a drastic lockdown of ordinary social life as we know it. Schools, shops and many work places have closed. Family is confined to the home. Those who are lucky can work online at home. But others have lost their jobs and depend on government subsistence. But going out means wearing a mask for protection has been mandated.

Even though some countries have slowed down the spread of this virus with social distancing, keeping away from others by more than 6 ft, contact tracing and etc, there are potential down sides. For a start life is lonely not being able to see one’s larger family and friends. Then for those whose marriage is not rock solid, there are emotional risks like child abuse, spouse abuse, drug addictions, alcoholism, and various mental problems even suicides. It has been said that these ills as it happens are worse than the virus itself!! It is imperative that the degree to which these risks have been realized and studied so that health professionals can then develop strategies by which they can be treated. Financial problems can arise, this is where governments have come in to help small businesses and personal problems with stimulus. packages.

There is only a limited time we can lead this dreary life. It is not a permanent solution. Humans are social creatures, we need to go out, meet others, go to schools, have sports, worship in churches and so on……..Most important, schools, the economy cannot be shut down for long.

Now that the season has changed, with the sun beckoning outside, people have the urge to go outside for some fresh air, To the beaches for those living near the coast, to the national parks etc . People cannot be shut indoors forever and it is time to relax the rules.

Most importantly, schools have to open as our children need to go back to their friends and to continue their education. But how?

Social distancing is still necessary. The opening of schools has necessitated a certain closeness in living among the young students, leading to many with low grade fever. In the absence of vaccines what are the solutions? Online teaching is definitely here to stay even though it puts more stress on the families. Then there is nerd immunity [2] where a majority of people who have been exposed and acquired immunity for the virus can impart the immunity to the whole community. That is once a threshold of immune people exist hereby reducing the likelihood of infection for individuals who lack immunity. Immure individuals are unlikely to contribute to disease transmission, They disrupt the chain of infection, which stops or slows the spread of the disease. The greater the proportion of immune individuals in a community, the smaller the probability that that non-immune individuals will come into contact with an immune individual. However, the basic concepts of social distancing, cleanliness of personal hygiene still apply[2].

Definitely, small business – restaurants, hairdressers, stores and workplaces which are the backbone of a country’s economy have to open so long as the basic rules are observed. Innovative ideas such as using the sidewalk for business have sprung up.

PATH TAKEN BY CROATIA TO COMBAT COVID-19

What is happening is Croatia may be an example of what might come [3].

Figure 3 Active Cases in Croatia in 2020

First comes the main peak of active cases. After a mandated social distancing and general lockdown, the number of cases drops drastically. Now is the time to reopen the society and economy? However, after some social mixing, the number of cases rises again. Another lockdown has to happen. Again the number of cases drops. Another attempt of reopening happens followed by an expected rise again of the number of cases. Each time the number of people catching the disease is expected to be lower, Several attempts of reopening will happen until the disease is finally eradicated and society gets back to normal.

Having the confidence that the virus has been licked, the government decided to open up the country completely without restrictions.

This has led to a disastrous sharp rise in new cases in a third wave. See figures 3 and 4. In fact what we are seeing is the second wave followed by the third wave. Not many countries in the world have seen such pronounced multiple waves. Spain is now seeing the second wave. There are signs that the USA is on its second wave.

Figure 4 Daily New Cases in Croatia

TREATMENTS FOR COVID-19 [4]

Although there is no product approved by the US FDA there are many drugs being tested and used. Remdesivir may be prescribed for emergency use. Otherwise the following are actively being tested:

Antivirial drugs

In addition to Remdesivir, there are favipiravir and merimepodib.

– Dexamethasone

It is a corticosteroid anti – inflammatory drug studied to treat or prevent organ dysfunction and lung injury from inflammation. With people on ventilators or supplemental oxygen. This can reduce death by 30 %.

Anti- inflammatory therapy

This is in general useful for more severe cases

I mmune – based therapy[4]

This is a developing therapy which has been found to be highly effective. Recently the US Food and Drug Administration has issued emergency use authorization to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients with convalescent plasma from people who have recovered from the virus. Convalescent plasma is the liquid portion of the blood that contains the antibodies an individual develops in response to an infection and can be given to patients currently fighting that virus. This treatment has long been a part of the infectious disease arsenal. It has already been in use for COVID-19 for a number of months: The Mayo Clinic has run an “expanded access program for convalescent plasma since March, and more than 70,000 people have received the treatment. It is found that there is a 35% improvement in mortality rate for COVID-19 patients given the plasma.

Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine.

This is a long standing anti -malarial drug which has been used for nearly a century. However, there is a fraction of the medical community which maintain this is not an effective solution. In fact there are many people who have used it for long periods just for the prevention of malaria. For them no ill effects have been observed. So this has led to an almost political dialogue. Some say it may cause heart problems but otherwise it has been widely used across all continents with no serious effects.

Ventilators and oxygen supplements may be used for breathing

VACCINES FOR COVID-19 [5]

It is only natural that we resort to a universal vaccine to solve the pandemic problem. But the scale of the problem given the population size of each country is gigantic. More than 150 companies are desperately competing working drastically to produce a vaccine by the end of 2020. Following are the prominent candidates but which will succeed?

The basic idea of all those vaccines is to instruct one’s immune system to mount a defense, which is sometimes stronger than what would be provided through natural infection and hopefully comes with fewer health consequences.

To do so, some vaccines use the whole coronavirus, but in a killed or weakened state. Others use only part of the virus – whether protein or a fragment. Some transfer the protein into a different virus.

Finally some use pieces of the virus’s genetic material so as to temporarily make the right proteins to stimulate the immune system.

Even when a vaccine has been chemically produced, it faces still a tortuous path to the final usable product. Vaccines have to go through a multi – stage clinical trial process. First phase starts by checking for their safety and whether they trigger an immune response to a small group of healthy individuals. Second phase finds a wider group of those who are likely to catch the virus and to gauge how effective it is. The third phase expands the group to thousands of people to make sure it is safe and effective, given that the immune response varies by age, ethnicity or underlying health conditions.

It then goes to various regulatory agencies for approval. This may take years.

Following are some of the prominent companies. There is much in common between the various companies. Most use the SARS-CoV2 protein to trigger the immune response

== Moderna Therapeutics

Name: mRNA-1273

DNA is the gene and ~RNA gives instructions for certain proteins. A mRNA vaccine is the instruction for the SARS-CoV2 protein. Once inside the cell, the protein is made and that triggers the immune response

Who: A Massachusetts-based biotech company, in collaboration with the US National Institutes of Health.

This vaccine candidate relies on injecting snippets of a virus’s genetic material, in this case mRNA, into human cells. They create viral proteins that mimic the coronavirus, training the immune system to recognize its presence.

STATUS: The third phase has started in a deal with the Swiss company Lonza. It is hoped to manufacture up to one billion doses a year.

Name: BNT162b2

WHO : One of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, based in New York in collaboration with German biotech BioNTech.

WHAT: Also an mRNA vaccine based on cancer vaccine.

STATUS : Currently combining phase 2 and 3 on a diverse population in 30,000 people from 39 US states and from Brazil, Argentina, and Germany. Hope to supply 1.3 billion doses by end of 2021.

== University of Oxford

Name: ChAdOx1 nCoV-19

Who: The U.K. university in collaboration with AstraZeneca.

What: Oxford’s candidate is what’s known as a viral vector vaccine, essentially a “Trojan horse ” presented to the immune system. Oxford’s research team has transferred the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein—which helps the coronavirus invade cells—into a weakened version of an adenovirus, which typically causes the common cold. When this adenovirus is injected into humans, the hope is that the spike protein will trigger an immune response. AstraZeneca and Oxford plan to produce a billion doses of vaccine that they’ve agreed to sell at cost.

Status: Preliminary results from this candidate’s first two clinical trial phases revealed that the vaccine had triggered a strong immune response—including increased antibodies and responses from T-cells—with only minor side effects such as fatigue and headache. It has now moved into phase three of clinical trials, aiming to recruit up to 50,000 volunteers in Brazil, the UK, USA and South Africa.

Recently it has been found that one volunteer in the test phase of AstreZeneca has contracted inflammation of the spine. It is not known whether this is related to the vaccine or an independent coincidence. So the whole test phase has been put on hold until further investigation.

==. Sinovac

Name: CoronaVac

Who: A Chinese biopharmaceutical company, in collaboration with Brazilian research center Butantan.

What: CoronaVac is an inactivated vaccine, meaning it uses a non-infectious version of the coronavirus. While inactivated pathogens can no longer produce disease, they can still provoke an immune response, such as with the annual influenza vaccine.

Status: On July 3, Brazil’s regulatory agency granted this vaccine candidate approval to move ahead to phase three, as it continues to monitor the results of the phase two clinical trials. The first phases have so far shown that the vaccine does produce an immune response with no severe adverse effects. Preliminary results of this candidate’s earlier testing in macaque monkeys, published in Science , revealed that the vaccine produced antibodies that neutralized 10 strains of SARS-CoV-2. Phase three will recruit nearly 9,000 healthcare professionals in Brazil.

== Sinopharm

Who: China’s state-run pharmaceutical company, in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products. Wuhan Institute is where the virus initially started. There has been much resentment outside China, especially in the US, that China initially limited the movement of people from Wuhan but failed to let travelers go outside internationally. In this way the virus took hold in Europe and then in USA. The spread of the virus all over the world has led to countless cases and deaths. Not to mention the economic and social disruption it has caused the whole world, China should be made accountable for the gigantic disruption and suffering it has caused to the whole planet!

What: Sinopharm is also using an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine that it hopes will reach the public by the end of 2020 . Sinopharm has reported that early trials of its vaccine candidate triggered a strong neutralizing antibody response in participants, with no serious adverse effects.

Status: In mid-July, Sinopharm launched its phase three trial among 15,000 volunteers—aged 18 to 60, with no serious underlying conditions—in the United Arab Emirates. The company selected the UAE , as it has a diverse population with approximately 200 different nationalities, making it an ideal testing ground.

==. Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

Name: Bacillus Calmette-Guerin BRACE trial

Who: The largest child health research institute in Australia, in collaboration with the University of Melbourne.

What: For nearly a hundred years, the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine has been used to prevent tuberculosis by exposing patients to a small dose of live bacteria . Evidence has emerged over the years that this vaccine may boost the immune system and help the body fight off other diseases as well. Researchers are investigating whether these benefits may also extend to SARS-CoV-2,

Status: This trial has reached phase three in Australia. It has begun a series of randomized controlled trials that will test whether BCG might work on the coronavirus as well. They aim to recruit 10,000 healthcare workers in the study.

==. CanSino Biologics

Name: Ad5-nCoV

Who: A Chinese biopharmaceutical company.

What: CanSino has also developed a viral vector vaccine, using a weakened version of the adenovirus as a vehicle for introducing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to the body. Preliminary results from phase two trials have shown that the vaccine produces “significant immune responses in the majority of recipients after a single immunization.” There were no serious adverse reactions documented.

Status: Though the company is still technically in phase two of its trial, on June 25, CanSino became the first company to receive limited approval to use its vaccine in people. The Chinese government has approved the vaccine for military use only, for a period of one year.

==. The Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology

Name: Sputnik V

Who: This is the only Russian vaccine research institution which is in collaboration with the state-run Russian Direct Investment Fund.

What: Gamaleya has developed a viral vector vaccine that also uses a weakened version of the common cold-causing adenovirus to introduce the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to the body. This vaccine uses two strains of adenovirus, and it requires a second injection after 21 days to boost the immune response. Russia has not published any data from its clinical trials, but officials with the institute state that they have completed phases one and two. The researchers also claim the vaccine produced strong antibody and cellular immune responses.

Status: Despite the lack of published evidence, Russia has cleared the Sputnik V vaccine for widespread use and claimed it as the first registered COVID-19 vaccine on the market. Russia reports that it will start phase three clinical trials on August 12 ; the World Health Organization, however, lists the Sputnik V vaccine as being in phase one of clinical trials.

Even when a vaccine is approved, there is the problem of manufacturing, distribution, scaling up of the production and deciding who should get it first. Many vaccines go through the 4th phase of regular study. This can take long time. Then what about the cost? The US government has pledged $10 billion with Pfizer to develop 300 million doses by beginning of 2021, And World Health Organization, WHO, is aiming to deliver 2 billion doses by the end of 2021. It is truly a worldwide effort in the race to produce vaccines to fight and eradicate the pandemic. The companies are located in Australia, Russia, Germany, Brazil, Switzerland, UK, USA and of course China. We hope that the ingenuity of the world’s brilliant scientists and technicians as well as the experience and organized know how of our governments and social systems will lead us through this pandemic by the end of 2020.

Gioietta Kuo, MA at Cambridge, PhD in nuclear physics, Atlas Fellow at St Hilda’s College, Oxford and Princeton University plasma physics lab, is a research physicist. Over 70 professional articles and over 100 articles in environmental problems – in World Future Society-wfs.org, amcips.org, MAHB Stanford and other worldwide think tanks. Also in Chinese in ‘ People’s Daily’ and ‘World Environment’ – Magazine of the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection, and others in China. She can be reached at < [email protected] .>

[1] Coronavirus Update (Live): 23,272,847 Cases and 805,907 … https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

[2] Herd immunity and COVID-19 (coronavirus): What you need to … https://www.mayoclinic.org/herd-immunity-and-coronavirus/art-20486808

[3] Croatia Coronavirus: 7,900 Cases and 170 Deaths …

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/croatia/

[4] FDA Authorizes Convalescent Plasma As Emergency … https://www.capradio.org/news/npr/story?storyid=905277083 1 day ago … https://www.capradio.org/news/npr/story?storyid=905277083 1 day ago …

[5] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/expert-answers/coronavirus-drugs

COVID-19 (coronavirus) drugs: Are there any that work …

[6] CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: Here’s what you should know about the vaccines in development

National Geographic 2020

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-diseases/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker-how-they-work-latest-developments-cvd/

Preparing for the next pandemic: Early lessons from COVID-19

Subscribe to the economic studies bulletin, dante disparte dante disparte chief strategy officer and head of global policy - circle, executive vice president, policy and social impact - diem association, member - fema national advisory council.

February 16, 2021

15 min read

COVID-19 has caused more than 109 million confirmed cases , claimed more than 2.4 million lives, and even brought prosperous nations and well-run healthcare systems to their knees. Few countries have been spared. Even in the economically powerful U.S., the tension between maintaining social freedoms and engaging in efforts of collective defense against the virus has led to politicization (e.g., mask wearing, social distancing and vaccine refusal). Sadly, the U.S. is bearing the heaviest human toll from the virus with 25.4 percent of total confirmed cases and more than 486,000 deaths. Fortunately, even in our darkest hour in the fight against COVID-19 – amid a predictable winter surge – there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Pfizer and Moderna have each produced vaccine breakthroughs with 90 percent or greater efficacy, while Johnson & Johnson seeks approval of a single dose vaccine that may be available over the summer. With over 70 million doses delivered across the country, close to 53 million doses have been administered of which 14 million people have received their second shot, breaking the logistical and supply chain log jam that plagued early vaccine efforts.

Even though pandemic preparedness and biodefense have had ardent and clarion supporters, namely Bill Gates and the first Secretary for Homeland Security Tom Ridge , COVID-19 proved how ill-prepared we were to combat a 100-year pandemic. It is not too early to draw lessons from this lack of preparation and global coordination. Not only will doing so aid current recovery efforts, but it would also increase readiness for the next communicable or vector-borne disease to threaten the world. Below are seven areas of opportunity to learn from our COVID-19 response and improve readiness for future pandemic shocks.

Restore institutional trust

Public health always depends on public trust. This is especially true during a global health emergency in which the first line of defense is public adherence to health directives, including to quarantine, observe social distancing, wear masks, and, eventually, receive a vaccine. It is notable that during the 21st century’s pandemics, the most effective remedies borrow from a playbook that is hundreds of years old. Unfortunately, the fight against COVID-19, like past outbreaks and pandemics, has suffered from various perverse, insidious, and conspiratorial setbacks, including the specter of cyber-attacks attempting to thwart the lucrative and geopolitically prized race for a cure or vaccine. Indeed, cyber ne’er-do-wells are also targeting cold supply chains as the mobilization of vaccines gets underway.

The eroding public trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), World Health Organization (WHO), and pharmaceutical companies more generally has already signaled the need for reform. In the U.S., the CEOs of major pharmaceutical firms , along with industry bodies, have made public pledges that their race for a cure will not succumb to political pressure nor will their companies cut corners on public safety and scientific soundness. Seeing a tension between public interest, shareholder value, and corporate reputation, the private pharmaceutical industry seems to have distanced itself from political interference and emphasized science in their decision making. The same temperament should hold true among political leaders who, in a crisis, must model the behavior they want to see in the public. Such leaders must also provide clear, fact-based information, even if— especially if—it is politically inconvenient.

Fortify early alert frameworks

Some countries, such as Singapore and South Korea , have a comparatively more effective disease outbreak early alert system. This is especially true in Southeast Asia, where people are accustomed to the perennial threat of communicable upper respiratory diseases. Many of these diseases have been identified and mitigated through preventative measures including airport and port of entry screening, temperature checks, and broader social acceptance of wearing masks. Partly due to such measures, countries with crowded urban environments such as Taiwan or Singapore have fared comparatively well in terms of COVID-19 infections even though social distancing (of six feet or greater) may be impossible in some settings such as public transport. These examples demonstrate that building a system for defense against infectious diseases, especially novel or emerging threats, requires an outermost perimeter that serves as a veritable early alert system. Central components of this early alert system include forward-deployed infectious disease specialists, as well as trusted relationships among scientists and epidemiologists. These specialists know the tell-tale signs that a novel virus is emerging and when to sound the alarm – in short, science and data should guide decision-making in response to potential outbreaks.

Sadly, in the case of COVID-19, many components of such early alert systems have been greatly strained, defunded, and politicized, both at the national and global levels. However, in the fight against a so-called “invisible threat,” global solidarity, trust, and real-time threat information sharing are a part of our collective defense. The U.S. is best positioned to lead and refortify these early alert frameworks, beginning with shoring up trust in public health authorities within the country and resourcing them adequately for the global fight against vector-borne and emerging infectious diseases. It was always a matter of time before a new pandemic would occur, and efforts to improve defenses post-COVID-19 should treat the prospect of communicable disease outbreaks like a mathematical certainty.

Threat-based resource allocation

One of the risk management conundrums in pandemic preparedness and biodefense is that the risk feels intangible. Additionally, experts who warn about the specter of contagion are frequently dismissed. Prominent voices from Bill Gates, who sounded a clear alarm at the 2017 Munich Security Conference , to Governor Tom Ridge and Senator Joe Lieberman, who co-chair the bipartisan commission on U.S. biodefense and pandemic preparedness , have largely gone unheeded. COVID-19 must serve as a global wake up call, lest the great human and economic sacrifices are in vain.

Hopefully, the aftermath of COVID-19—which may still be some ways off as the U.S. grapples with a growing third wave and the appearance of mutating variations , which may blunt the effectiveness of vaccines—will recalibrate resource allocation to match the global threat environment. Even in the lead up to the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. resource allocation for combating infectious diseases and developing biodefense was woefully inadequate. In 2014, the U.S. allocated $6 billion in Federal funding to civilian biodefense, mostly in a diffused manner across a range of research and development programs. Similarly, despite the threat of novel infectious diseases making the “magic leap” and the ever-present specter of bioterrorism or lab-borne threats from malicious actors, this low defensive posture is largely the same around the world.

Comparatively speaking, as a share of global defense spending, the security industrial complex does not allocate nearly enough threat-based resources to mitigating pandemic risk, in the form of money, attention, or human capital. In aviation risk management, there is a process of capturing near misses. By this measure, when it comes to emerging zoonotic risks, scientists have identified 200 zoonoses and seen six registered as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern under the WHO’s emergency classification. Of these, three have been coronaviruses, suggesting that it was only a matter of time before one reached pandemic proportions. Considering the amount of money spent in shoring up the U.S. economy and providing direct relief to citizens (more than $5.7 trillion in economic interventions thus far), pre-investing in infectious disease prevention and meaningful ways of breaking the chain of transmission are clearly a better investment than ex-post efforts to deal with a novel zoonotic health crisis.

Science in the war room

There is an adage in management circles that if you do not measure something, you cannot manage it. In fighting the spread of COVID-19, data and science should be the most critical elements of decision making. Unfortunately, the void of reliable real-time information has been a global challenge during the COVID-19 crisis. This has been particularly true in the U.S., where different states have each pursued varying degrees of transparency, accuracy, accountability, and, critically, methodologies, with regards to reporting infection and casualty rates. In some instances, low-levels of technological processes like the limits of Excel spreadsheets or the specter of keystroke errors, have created misreporting and miscalculation on the number of confirmed cases, as well as the prevalence of community spread.

Another major challenge in the race for a vaccine has been the early, often erroneous signals surrounding the effectiveness of treatments and experimental drugs or vaccines. The world has embarked on nothing short of a vaccine space race to find an effective cure for COVID-19, with some countries, such as Russia, claiming victory early on even though clinical trials have been either scant or could not support efficacy and safety with data. Sadly, even in the face of a global threat, the tendency of economic nationalism and retrenchment stands in the way of global collaboration and solidarity in the race for a vaccine and its global availability. This is true for the vital task of building the type of integrated supply chains that are needed for the provision of lifesaving N95 masks and medical equipment, as well as the high-functioning cold supply chains required to distribute vaccines at global scale. Unless there is great coordination on cold supply chain management, likely led by the logistics prowess of the U.S., the advent of a vaccine may be a Hail Mary pass for many countries wherein poor countries that comprise the largest share of the world’s population may pay the heaviest price of vaccine nationalism.

Privacy preserving technology

Although we have many technological tools that could help control a public health crisis, those tools are only beneficial if the technologies are both trusted and readily deployable. The general lack of reliable, real-time threat information sharing, contact tracing, and community prevalence data during this pandemic has meant people and public health authorities have either been flying blind in the fight against COVID-19 or are relying on backward-looking reporting of confirmed cases. This type of reporting has been particularly plagued with issues: persistent testing bottlenecks, false positive tests, the asymptomatic nature of many cases, and lags in reporting testing outcomes have all presented challenges in mounting an effective and trusted response. The gap in population-scale technologies to facilitate open information sharing, including self-reporting COVID-19 symptoms in a privacy preserving way, is a clear national and global vulnerability. The lack of ubiquitous, trusted technologies in the hands of U.S. citizens confounded real-time risk-reward decision making at the household level.

Playing whack-a-mole with the moving target of a COVID-19 resurgence (including the specter of rapidly evolving variants) without a reliable national COVID-19 dashboard has hampered containment, mitigation, and public health information sharing. In the absence of reliable, real-time data on community prevalence of COVID-19, the assumption is that everyone is a potential threat, which is what makes the “nuclear” lockdown option necessary despite its economically detrimental effects, especially on the most vulnerable people and sectors. Herein lies the difference between risk and uncertainty: risk is measurable, uncertainty is not, which is why the latter is a driver of panic, paralysis, and fear. These are the very conditions that have gripped many parts of the country, as U.S. households have contended with the type of life-or-death decision making usually reserved for battlefields or hospitals.

Indeed, as vaccines are gradually approved, notwithstanding the deleterious effects of vaccine nationalism , containing COVID-19 will require the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history. As with yellow fever vaccination cards required at ports of entry in a number of countries , the prospect of health passports being upgraded from risk-prone analog cards, which may be lost or forged, is another opportunity to leverage technology. Here, too, the advent of privacy preserving technology in the form of portable e-health passports can provide individual protections and community health assurances as we overcome our trepidations to return to normal. Five major airlines are adopting their own e-health passport as a potential precondition for boarding, along with rapid testing to augment potentially porous airport screening or traveler-provided assurances on pre-travel health. Until population-scale clearances are provided, restoring trust and business as usual may see two populations being served: one group that can provide high-assurance on COVID-19 immunity may be allowed to resume a semblance of normal activities, while the other may struggle with restrictions until the chain of transmission is broken.

Mass casualty surge capacity

There is a fundamental tension between public health emergencies—and their resulting need for collective defense against a pandemic—and privatized healthcare. The definition of a moral hazard is risk-taking behavior without bearing the consequences of the risk. The vulnerability of an unequal and ill-prepared U.S. public health system, where more than 26 million people are functionally out of the system (as uninsured or poorly covered), has been laid bare during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did the material scarcity of life-saving equipment like ventilators and personal protective equipment (PPE) – among other essential supplies – imperil frontline healthcare workers, but it also often consigned those with treatable conditions to their death.

There is a clear need for improved universally accessible emergency healthcare surge capacity to respond to mass casualty events. The national healthcare emergency perimeter should reach 100 percent of the U.S. population, particularly when combating the spread of an infectious disease or responding to a wide-scale bio-hazard event or other mass casualty threat. The medical and emergency management professionals on the frontlines, meanwhile, should never experience a shortfall of predictably necessary and life-saving supplies. Sending healthcare professionals to fight COVID-19 with ill-fitting, reused, or patchwork PPE, is tantamount to sending soldiers into battle without body armor or weapons. In keeping with this combat analogy, the nation’s healthcare and emergency response system must also draw lessons learned from the COVID-19 response and formulate tabletop exercises and preparedness drills that treat mass casualty events, communicable diseases, and bio-threats as ever present, rather than as so-called black swans or statistically rare events.

Public-private accelerator

If and when the world sounds the all clear on COVID-19 and the global economy returns to a new normal, a generational debt of gratitude will be owed to scientists and medical professionals. The pandemic, like prior global crises, has blurred the lines between public and private resources. In many countries, including the U.S., governmental powers usually reserved for times of war were used to compel the private sector’s balance sheet to make a down payment on the greater good. While some firms responded to this call to action affirmatively and on their own volition, others will be compelled by the Defense Production Act , not realizing that shielding their balance sheet amid total economic collapse would be a reputation tarnishing Pyrrhic victory. This is especially true considering the scale of the taxpayer backstop that has been deployed in the U.S. in an unprecedented mobilization of the government’s financial wherewithal to stave off massive layoffs, business closures, and economic ruin.

In all, the economic response to COVID-19 has tipped already perilous U.S. debt-to-GDP rates to stratospheric heights not seen since World War II. With national debt projected to be greater than the size of the U.S. economy, the down payment on COVID-19 response and recovery will require generational commitments to ensure national resilience in the face of future threats. A public-private approach to catalyzing national and global resilience to large-scale emerging threats such as climate change , pandemic preparedness, and biodefense, among others, would be a more effective use of resources than addressing a catastrophic event without a plan. Operation Warp Speed, the nom de guerre for the U.S. race for a cure, has mobilized what is ostensibly the fastest pursuit of a safe vaccine in history and has also shown the benefits of purposeful societal collaboration. The U.S. is not alone in this quest. If this type of innovation accelerator were not a zero-sum proposition for each country but rather a globally shared and pre-funded capability immune from corporate intellectual property restrictions and national interests, the potential for broad societal benefits would be unprecedented.

The dreadful human, economic and sociopolitical toll of the COVID-19 pandemic hearkens to a war time effort. Rather than combating this disease in global solidarity, many countries and regions have opted to go it alone, ignoring the reality that against a threat unseen like a novel zoonotic disease, porous national borders that depend on the arteries of trade, integration, and globalization, will offer little defense. Some of the capabilities established in response to COVID-19 should remain in place, including and especially reinforced early alert frameworks that can serve as a proverbial tripwire that a novel virus, vector-borne disease or other bio threat has surfaced. These early alert systems are a global tripwire framework that all countries must contribute to and believe in. Similarly, once the tendencies of vaccine and resource nationalism are overcome, countries must realize that in the face of pandemic and other global threats, we are in effect as strong as the weakest link. U.S. leadership in strengthening the chain of pandemic resilience will be a vital catalyst to ensuring the world is prepared for the next one and that the costly lessons from COVID-19 prepare future generations.

Science coupled with focused public spending or guaranteed demand for billions of vaccines has produced multiple breakthroughs in record time compared to the typical 12 to 18 months it takes to develop a new vaccine. This rapid vaccine development capability should not be disbanded once COVID-19 is contained, especially as many developing countries will rely on coordinated international assistance to contain domestic outbreaks and prevent mutations from leaping over national borders. COVID-19 bears many similarities to other global threats, such as climate change, severe income inequality and societal polarization. Like COVID-19, responding to these threats will require a societal approach, tradeoffs across the public and private lines and trusted public leadership that people will follow.

Dante Alighieri Disparte is Founder and Chairman of Risk Cooperative, a risk management and insurance advisory firm; a member of FEMA’s National Advisory Council; a member of the World Economic Forum Digital Currency Governance Consortium; and Executive Vice President of the Diem Association. The author did not receive financial support from any firm or person for this article or, other than the aforementioned, from any firm or person with a financial or political interest in this article. Other than the aforementioned, he is currently not an officer, director, or board member of any organization with an interest in this article.

Economic Studies

Center on Regulation and Markets

The Brookings Institution, Washington D.C.

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Isabel V. Sawhill, Kai Smith

July 30, 2024

Wei-Ting Yen

July 22, 2024

I Thought We’d Learned Nothing From the Pandemic. I Wasn’t Seeing the Full Picture

M y first home had a back door that opened to a concrete patio with a giant crack down the middle. When my sister and I played, I made sure to stay on the same side of the divide as her, just in case. The 1988 film The Land Before Time was one of the first movies I ever saw, and the image of the earth splintering into pieces planted its roots in my brain. I believed that, even in my own backyard, I could easily become the tiny Triceratops separated from her family, on the other side of the chasm, as everything crumbled into chaos.

Some 30 years later, I marvel at the eerie, unexpected ways that cartoonish nightmare came to life – not just for me and my family, but for all of us. The landscape was already covered in fissures well before COVID-19 made its way across the planet, but the pandemic applied pressure, and the cracks broke wide open, separating us from each other physically and ideologically. Under the weight of the crisis, we scattered and landed on such different patches of earth we could barely see each other’s faces, even when we squinted. We disagreed viciously with each other, about how to respond, but also about what was true.

Recently, someone asked me if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, and my first thought was a flat no. Nothing. There was a time when I thought it would be the very thing to draw us together and catapult us – as a capital “S” Society – into a kinder future. It’s surreal to remember those early days when people rallied together, sewing masks for health care workers during critical shortages and gathering on balconies in cities from Dallas to New York City to clap and sing songs like “Yellow Submarine.” It felt like a giant lightning bolt shot across the sky, and for one breath, we all saw something that had been hidden in the dark – the inherent vulnerability in being human or maybe our inescapable connectedness .

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But it turns out, it was just a flash. The goodwill vanished as quickly as it appeared. A couple of years later, people feel lied to, abandoned, and all on their own. I’ve felt my own curiosity shrinking, my willingness to reach out waning , my ability to keep my hands open dwindling. I look out across the landscape and see selfishness and rage, burnt earth and so many dead bodies. Game over. We lost. And if we’ve already lost, why try?

Still, the question kept nagging me. I wondered, am I seeing the full picture? What happens when we focus not on the collective society but at one face, one story at a time? I’m not asking for a bow to minimize the suffering – a pretty flourish to put on top and make the whole thing “worth it.” Yuck. That’s not what we need. But I wondered about deep, quiet growth. The kind we feel in our bodies, relationships, homes, places of work, neighborhoods.

Like a walkie-talkie message sent to my allies on the ground, I posted a call on my Instagram. What do you see? What do you hear? What feels possible? Is there life out here? Sprouting up among the rubble? I heard human voices calling back – reports of life, personal and specific. I heard one story at a time – stories of grief and distrust, fury and disappointment. Also gratitude. Discovery. Determination.

Among the most prevalent were the stories of self-revelation. Almost as if machines were given the chance to live as humans, people described blossoming into fuller selves. They listened to their bodies’ cues, recognized their desires and comforts, tuned into their gut instincts, and honored the intuition they hadn’t realized belonged to them. Alex, a writer and fellow disabled parent, found the freedom to explore a fuller version of herself in the privacy the pandemic provided. “The way I dress, the way I love, and the way I carry myself have both shrunk and expanded,” she shared. “I don’t love myself very well with an audience.” Without the daily ritual of trying to pass as “normal” in public, Tamar, a queer mom in the Netherlands, realized she’s autistic. “I think the pandemic helped me to recognize the mask,” she wrote. “Not that unmasking is easy now. But at least I know it’s there.” In a time of widespread suffering that none of us could solve on our own, many tended to our internal wounds and misalignments, large and small, and found clarity.

Read More: A Tool for Staying Grounded in This Era of Constant Uncertainty

I wonder if this flourishing of self-awareness is at least partially responsible for the life alterations people pursued. The pandemic broke open our personal notions of work and pushed us to reevaluate things like time and money. Lucy, a disabled writer in the U.K., made the hard decision to leave her job as a journalist covering Westminster to write freelance about her beloved disability community. “This work feels important in a way nothing else has ever felt,” she wrote. “I don’t think I’d have realized this was what I should be doing without the pandemic.” And she wasn’t alone – many people changed jobs , moved, learned new skills and hobbies, became politically engaged.

Perhaps more than any other shifts, people described a significant reassessment of their relationships. They set boundaries, said no, had challenging conversations. They also reconnected, fell in love, and learned to trust. Jeanne, a quilter in Indiana, got to know relatives she wouldn’t have connected with if lockdowns hadn’t prompted weekly family Zooms. “We are all over the map as regards to our belief systems,” she emphasized, “but it is possible to love people you don’t see eye to eye with on every issue.” Anna, an anti-violence advocate in Maine, learned she could trust her new marriage: “Life was not a honeymoon. But we still chose to turn to each other with kindness and curiosity.” So many bonds forged and broken, strengthened and strained.

Instead of relying on default relationships or institutional structures, widespread recalibrations allowed for going off script and fortifying smaller communities. Mara from Idyllwild, Calif., described the tangible plan for care enacted in her town. “We started a mutual-aid group at the beginning of the pandemic,” she wrote, “and it grew so quickly before we knew it we were feeding 400 of the 4000 residents.” She didn’t pretend the conditions were ideal. In fact, she expressed immense frustration with our collective response to the pandemic. Even so, the local group rallied and continues to offer assistance to their community with help from donations and volunteers (many of whom were originally on the receiving end of support). “I’ve learned that people thrive when they feel their connection to others,” she wrote. Clare, a teacher from the U.K., voiced similar conviction as she described a giant scarf she’s woven out of ribbons, each representing a single person. The scarf is “a collection of stories, moments and wisdom we are sharing with each other,” she wrote. It now stretches well over 1,000 feet.

A few hours into reading the comments, I lay back on my bed, phone held against my chest. The room was quiet, but my internal world was lighting up with firefly flickers. What felt different? Surely part of it was receiving personal accounts of deep-rooted growth. And also, there was something to the mere act of asking and listening. Maybe it connected me to humans before battle cries. Maybe it was the chance to be in conversation with others who were also trying to understand – what is happening to us? Underneath it all, an undeniable thread remained; I saw people peering into the mess and narrating their findings onto the shared frequency. Every comment was like a flare into the sky. I’m here! And if the sky is full of flares, we aren’t alone.

I recognized my own pandemic discoveries – some minor, others massive. Like washing off thick eyeliner and mascara every night is more effort than it’s worth; I can transform the mundane into the magical with a bedsheet, a movie projector, and twinkle lights; my paralyzed body can mother an infant in ways I’d never seen modeled for me. I remembered disappointing, bewildering conversations within my own family of origin and our imperfect attempts to remain close while also seeing things so differently. I realized that every time I get the weekly invite to my virtual “Find the Mumsies” call, with a tiny group of moms living hundreds of miles apart, I’m being welcomed into a pocket of unexpected community. Even though we’ve never been in one room all together, I’ve felt an uncommon kind of solace in their now-familiar faces.

Hope is a slippery thing. I desperately want to hold onto it, but everywhere I look there are real, weighty reasons to despair. The pandemic marks a stretch on the timeline that tangles with a teetering democracy, a deteriorating planet , the loss of human rights that once felt unshakable . When the world is falling apart Land Before Time style, it can feel trite, sniffing out the beauty – useless, firing off flares to anyone looking for signs of life. But, while I’m under no delusions that if we just keep trudging forward we’ll find our own oasis of waterfalls and grassy meadows glistening in the sunshine beneath a heavenly chorus, I wonder if trivializing small acts of beauty, connection, and hope actually cuts us off from resources essential to our survival. The group of abandoned dinosaurs were keeping each other alive and making each other laugh well before they made it to their fantasy ending.

Read More: How Ice Cream Became My Own Personal Act of Resistance

After the monarch butterfly went on the endangered-species list, my friend and fellow writer Hannah Soyer sent me wildflower seeds to plant in my yard. A simple act of big hope – that I will actually plant them, that they will grow, that a monarch butterfly will receive nourishment from whatever blossoms are able to push their way through the dirt. There are so many ways that could fail. But maybe the outcome wasn’t exactly the point. Maybe hope is the dogged insistence – the stubborn defiance – to continue cultivating moments of beauty regardless. There is value in the planting apart from the harvest.

I can’t point out a single collective lesson from the pandemic. It’s hard to see any great “we.” Still, I see the faces in my moms’ group, making pancakes for their kids and popping on between strings of meetings while we try to figure out how to raise these small people in this chaotic world. I think of my friends on Instagram tending to the selves they discovered when no one was watching and the scarf of ribbons stretching the length of more than three football fields. I remember my family of three, holding hands on the way up the ramp to the library. These bits of growth and rings of support might not be loud or right on the surface, but that’s not the same thing as nothing. If we only cared about the bottom-line defeats or sweeping successes of the big picture, we’d never plant flowers at all.

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Introduction - Pandemic Preparedness | Lessons From COVID-19

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The work ahead—home

On December 31, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) contacted China about media reports of a cluster of viral pneumonias in Wuhan, later attributed to a coronavirus, now named SARS-CoV-2 . By January 30, 2020, scarcely a month later, WHO declared the virus to be a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC)—the highest alarm the organization can sound. Thirty days more and the pandemic was well underway; the coronavirus had spread to more than seventy countries and territories on six continents, and there were roughly ninety thousand confirmed cases worldwide of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over and could yet evolve in unanticipated ways, but one of its most important lessons is already clear: preparation and early execution are essential in detecting, containing, and rapidly responding to and mitigating the spread of potentially dangerous emerging infectious diseases. The ability to marshal early action depends on nations and global institutions being prepared for the worst-case scenario of a severe pandemic and ready to execute on that preparedness The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over and could yet evolve in unanticipated ways, but one of its most important lessons is already clear: preparation and early execution are essential in detecting, containing, and rapidly responding to and mitigating the spread of potentially dangerous emerging infectious diseases. The ability to marshal early action depends on nations and global institutions being prepared for the worst-case scenario of a severe pandemic and ready to execute on that preparedness before that worst-case outcome is certain.

The rapid spread of the coronavirus and its devastating death toll and economic harm have revealed a failure of global and U.S. domestic preparedness and implementation, a lack of cooperation and coordination across nations, a breakdown of compliance with established norms and international agreements, and a patchwork of partial and mishandled responses. This pandemic has demonstrated the difficulty of responding effectively to emerging outbreaks in a context of growing geopolitical rivalry abroad and intense political partisanship at home.

Pandemic preparedness is a global public good. Infectious disease threats know no borders, and dangerous pathogens that circulate unabated anywhere are a risk everywhere. As the pandemic continues to unfold across the United States and world, the consequences of inadequate preparation and implementation are abundantly clear. Despite decades of various commissions highlighting the threat of global pandemics and international planning for their inevitability, neither the United States nor the broader international system were ready to execute those plans and respond to a severe pandemic. The result is the worst global catastrophe since World War II.

The lessons of this pandemic could go unheeded once life returns to a semblance of normalcy and COVID-19 ceases to menace nations around the globe. The United States and the world risk repeating many of the same mistakes that exacerbated this crisis, most prominently the failure to prioritize global health security, to invest in the essential domestic and international institutions and infrastructure required to achieve it, and to act quickly in executing a coherent response at both the national and the global level.

The goal of this report is to curtail that possibility by identifying what went wrong in the early national and international responses to the coronavirus pandemic and by providing a road map for the United States and the multilateral system to better prepare and execute in future waves of the current pandemic and when the next pandemic threat inevitably emerges. This report endeavors to preempt the next global health challenge before it becomes a disaster.

A Rapid Spread, a Grim Toll, and an Economic Disaster

On January 23, 2020, China’s government began to undertake drastic measures against the coronavirus, imposing a lockdown on Wuhan, a city of ten million people, aggressively testing, and forcibly rounding up potential carriers in makeshift quarantine centers. 1 In the subsequent days and weeks, the Chinese government extended containment to most of the country, sealing off cities and villages and mobilizing tens of thousands of health workers to contain and treat the disease. By the time those interventions began, however, the disease had already spread well beyond the country’s borders.

SARS-CoV-2 is a highly transmissible emerging infectious disease for which no highly effective treatments or vaccines currently exist and against which people have no preexisting immunity. Some nations have been successful so far in containing its spread through public health measures such as testing, contact tracing, and isolation of confirmed and suspected cases. Those nations have managed to keep the number of cases and deaths within their territories low.

More than one hundred countries implemented either a full or a partial shutdown in an effort to contain the spread of the virus and reduce pressure on their health systems. Although these measures to enforce physical distancing slowed the pace of infection, the societal and economic consequences in many nations have been grim. The supply chain for personal protective equipment (PPE), testing kits, and medical equipment such as oxygen treatment equipment and ventilators remains under immense pressure to meet global demand.

If international cooperation in response to COVID-19 has been occurring at the top levels of government, evidence of it has been scant, though technical areas such as data sharing have witnessed some notable successes. Countries have mostly gone their own ways, closing borders and often hoarding medical equipment. More than a dozen nations are competing in a biotechnology arms race to find a vaccine. A proposed international arrangement to ensure timely equitable access to the products of that biomedical innovation has yet to attract the necessary support from many vaccine-manufacturing nations, and many governments are now racing to cut deals with pharmaceutical firms and secure their own supplies.

As of August 31, 2020, the pandemic had infected at least twenty-five million people worldwide and killed at least 850,000 (both likely gross undercounts), including at least six million reported cases and 183,000 deaths in the United States. Meanwhile, the world economy had collapsed into a slump rivaling or surpassing the Great Depression, with unemployment rates averaging 8.4 percent in high-income economies. In the second quarter of 2020, the U.S gross domestic product (GDP) fell 9.5 percent, the largest quarterly decline in the nation’s history. 2

Already in May 2020, the Asia Development Bank estimated that the pandemic would cost the world $5.8 to 8.8 trillion, reducing global GDP in 2020 by 6.4 to 9.7 percent. The ultimate financial cost could be far higher. 3

The United States is among the countries most affected by the coronavirus, with about 24 percent of global cases (as of August 31) but just 4 percent of the world’s population. While many countries in Europe and Asia succeeded in driving down the rate of transmission in spring 2020, the United States experienced new spikes in infections in the summer because the absence of a national strategy left it to individual U.S. states to go their own way on reopening their economies. In the hardest-hit areas, U.S. hospitals with limited spare beds and intensive care unit capacity have struggled to accommodate the surge in COVID-19 patients. Resource-starved local and state public health departments have been unable to keep up with the staggering demand for case identification, contract tracing, and isolation required to contain the coronavirus’s spread.

A Failure to Heed Warnings

Institute of Medicine, Microbial Threats to Health (1992)
National Intelligence Estimate, The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications ...

This failing was not for any lack of warning of the dangers of pandemics. Indeed, many had sounded the alarm over the years. For nearly three decades, countless epidemiologists, public health specialists, intelligence community professionals, national security officials, and think tank experts have underscored the inevitability of a global pandemic of an emerging infectious disease. Starting with the Bill Clinton administration, successive administrations, including the current one, have included pandemic preparedness and response in their national security strategies. The U.S. government, foreign counterparts, and international agencies commissioned multiple scenarios and tabletop exercises that anticipated with uncanny accuracy the trajectory that a major outbreak could take, the complex national and global challenges it would create, and the glaring gaps and limitations in national and international capacity it would reveal.

The global health security community was almost uniformly in agreement that the most significant natural threat to population health and global security would be a respiratory virus—either a novel strain of influenza or a coronavirus that jumped from animals to humans. 4 Yet, for all this foresight and planning, national and international institutions alike have failed to rise to the occasion.

National Intelligence Estimate, The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the United States (2000)
Launch of the U.S. Global Health Security Initiative (2001)
Institute of Medicine, Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection, and Response (2003)
Revision of the International Health Regulations (2005)
World Health Organization, Global Influenza Preparedness Plan (2005)
Homeland Security Council, National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza (2005)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Health Security Strategy of the United States of America (2009)
U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Worldwide Threat Assessments (2009–2019)
World Health Organization, Report of Review Committee on the Functioning of the International Health Regulations (2005) in Relation to Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 (2011)
Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act of 2013
Launch of the Global Health Security Agenda (2014)
Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense (now Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense) (2015)
National Security Strategy (2017)
National Biodefense Strategy (2018)
Crimson Contagion Simulation (2019)
Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, A Work at Risk: Annual Report on Global Preparedness for Health Emergencies (2019)
CSIS Commission, Ending the Cycle of Crisis and Complacency in U.S. Global Health Security (2019)
U.S. National Health Security Strategy, 2019–2022 (2019)
Global Health Security Index (2019)

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“Now is the time for unity”

About the author, antónio guterres.

António Guterres is the ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations, who took office on 1st January 2017.

The Covid-19 pandemic is one of the most dangerous challenges this world has faced in our lifetime. It is above all a human crisis with severe health and socio-economic consequences.

The World Health Organization, with thousands of its staff, is on the front lines, supporting Member States and their societies, especially the most vulnerable among them, with guidance, training, equipment and concrete life-saving services as they fight the virus.

The World Health Organization must be supported, as it is absolutely critical to the world’s efforts to win the war against Covid-19.

I witnessed first-hand the courage and determination of WHO staff when I visited the Democratic Republic of the Congo last year, where WHO staff are working in precarious conditions and very dangerous remote locations as they fight the deadly Ebola virus. It has been a remarkable success for WHO that no new cases of Ebola have been registered in months.

It is my belief that the World Health Organization must be supported, as it is absolutely critical to the world’s efforts to win the war against Covid-19.

This virus is unprecedented in our lifetime and requires an unprecedented response. Obviously, in such conditions, it is possible that the same facts have had different readings by different entities. Once we have finally turned the page on this epidemic, there must be a time to look back fully to understand how such a disease emerged and spread its devastation so quickly across the globe, and how all those involved reacted to the crisis. The lessons learned will be essential to effectively address similar challenges, as they may arise in the future.

But now is not that time. Now is the time for unity, for the international community to work together in solidarity to stop this virus and its shattering consequences.

S7-Episode 2: Bringing Health to the World

“You see, we're not doing this work to make ourselves feel better. That sort of conventional notion of what a do-gooder is. We're doing this work because we are totally convinced that it's not necessary in today's wealthy world for so many people to be experiencing discomfort, for so many people to be experiencing hardship, for so many people to have their lives and their livelihoods imperiled.”

Dr. David Nabarro has dedicated his life to global health. After a long career that’s taken him from the horrors of war torn Iraq, to the devastating aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami, he is still spurred to action by the tremendous inequalities in global access to medical care.

“The thing that keeps me awake most at night is the rampant inequities in our world…We see an awful lot of needless suffering.”

:: David Nabarro interviewed by Melissa Fleming

Ballet Manguinhos resumes performing after a COVID-19 hiatus with “Woman: Power and Resistance”. Photo courtesy Ana Silva/Ballet Manguinhos

Brazilian ballet pirouettes during pandemic

Ballet Manguinhos, named for its favela in Rio de Janeiro, returns to the stage after a long absence during the COVID-19 pandemic. It counts 250 children and teenagers from the favela as its performers. The ballet group provides social support in a community where poverty, hunger and teen pregnancy are constant issues.

Nazira Inoyatova is a radio host and the creative/programme director at Avtoradio FM 102.0 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Photo courtesy Azamat Abbasov

Radio journalist gives the facts on COVID-19 in Uzbekistan

The pandemic has put many people to the test, and journalists are no exception. Coronavirus has waged war not only against people's lives and well-being but has also spawned countless hoaxes and scientific falsehoods.

The Pandemic Accord Explained: What Countries are Doing to Protect Against Future Global Health Emergencies

By Nico D’Auterive on April 15, 2024

Workers from the Samoa Ministry of Health prepare cold boxes for measles vaccination teams at Tupua Tamasese Meaole Hospital in Apia. Photo: Allan Stephen/Infinity Images / UNICEF

Experts agree that a lot can be done to prevent future pandemics, mitigate their severity, and avoid repeating mistakes made during the response to COVID-19. Countries have been negotiating the terms of a pandemic accord to create a blueprint to prevent, prepare for, and improve response to future global health threats. It is a crucial step in securing the health and well-being of people everywhere.

What is the pandemic accord, and why do we need it?

Although the emergency phase of the COVID-19 pandemic has passed, we cannot forget the trauma it inflicted on all parts of society. It deepened economic inequality , sparked historic unemployment, spawned mental health crises , and exacerbated chronic health conditions for billions. If we do not learn from the deadly, costly mistakes made during the COVID-19 response, the world could be doomed to repeat them.

The COVID-19 pandemic proved, once and for all, that no one is safe until everyone is safe. A health crisis somewhere can very quickly become a health crisis everywhere. The COVID-19 pandemic also showed us the weaknesses in the international system that coordinates the world’s response to pandemic threats. Numerous expert review panels have reached the same conclusion: More must be done to reduce the likelihood and impact of future pandemics.

With this goal in mind, governments of the world, backed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and multilateral partners, have launched a range of initiatives to boost pandemic preparedness globally. These solutions include fixing medical equipment supply chains, increasing financing for preparedness, and investing in local capacities so low- and middle-income countries can address their medical needs with more autonomy.

Furthermore, to solidify collaboration and coordination at the highest levels of government, all of WHO’s 194 Member States resolved in December 2021 to develop an international agreement, referred to as a pandemic accord (and sometimes called a pandemic treaty), which will define rules and norms for how countries can better prevent pandemics from happening and respond to future health emergencies in order to protect the safety and well-being of people everywhere.

Empty shops on Malioboro Street in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, as consumer spending decreased in both urban and rural areas during the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo: Adi Purnatama

What could the pandemic accord accomplish?

International agreements serve an important role in holding countries accountable and solving global problems that transcend borders. For example, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer , the first treaty in the history of the UN to achieve universal ratification, has succeeded in eliminating around 99% of ozone-depleting substances.

If widely adopted by countries, the pandemic accord has the potential to stop pandemics before they start and to facilitate a faster, more effective response — saving lives and protecting against losses to the global economy.

Countries are negotiating the pandemic accord based on the principles of solidarity, equity, science and evidence, respect for human rights, and protection of national sovereignty over all health decision-making.

While still under negotiation, the final accord is expected to:

Improve transparency and early warning of potentially dangerous outbreaks.
Ensure health workers have the tools and protection they need.
Facilitate faster development and deployment of new vaccines and medicines worldwide.
Improve laboratory and surveillance capabilities around the world.
Enable a faster, better, and more cooperative response to the next health crisis.
Respect and protect human rights.

How soon will the pandemic accord be finalized?

Looking to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to protect future generations from a repeat of the difficulty and loss the world suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic, countries set an ambitious timeline to complete the drafting and negotiation of the pandemic accord in just three years. Currently, negotiations are set to culminate in May in time for consideration of a Member-State-drafted proposal at the 77th World Health Assembly, which starts May 27, 2024.

Maryann Turnsek (center), microbiologist for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), works with staff at the molecular biology department of the National Public Health Laboratory of Haiti in Port-au-Prince. After more than three years with no cases of cholera reported in Haiti, the Ministry of Health confirmed two positive cases in October 2022, prompting health authorities to declare an outbreak. Photo: Georges Harry Rouzier / US CDC / UNICEF

Who decides what is in the pandemic accord?

The pandemic accord is being determined by governmental leaders from 194 countries through an ongoing negotiation process, facilitated by WHO. Once the final agreement is decided, each country will choose whether to be a party to it. Even though this process is being led by governments, there have been many opportunities for the wider public to lend their voice. To date, thousands of organizations and individuals have provided input through diverse platforms, including public hearings, online surveys, email submissions, and statements during meetings.

How would the pandemic accord change the way countries manage pandemic threats?

The pandemic accord is designed to strengthen collaboration and coordination across sectors, and ensure all people—including youth, healthcare professionals, community members, patients, and other members of society—are protected.

If agreed upon, the accord would create incentives and opportunities for greater transparency and collaboration among countries in areas that are key to a global response to pandemic threats. It would also establish means to encourage governments to comply, such as procedures for reporting and accountability.

What it would not do is hand over control of domestic public health policies to WHO or any other international body. As with other international agreements, the pandemic accord would not affect countries’ sovereignty. How each country goes about implementing the agreement would depend on its own domestic laws and policies.

How can I get involved?

First, it is important to educate yourself on the pandemic accord.

Take a moment to learn more about the pandemic accord negotiation process and explore some of the common myths and key facts about the accord.

Take it a step further and sign this petition from Global Citizen, calling on global leaders to finish what they have started by committing to an ambitious agreement to protect everyone from future pandemics.

This blog post was originally published on May 19, 2023.

Get Involved

Call on world leaders to support the pandemic accord and ensure that a pandemic like COVID-19 never happens again.

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Open access
Published: 07 April 2020

Fighting against the common enemy of COVID-19: a practice of building a community with a shared future for mankind

Xu Qian 1 ,
Ran Ren 2 ,
Youfa Wang 3 ,
Yan Guo 4 ,
Jing Fang 5 ,
Zhong-Dao Wu 6 ,
Pei-Long Liu 4 ,
Tie-Ru Han 7 &

Members of Steering Committee, Society of Global Health, Chinese Preventive Medicine Association

Infectious Diseases of Poverty volume 9 , Article number: 34 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused more than 80 813 confirmed cases in all provinces of China, and 21 110 cases reported in 93 countries of six continents as of 7 March 2020 since middle December 2019. Due to biological nature of the novel coronavirus, named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) with faster spreading and unknown transmission pattern, it makes us in a difficulty position to contain the disease transmission globally. To date, we have found it is one of the greatest challenges to human beings in fighting against COVID-19 in the history, because SARS-CoV-2 is different from SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV in terms of biological features and transmissibility, and also found the containment strategies including the non-pharmaceutical public health measures implemented in China are effective and successful. In order to prevent a potential pandemic-level outbreak of COVID-19, we, as a community of shared future for mankind, recommend for all international leaders to support preparedness in low and middle income countries especially, take strong global interventions by using old approaches or new tools, mobilize global resources to equip hospital facilities and supplies to protect noisome infections and to provide personal protective tools such as facemask to general population, and quickly initiate research projects on drug and vaccine development. We also recommend for the international community to develop better coordination, cooperation, and strong solidarity in the joint efforts of fighting against COVID-19 spreading recommended by the joint mission report of the WHO-China experts, against violating the International Health Regulation (WHO, 2005), and against stigmatization, in order to eventually win the battle against our common enemy — COVID-19.

A sudden outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus has happened since December 2019 in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, a central city in the People’s Republic of China, where transportation is enormously convenient to connecting all other places in China and overseas [ 1 , 2 ]. As of 7 March, 2020, a total of 80 813 confirmed cases reported in all provinces of China, and 21 110 cases reported in 93 countries/territories/areas of six continents [ 3 ]. In particular, some cases have been confirmed in African countries, such as Algeria, Egypt, and Nigeria [ 3 ]. This is the biggest infectious disease outbreak in China ever since 1949, the year of founding the People’s Republic of China. It is the biggest battle since the disease is spreading so fast with high prevalence, and the prevention of the transmission has involved all people in the country [ 4 ]. While at global level, the strategy and coordinating mechanism to control COVID-19 need to be set down as soon as possible [ 5 ], in particular, three questions need to be addressed as (i) how to take the emergency response actions effectively in different countries? (ii) how to mobilize resources quickly with strategic ways? and (iii) how to encourage people proactively and orderly to participate in this battle against COVID-19 from different regions of the world?

Lessons from the battle against COVID-19 in China

In order to address three aforementioned questions, the lessons from China in the battle against COVID-19 need to be understood clearly in the following three aspects:

Traditional epidemiological approaches effectively control the transmission

Professionally speaking, three steps are necessary to taken once an infectious disease outbreaks in certain regions, including controlling infectious sources, blocking the transmission routes, and protecting the susceptive population [ 6 ]. While, as COVID-19 spreading so fast and people’s travelling so frequent during the Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) season, it cannot control effectively if only taking the normal or general countermeasures [ 7 ]. Therefore, the Chinese government has quickly taken actions to contain its transmission inside China, including detecting the disease early, diagnosis and reporting early, isolating and treatment of cases early, tracing all possible contacts, persuading people to stay at home, and promoting social distancing measures commensurate with the risk, etc., based on the current knowledge about epidemiological features and transmission patterns of COVID-19.

Response strategies coping with local conditions

In dealing with the outbreak, China has been adopting the way of tailoring interventions into local settings, from quickly finding each infected person, tracing close contacts and placing them under quarantine, to promoting basic hygiene measures to the public, such as frequent hand washing, cancelling public gathering, closing schools, extending the Spring Festival holiday, delaying return to work, and to the most severe measure of city lockdown of Wuhan [ 8 , 9 ]. By adapting response strategies to the local context, it may avoid blockading the city when it is not needed, and also prevent from a major outbreak without taking any action.

Mobilizing resources quickly to support the emergency responses

Under the strong leadership of the Central Government of China, the mobilization for the emergency responses has been effectively promoted in following ways. Firstly, a Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council has established involving 32 Ministries, with subgroups on control of outbreak, medical rescue, scientific research, information and communication, international cooperation, logistics, and frontline coordination [ 10 ]. This multi-sectoral cooperation mechanism at high level is to ensure the facilities and supplies have been well arranged to support the emergency responses in all provinces, with focus on the Hubei Province, for example, more than 10 mobile hospitals and two big hospitals with each one having the capacity of holding more than 1000 beds have been built within 10 days. Secondly, more than 40 000 medical professionals from other provinces or military institutions have been dispatched to Hubei Province to implement emergency responses, including medical care and treatment, epidemiological investigations, environmental sterilization for disinfection, and data and information management to support the policy making.

Encouraging people proactively and orderly participate in this battle against COVID-19

It is important to protect the community from exposure to the infection, all residents in the potential risk areas were encouraged to stay at home, which is an effective way to block the transmission routes. Local community health workers and volunteers, after the specific training, proactively participate in screening the suspicious infections, and help in implementing proper quarantine measures by providing support services, such as driving patients to the mobile hospitals [ 8 ]. All those activities logistically managed at the community level.

At the same time, from medical care side, the medical doctors and nurses worked very hard in the hospitals, to screen the suspected cases, provide medical care for the confirmed cases, and taking emergency response to rescue severe patients to reduce the fatality. While epidemiologists working in centers for disease control and preventions provided the statistical results for the dissemination of epidemiological data correctly, and provide the well-prepared datasets for the decision makers for coordination of necessary resources, and many health workers investigate the suspected contactors for quick medical quarantine of the suspected cases at the community level.

Preventing the pandemic of COVID-19

With the conceptualization on building a community with a shared future for mankind proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 [ 11 ], Chinese people have taken following actions to prevent the pandemic of the diseases: (i) sharing the sequences of SARS-Cov-2 virus with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other countries which are important information for other countries to prepare the tests for screening and diagnosis, (ii) all epidemiological data with clinical treatment in China has been published in the international journals, (iii) prevent spreading of the disease by traveling ban in Wuhan, (iv) medical quarantine has been performed for all suspected contactors, (v) body temperature measuring facilities were equipped in all railway stations and airports, etc. In order to take very strict contain measures for COVID-19 outbreak tailored to local settings, the travelling ban was executed in Wuhan, and encouraging no gathering and less travelling in other cities out of Hubei Province. Those actions were implemented by strong coordinating of the Chinese government in cooperation with local residents. To date, the epidemiological data has showed more than thousands of people have been protected from the infections, and increasing pattern of the transmission has been suppressed significantly in China [ 12 ].

Challenges in fighting against COVID-19

The fighting against COVID-19 has been lasting almost two months, and the time left for people outside of China to prepare the countermeasures has been narrowed quickly. To date, we have found it is one of the greatest challenges to human beings in fighting against COVID-19 in the history, since the pathogen of SARS-CoV-2 is a new coronavirus, differed from either SARS-CoV or MERS-CoV in terms of biological characteristics and transmissibility [ 13 ].

Technically, we have little knowledge on the pathogen and pathogenesis, without specific effectively drugs or vaccine against the virus infection, which cause difficulties in rescuing the severe cases which account for about 20% of the infections. The transmission routes are not clear enough, although we currently understand that the respiratory transmission from human to human is the major transmission route, but other ways for transmission, such as gastrointenstinal transmission or aerosol propagation, is not so clear.

Administratively, implementing the locked down measures in such a big city with over 15 millions of people is not an easy task, with a lot of preparing works from different dimensions of municipal logistic management, to support the emergency response actions. Thus, the multi-administrative systems need to be coordinated collectively, guiding from the central government, with more resources gathering from various places all over the country.

Globally, the information sharing is so important, including patients’ information sharing to trace the suspected cases to protect more people as quickly as possible, genome sequences information sharing to prepare the diagnostics as quickly as possible, and treatment schemes sharing to rescue more severe cases. The WHO declared the Public Health Emergency of International Concern based on the International Health Regulation (2005) in the early time of the outbreak of COVID-19, as it is an extraordinary event to constitute a public health risk to the states through the international spread of disease, and to potentially require a coordinate international response [ 14 ]. All actions to strengthen surveillance and response systems on infectious diseases need to put emphasis on resources limited countries, such as Southeast Asia and African countries [ 15 ].

Recommendations

With understanding more about the nature of COVID-19, it is necessary to understand clearly the current challenges against COVID-19 become increasing, not only to China but also to the world. In order to take quick actions to early prepare the battle against COVID-19 and better allocate enough health resources from the world, the recommendations are as follows:

Coordinating interventions and resources mobilization globally

Preparedness in low and middle income countries.

WHO has identified 13 African countries at the top-risk affected by COVID-19 but with limited resources against COVID-19, including Algeria, Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. These countries have direct links or greater numbers of people travelling to/from China [ 15 ]. The preparing works on response to the imported cases need initiated as soon as possible with the assistance of WHO as well as developed world. The major preparing works are to prepare enough facilities for use in hospitals, such as test kits, facemasks, and personal protective equipment (PPE), to prepare the quarantine measures in each gate of the traveling venues, and to prepare information communication, etc. The emergency response mechanism on multi-sectoral cooperation needs to be established once the first case has been detected.

Intervention and coordination globally

The fast spreading of COVID-19 to more than 90 countries/territories, with some cluster cases occurred in a few countries, demonstrated that this new disease has higher transmissibility compared with SARS and MERS. The nature of high transmissibility for COVID-19 requires us to (i) prepare the battle globally as soon as possible, by taking the advantage of the time window opened by Chinese battle against COVID-19, (ii) invest more weapons or tools against the diseases by better global coordination, and (iii) take proper quarantine measures globally [ 16 ]. We are able to win the battle only if our actions are coordinated better at a global level.

Resources mobilization globally

One of lessons learnt from the battle in Wuhan is the speed of resources gathering against COVID-19 outbreak could not catch up the speed of the coronavirus spreading in early stage of the outbreak, and it is in need of support or assistances from outside of epicenter, including medical doctors, nurses, and facilities of PPE used in hospitals, and facemasks for residents. The strong support from outside of epicenter quickly to ensure all infectious sources either controlled through quarantine measures or treated in the specialized hospitals. Therefore, for those countries with weak health system, it is so urgent to get help from other parts of the world. WHO needs to mobilize its certified global emergency medical teams to get ready to be dispatched to other countries where health workers are in short supply while an outbreak occurs.

Jointly fighting against common enemy ─ COVID-19

As said by WHO Director-General in the news press on Public Health Emergency of International Concern declaration that “this declaration is not a vote of no confidence in China, our greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems.” Therefore, international community needs to work together to prepare for the containment of COVID-19 transmission and spreading in other countries, under the scenario that more countries may be affected by the new coronavirus [ 17 ]. These containment works have to quickly take readiness on active surveillance, early detection, isolation and case management, contact tracing and prevention of onward spread of COVID-19.

Therefore, at this stage, with more countries having confirmed more and more COVID-19 cases, all countries need work together on the following global actions on:

fighting against COVID-19 spreading, including sharing the information of the disease transmission and epidemiological knowledge, sharing the experiences on case management and treatment approaches both for severe cases or light symptoms, and sharing new technologies or strategies to contain the transmission;

fighting against violating International Health Regulation, by following the WHO’s authoritative advices which called on all countries to implement decisions that are evidence-based and convincing. We need to improve our quarantine measures to replace the disconnection of international traveling and trade restrictions, with an assistance of the improved active surveillance systems and AI-based technology to trace the contactors;

fighting against stigmatization, since the stigmatization is always present when the disease outbreak and people facing the sudden attack of this kind of epidemic. These phenomena on stigmatization may be at a scale of epicenter areas, or may be at a country and regional scale, and even at global scale. Thus, we need fight with the real and common enemy which is the new coronavirus, rather than the infected people. The international community needs the solidarity and sympathy to start the battle against the common enemy – the new coronavirus, as well as against stigmatization at the same time.

Global cooperation in priority settings

By considering COVID-19 is spreading so fast which causes difficulties in containing the disease, we, as a community of shared future for mankind, need better coordination in global cooperation and further improvement in the multi-sectoral cooperation in order to quickly take response and prevent from the pandemic [ 18 ]. In addition, we also need better coherence of our resources with more international partners, at least, we can quickly improve our priority settings in sharing information and data, on research priority settings, on surveillance and response to outbreaks at a global level.

Cooperation on sharing information and data

In order to quickly share the information and datasets for countermeasures, the actions on fast and open reporting of outbreak data and sharing of virus samples, genetic information, and research results are encouraged for all international communities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as governmental institutions around the world. Through regional and country office of WHO, more preventive information against COVID-19 can be disseminated to the public in the vulnerable countries.

Coordination on surveillance and response

With understanding the importance of human health in the planet, multi-sectoral and multi-lateral cooperation against COVID-19 pandemic are recommended at global level. Particularly, the scientific communities, governments and NGOs in different fields, such as public health, agriculture, ecology, epidemiology, governance planning, science, and many others need to collaboratively prevent future outbreaks, with better coordination. The secretary of the United Nations need take the responsibility to coordinate the actions on protecting the planetary health by systematic approaches, such as EcoHealth, One Health, Planetary Health and Urban Health, and making sure public resources are worthwhile investing in strengthening surveillance and response systems for preventing future outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases.

Coherence on research priority settings

We urgently encourage all governments and international foundation to support short-term and emergency response-related research projects to improve our understanding of the causes, risks, infectiousness, and threats of a pandemic [ 19 ]. Health institutions at international level should be encouraged to organize the research priority settings on preventing the pandemic or averting the emergence of the disease. International conservation organizations start to take investigations on types of wildlife-pathogens interactions affecting human health. International environmental agencies can initiate researches on unsustainable transformations of natural environments and ecosystems that provide life-supporting services for our health.

Conclusions

To summarize, COVID-19 is a new disease that has caused great impacts to the people’s daily life extraordinarily. We, as a community of shared future for mankind, need to take collectively and quickly strong emergency responses as a battle against our common enemy, the new coronavirus, not only in China but also in the world. All partners of international community and country leaders are encouraged to proactively take strategic actions as soon as possible to fight the COVID-19 together. Hard times will end finally, and we will meet each other in the blooming spring soon.

Availability of data and materials

All data supporting the findings of this study are included in the article.

Abbreviations

Coronavirus disease 2019

Novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus

Non-governmental organizations

World Health Organization

Personal protective equipment

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QX, RR, WYF, GY, FJ, WZD, LPL, and HTR conceived the paper. QX, RR, WYF, and LPL performed the literature search, prepared the figures, and interpreted the data. QX wrote the first version of the manuscript. QX, RR, WYF, GY, and LPL assisted in the restructuring and revision of the manuscript. All authors read, contributed to, and approved the final version.

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Qian, X., Ren, R., Wang, Y. et al. Fighting against the common enemy of COVID-19: a practice of building a community with a shared future for mankind. Infect Dis Poverty 9 , 34 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40249-020-00650-1

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Community participation in the fight against COVID-19: between utilitarianism and social justice

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1 Instituto Multidisciplinar em Saúde, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Vitória da Conquista, Brazil.
PMID: 32756764
DOI: 10.1590/0102-311x00151620

This essay aims to discuss the foundations and possibilities for community participation in the fight against COVID-19. The first part discusses the meanings of community, defined according to geographic, aggregate-interest, or epidemiological criteria. In the context of the pandemic, none of the three perspectives can be considered alone. The essay discusses the need to link different approaches in order to produce socially contextualized health interventions. Next, the authors present the four main models in the international literature that provide the basis for community participation practices in various countries. The analysis of community participation in the context of COVID-19 uses conceptual systematization based on two meta-narratives: utilitarian and social justice. The utilitarian perspective involves measures to restrict social contact. Participation is thus understood as collaboration in implementing measures that contribute to controlling the problem. The social justice perspective especially addresses the social determinants of health and reduction in social inequalities. The approach focuses on community empowerment and the search for solutions to the social and economic problems that determine the spread of COVID-19 and other diseases. The essay concludes on the peculiarities and importance of each approach. Community participation in the fight against COVID-19 should consider the emergency contexts to strengthen the health system and the defense of the social protection system and democracy.

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Beyond the pandemic: The truth of life after COVID-19

This study focused on how to deal with the psychological trauma from the perspective of a doctor on the front line of the fight against COVID-19. As the pandemic continues to ravage our world, post-pandemic psychological counseling urgently needs to be addressed. Based on the experience of fighting the epidemic, this study discusses the psychological changes since the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. Taking a 19-year-old with breast cancer as an example, this study considered how to find spiritual comfort, and examined how to find meaning in today's complicated world and lives, as well as turning the crisis into an opportunity for spiritual renewal and adding meaning to our lives. It is hoped that this study will inspire readers to overcome the difficulties of the epidemic, find strength and see it as a life-changing opportunity.

Introduction

The Covid-19 pandemic is in its third year. China has been battling the outbreak since early 2020. 1 To date, we are still fighting SARS-Cov-2 and the Omicron variants on multiple fronts. 2 The dramatic changes brought about by COVID-19 have affected every aspect of people's lives. Some of the measures to control the epidemic, including isolation, access restrictions and economic shutdowns, radically changed psychosocial behavior, and induced psychological trauma, especially China's strict prevention and control policies have affected large numbers of people. Nevertheless, there is a lack of timely research on post-pandemic trauma and psychological counseling. 3 Here, I would like to share some thoughts about the trauma under the epidemic from the viewpoint of an infectious disease specialist. It is hoped this will inspire readers and help them overcome psychological trauma and bring a new perspective on life in the post-pandemic era.

Trauma haunts many people and psychological counseling is urgent

Before COVID-19, like everyone else around me, I had made plans, looked forward to the future, and expected things to go according to my wishes. We live so uneventfully for so long that we become desensitized to major events. Even in the hospital, faced with life, death, and severe diseases, we do things according to procedure and remain unperturbed. However, when COVID-19 hit, things changed.

In the early days of fighting COVID-19, the knowledge of the Novel Coronavirus was limited. We risked our lives in the fight against an unknown enemy. From public officials to medical staff, even ordinary Chinese citizens, people paid a high price for the first victory against COVID-19. In the most difficult times, I held multiple roles: a doctor in a fever clinic, a comforter of anxious patients, a collector of throat swabs for SARS-Cov-2 tests, and a member of staff collating patients’ data. Initially, I was lost, terrified, overwhelmed, and had never felt so close to death. I lived alone, apart from my family. What I could do was immerse myself in various roles, held on through psychological trauma, dedicated to the fight against the epidemic, and looked forward to overcoming it as soon as possible. People around me, including colleagues, friends, were also suffering from trauma; some even struggled with feelings of powerlessness and desperation. We pulled through the hard times and made hard-won progress.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 became a global pandemic. 4 , 5 At this moment, we are still experiencing waves of the Omicron variants. I often wonder, what does COVID-19 bring after we have suffered so much? How do we define ourselves in a medical career under such conditions? It could be said without exaggeration that human destiny and behavior have been forced to undergo momentous changes, including lives, work, study, and entertainment, among others. Many people experienced psychological distress, even to the brink of collapse. Personally, I have experienced a range of emotions and situations. Facing life, death, illness, science, religion, mission, work, family, solitude, incomprehension from others, pressure, and so on, which are intertwined as diversely as cytokine signaling pathways.

How do we respond to these huge changes? What is the most essential change that COVID-19 has brought? What are the key factors in the chaos and how do we make the right choices? We may complain that the epidemic and the competitive society have caused a seismic shift in our day to day lives, increased social inequities and adversities; however, complaining leads nowhere. The real difficulty is how to embrace life according to inner ideas and think independently. I cannot help but think, the most important thing I can do under the pandemic is to find things that touch our soul truly live our lives.

Turning crisis into opportunity

Whenever I think about things in life that touch our souls, I miss a friend named Xiao Yue, who was once one of my patients. At that time, I was a medical intern and studied thoracic surgery. Xiao Yue was a 19-year-old girl with advanced breast cancer. She had no choice but to have one breast removed, leaving thick stitches on her chest. She said to me: “I want to be a doctor in the future, specializing in breast reconstruction, so that many patients like me can get their lost breasts back. I hope to be able to stand out with my proud chest.”

Xiao Yue was gone a few years later, leaving no legacy. However, her words had a lasting impact on my life. As I look back, how should I use my friend's words to guide me in difficult situations like the pandemic? Do I “go with the flow”, or follow my mission, even in hard times? I do not want to be a mindless and insensitive man, but look forward to a colorful life, although there will be a lot of difficulties. How then do we find the truth about life? As a doctor, I will do everything I can to help patients, and guide them to understand the disease, life, and death. As a thinker, I would like to devote myself to the integration of medical science, my mission as a doctor, passion for the unknown, and real-life, give meaning to life, not only to the individual and families but also to devotion to society and medicine.

Reality and dreams, just like the double helix of DNA, are closely intertwined and create beautiful lives. Maybe this is where the truth of life is hidden. Life and death are nothing more than a dreamlike gathering of particles that constantly assemble and disintegrate. We should face reality and try to make the best of our lives and make them as fulfilling as possible.

Acknowledgment

I would like to express my deep gratitude to my wife, Yun Liu, for her continuous support. This work was supported by the research start-up fund of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University (B2117).

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Charlie Kirk

Gov. Tim Walz speaks May 5, 2020, during a press conference in Minneapolis about COVID-19 and other topics. (Minneapolis Star Tribune via AP)

Did Tim Walz discriminate against white people? Claim distorts COVID-19 treatment plan

If your time is short.

Minnesota’s health department had a centralized program from February 2021 to July 2022 to refer patients for monoclonal antibody treatments based on clinical need.

For about one month of the 16-month program, the increase of risk of poor COVID-19 outcomes for Black, Indigenous and other people of color because of disparate health impacts was considered a health factor in a scoring system that used prioritized treatment referrals.

Race was no longer a scoring factor during a weighted lottery period in early 2022, when monoclonal antibody supplies were lowest and some lower-risk patients were denied referrals.

Shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris tapped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her presidential running mate, he faced increased scrutiny over how he led his state during the coronavirus pandemic’s apex.

One claim is that a Minnesota health department program that sought to ensure equitable distribution of monoclonal antibody treatments discriminated against white people.

"During Covid, Tim Walz rationed access to monoclonal antibody treatments based on skin color. Being non-white gave a person more priority than having hypertension, and was equal in importance to having massive risk factors like diabetes or cardiovascular disease," conservative political activist Charlie Kirk wrote Aug. 6 on Threads . "How many people did Walz kill because he thought they were less deserving due to their race?"

We contacted a Kirk spokesperson for evidence supporting his claim but received no response.

We also found other social media posts making the same claim .

The notion that access to the treatments was rationed by race and that may have led to the deaths of white people is false and ignores key details about Minnesota’s policy, experts told PolitiFact.

The Minnesota Department of Health said the Food and Drug Administration acknowledged that race and ethnicity "may also place individual patients at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19." That risk may not be determined by underlying conditions alone, possibly because of underdiagnosis of other diseases in Black, Indigenous and people of color populations.

To account for that, Minnesota developed a scoring system that factored in race to determine who would be prioritized for the antibody treatments. This system was in effect for about one month of the program’s 16-month duration.

The state had abandoned the scoring system by the time a weighted lottery system was needed when monoclonal antibody treatment supplies were lowest.

A November 2023 case study showed that at least 79% of the people the program referred to get monoclonal antibody treatments were white. White people constitute 77% of the state’s 5.7 million-person population .

The Harris-Walz campaign defended Walz’s pandemic actions as governor.

"Americans haven't forgotten that at the height of the pandemic, states were forced to ration treatments for COVID-19 because Donald Trump failed to deliver the resources to keep our families safe and healthy," Sarafina Chitika, a campaign spokesperson, said in an email. "As Governor, Tim Walz made sure treatments for COVID were delivered to patients who needed them most in order to save as many lives as possible despite Trump's failures."

Monoclonal antibody treatments use laboratory-made proteins that mimic a person’s immune system to fight off viruses. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization as early as November 2020 for several of these products to treat COVID-19. These treatments, administered in outpatient settings, helped reduce the risk of COVID-19-related hospitalization and death.

Monoclonal antibody treatments were sometimes in short supply during pandemic surges. Minnesota in February 2021 launched the Minnesota Resource Allocation Platform, a program to equitably connect patients with the treatments based on clinical need. The program ran from Feb. 9, 2021, to July 1, 2022.

The goal, said J.P. Leider, a University of Minnesota associate public health professor who helped lead the project , was to have a centralized system to give any Minnesotan access to the treatments based on clinical data, rather than a first-come, first served policy that many states used.

The policy involved prioritizing access to the treatments. It first prioritized referrals for the treatment based on FDA criteria for identifying high-risk patients laid out in the agency’s emergency use authorizations, which changed over time. Besides multiple health conditions, the FDA said in May and July 2021 that race or ethnicity may place patients at "high risk for progression to severe COVID-19" partly because of other potentially undiagnosed health concerns.

Minnesota later designed a scoring system first used in December 2021 that assigned people points, on a scale of zero to 25, based on categories of clinical risk from COVID-19, The program used the Mayo Clinic’s Monoclonal Antibody Screening Score , but added categories for pregnant women and Black, Indigenous and people of color as risk factors.

The state’s Health Department said the score was adapted after studies showed pregnant women and Black people, Indigenous people and people of color "were independently associated with poor clinical outcomes from COVID-19 infection."

Minnesota’s scoring system awarded:

Four points: to pregnant women; patients who are immunocompromised.

Three points: to people with chronic kidney disease; patients 55 years and older with chronic respiratory disease.

Two points: to people ages 65 years or older; people with body mass indexes of 35 kg/m2 and higher; people with diabetes; cardiovascular disease in a patient 55 years and older; Black, Indigenous or people of color status.

One point: to patients 55 years and older with hypertension, which is also known as high blood pressure.

Race alone wouldn’t put people in the highest priority group unless they were older or had other risk factors.

Some critics and legal scholars questioned Minnesota’s approach at the time.

Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor who criticized Minnesota’s policy in a 2022 essay , told PolitiFact that considering race in rationing medical care "would generally be unconstitutional."

"I set aside unusual situations where race is directly medically relevant — for instance, if some medicine works well for East Asians but not for whites, or some such. That, as I understand it, was not at all relevant to COVID treatments."

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Minnesota on Jan. 12, 2022, removed race as a scoring factor for the rest of the program amid complaints about discrimination and threats of a lawsuit by America First Legal, a group started by Stephen Miller, once an adviser to former President Donald Trump. Objections to using race as a factor in treatment allocation were also raised in Utah and New York .

Scores for other health risks remained unchanged in Minnesota’s program, although pregnancy was also removed as a factor because pregnant people "are clinically prioritized, independent" of their score, the health department said.

The state, in its announcement, did not explain why Black, Indigenous or people of color status was removed as a scoring factor. The Minnesota Department of Health did not return PolitiFact’s request for comment.

Dan Wikler, a Harvard University ethics and population health professor, said pandemic-era points systems for weighing allocation of life-saving resources, such as vaccines and therapeutics, arose after debate among health professionals and usually came from institutions such as universities or the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Other institutions then adapted these systems, he said; this is what happened in Minnesota. The state’s scoring system was adapted from the Mayo Clinic’s system.

It’s "ludicrous" to attribute those health plans to Walz or any other governor, Wikler said.

"Very few would have had any idea of what was going on in these debates, and surely would have been unable to tell you what the guidelines for these institutions were," he said.

Wikler said the debates centered on balancing twin goals — using resources to do the most good and ensuring that everyone had a fair chance to benefit.

"There is no way to honor both of these goals fully. Among those contributing to the discussion of the ethics of these choices, people of good will often reached very different conclusions," Wikler said.

Minnesota’s health department cited the FDA’s guidance in 2021 emergency-use approvals for monoclonal antibody treatments that "in addition to certain underlying health conditions, race and ethnicity "may also place individual patients at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19."

That "acknowledgment means that race and ethnicity alone, apart from other underlying health conditions, may be considered in determining eligibility for (monoclonal antibodies)," the health department said in its "ethical framework" about allocation of the treatments.

"That was based on scientific evidence at the population health level that was showing us every single day that Black people and Latino people were experiencing worse symptoms and were more likely to be hospitalized and more likely to die from the COVID-19 virus," University of Minnesota health and racial equity professor Rachel Hardeman said.

Provisional age-adjusted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows that Black people; Hispanics; American Indian or Alaska Natives; and Native Hawaiians or Pacific Islanders all had higher COVID-19 death rates than whites. American Indians and Alaska Natives were about twice as likely to die from COVID-19, and Hispanic, Black, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders were about 1.5 times as likely to die.

Hardeman said those disparities were worse during the pandemic’s height.

"In Minnesota, for instance, in January of 2022 we saw that Black people, while just comprising about 6% of the population in Minnesota, were actually 11% of the COVID-19 hospitalizations for quite some time," Hardeman said. "Certainly those numbers fluctuated, but there was always consistently a gap based on race, which is why this decision was made."

Kirk’s claim that Minnesota rationed health care by skin color has elements of truth in that a scoring system awarded patients who were Black, Indigenous or people of color 2 points, the same as patients with diabetes or cardiovascular disease and more than a patient with hypertension.

But it ignores several facts and implies, with no evidence, that the scoring system led to deaths of white people.

"I don't have data that shows that (the program led to white people dying). I don't have reason to think that," Leider, the public health professor, said. "What I'll say about the state of Minnesota is that we set up a system where anybody could come in and get a referral. Didn't matter if they had a doctor who knew about this or not, and because of the demographics of our state that we are, especially in the older group, whiter, I think that our system demonstrably prevented hospitalizations and hopefully saved lives, compared to a lot of the other states that were just letting it be first come first serve."

Leider pointed to a 2022 study of Medicare patients that showed nationwide, people with no chronic diseases were five times likelier to receive monoclonal antibody treatments than people with six or more chronic conditions.

A 2022 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report also showed much lower use of the treatments among Black, Asian, Hispanic and other races compared with white patients.

Dr. Monica Peek, a University of Chicago professor for health justice of medicine, said some public health officials used race as a proxy for exposure to racism, which she said limits access to goods and services and increases exposure to risks and harms. Racialized minorities, she said, have increased risk for chronic diseases and were at an increased risk for COVID-19 exposure. Many front-line workers who had increased risk of contracting COVID-19, such as hospital and grocery store workers, were Black and brown, she said.

The attempts to "try to mitigate the exposure to racism when we're trying to allocate resources is really an attempt to mitigate the harm that racial and ethnic minorities have been exposed to," Peek said. "And so it's not trying to increase the harm for white people. It's trying to decrease the harm for Black and brown people."

States and cities used different strategies to equitably allocate resources fairly and ensure populations most at risk received resources first, using factors such as chronic diseases or age.

Minnesota’s weighted scoring system with race as a factor was in place from early December 2021 to early January 2022. It was used for less than a month of the 16 months the program operated.

We "did not use race/ethnicity during (the) lottery, when stuff was at its shortest," Leider said. It "was used for a small time before that, based on clinical guidance, that showed being BIPOC was associated with worse outcomes even after controlling for comorbidities, age, what have you. But that went away before (the) lottery was needed."

A case study Leider and other researchers published shows that 31,559 people received referrals through the program to get monoclonal antibody treatments to treat COVID-19 or for protection postexposure.

Of the 29,281 people who received it for treatment of the virus, at least 79% were white . About 11% declined to provide a race or ethnicity, and about 9% were people of color, including Black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian, Hispanic/Latino or other, the data shows.

Kirk claimed that in Minnesota, Walz rationed access to monoclonal antibody treatments for COVID-19 based on skin color, and that white people died because they were denied access.

For about a month during the pandemic, Minnesota did factor race into a scoring system to prioritize referrals for the treatments. A case study after the state’s program ended shows that at least 79% of patients who received referrals were white, in line with the racial composition of the state’s population.

People who were clinically eligible for the treatments weren’t denied access, but received referrals after higher-risk patients received theirs. By early 2022, when monoclonal antibody supplies were lowest and Minnesota used a weighted lottery system, race had been removed as a scoring factor.

We rate the claim Mostly False.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this fact-check.

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Our Sources

Charlie Kirk, Threads post , Aug. 6, 2024 ( archived )

University of Minnesota, New system connects patients with COVID-19 outpatient treatments , April 7, 2021

University of Minnesota, Minnesota connected over 31,000 patients to monoclonal antibody treatments during the COVID-19 pandemic , Dec. 11, 2023

Star Tribune, Minnesota removes race as factor in rationing COVID-19 antibody treatment , Jan. 13, 2022

Interview, Rachel Hardeman, University of Minnesota health and racial equity professor, Aug. 8, 2024

Rachel Hardeman and Eduardo Medina, op-ed in Star Tribune, 'Colorblind' treatment decision won't promote racial justice , Jan. 19, 2022

Interview, J.P. Leider, University of Minnesota associate public health professor, Aug. 8, 2024

Email interview, Dan Wikler, Harvard University professor of ethics and population health, Aug. 11, 2024Dan Wikler, a Harvard University professor of ethics and population health

Email interview, Eugene Volokh, UCLA law professor, Aug. 9, 2024

Eugene Volokh, "Reason", Minnesota Government: "Deprioritiz[e] Access for Patients" to COVID Drugs, Based Partly on Their Being White , Jan. 3, 2022

Interview, Dr. Monica Peek, University of Chicago professor for health justice of medicine, Aug. 12, 2024

The Washington Post, Former Trump adviser falsely claims states are rationing scarce covid treatments based largely on race , Feb. 10, 2022

Minnesota Department of Health, Ethical Framework for Allocation of Monoclonal Antibodies during the COVID-19 Pandemic , Feb. 12, 2021

Minnesota Department of Health, Ethical Framework for Allocation of Monoclonal Antibodies during the COVID-19 Pandemic , Dec. 6, 2021

Minnesota Department of Health, Ethical Framework for Allocation of Monoclonal Antibodies during the COVID-19 Pandemic , Dec. 23, 2021

Minnesota Department of Health, Ethical Framework for Allocation of Monoclonal Antibodies during the COVID-19 Pandemic , Jan. 12, 2022

Minnesota Department of Health, Operational Guidance for Monoclonal Antibodies , March 3, 2022

KFF, Key Data on Health and Health Care by Race and Ethnicity , June 11, 2024

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Risk for COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death By Race/Ethnicity , May 25, 2023

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Receipt of Medications for Treatment of COVID-19 — United States, March 2020–August 2021 , Jan. 21, 2022

Frontiers in Public Health, Using a web platform for equitable distribution of COVID-19 monoclonal antibodies: a case study in resource allocation , Nov. 27, 2023

America First Legal, Letter to Jan Malcolm, Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Health , Jan. 12, 2022

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, COVID-19 Monoclonal Antibodies , accessed Aug. 8, 2024

JAMA, Anti–SARS-CoV-2 Monoclonal Antibody Distribution to High-risk Medicare Beneficiaries, 2020-2021 , Feb. 4, 2022

Miami Herald, ‘Healthiest people got monoclonal antibodies.’ COVID therapy goes to those who need it less , Feb. 18, 2022

Minnesota Compass, All Minnesotans by race & ethnicity , accessed Aug. 8, 2024

U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Fact sheet for health care providers: Emergency use authorization of REGEN-COV , June 2021

U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Fact sheet for health care providers: Emergency use authorization of bamlanivimab and estesevimab , May 2021

Mayo Clinic, Clinical Prioritization of Antispike Monoclonal Antibody Treatment of Mild to Moderate COVID-19 , Nov. 18, 2021

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Connecting the world to combat coronavirus

To unite the world in the fight against coronavirus, WHO is bringing together a wide array of partners on a series of engaging initiatives to motivate and mobilize people to Be Ready to beat COVID-19, and to support the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund .

Musicians, footballers, athletes and artists will help you stay connected and healthy through shows of solidarity, lifesaving health messages and entertainment during lockdown.

Click on the campaigns below to learn how you can spread the word and help increase solidarity, awareness and funds to support the global response against COVID-19.

The Solidarity Series of Events

Join renowned musicians, bands, entertainers, filmmakers and artists with concerts, live sessions and art shows to raise funds for the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund .

The #SafeHands challenge

Take part in our series of social media challenges on handwashing, physical distancing, supporting health workers and more.

Pass the message to kick out coronavirus

Join your favourite footballer to learn and share tips on how to protect yourself and your loved ones from infection.

#HealthyAtHome

Here are some ways to stay fit and healthy while confined at home.

#HealthyTogether

Join WHO, UN and the International Olympic Committee to stay safe during COVID-19 and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

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Passenger Plane Crashes in Brazil, Killing 61 Onboard

The Brazilian authorities said no one survived the crash, outside São Paulo on Friday afternoon. The airline, VoePass, said the cause was unknown.

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By Jack Nicas Paulo Motoryn and Niraj Chokshi

Jack Nicas reported from Rio de Janeiro, Paulo Motoryn from Brasília and Niraj Chokshi from New York.

Above the small city of Vinhedo, Brazil, on Friday, a passenger plane was falling from the sky. Residents began filming.

Those videos show the horrifying moment when an 89-foot-long plane, carrying 61 people and slowly spinning in circles, plummeted to earth. A moment after the plane disappears from view near a gated community, an enormous black plume of smoke rises from the spot.

One video then shows a house on fire, a swimming pool full of debris and a group of men peering over a scene of carnage in a yard: a shredded fuselage, twisted metal and, several yards in front of the cockpit, a body.

VoePass Flight 2283 crashed Friday toward the end of a scheduled two-hour flight from Cascavel, Brazil, to São Paulo. VoePass, a small Brazilian airline, said all 57 passengers and four crew members died in the accident.

Thick gray smoke rising into the sky in a residential neighborhood.

The airline and Brazilian officials said they did not know why the plane had crashed.

The plane, an ATR 72, had all systems operating correctly when it took off, the airline said. The pilots did not signal any emergency, officials said. The aircraft, a twin-engine turboprop plane, was built in 2010 and was in compliance with Brazilian regulations, they added.

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Fighting against the common enemy of COVID-19: a practice of building a community with a shared future for mankind

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Traditional epidemiological approaches effectively control the transmission

Response strategies coping with local conditions

Mobilizing resources quickly to support the emergency responses

Encouraging people proactively and orderly participate in this battle against COVID-19

Preventing the pandemic of COVID-19

Challenges in fighting against COVID-19

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Coordinating interventions and resources mobilization globally

Intervention and coordination globally

Resources mobilization globally

Jointly fighting against common enemy ─ COVID-19

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