Who gets to say when the coronavirus pandemic is over? | GARY COSBY JR.
Perhaps you saw a couple of weeks ago that President Joe Biden declared the COVID-19 pandemic over. That's nice. We in Alabama did that over a year ago. Good of the president to catch up.
Of course, that statement does not mean that COVID-19 is a thing of the past. It isn't. It will always be with us, but it essentially means we have learned to deal with the disease, or at least to live with it in a more or less normal manner. And that actually is how a pandemic ends.
Several months ago, I read a story in one of the major national newspapers, one not known for being particularly conservative - cough, cough, The Washington Post - and they wrote that pandemics throughout history have ended when the people decided they were over, not when some official in government or science or health care said so. The Post did a survey of the pandemics of the 20th Century, and their analysis showed that the pandemics lasted only as long as the public was willing to tolerate them.
When COVID-19 was new and was killing tens of thousands every month, we were willing, sometimes more than willing due to the uncertainty associated with the disease, to endure restrictions and regulations designed to help keep us healthy. But, at some point, we simply got tired of it. We got tired of masks. We got tired of restaurants, stadiums, theaters and the various other public venues where we shared life being closed. We got tired of sitting at home.
The pandemic was over because we decided the risk of getting sick was not worse than the risk of going stir crazy from staring at the walls. Public confidence grew as we began seeing advances in treatment and though we all still knew people were getting sick, fewer and fewer were being hospitalized and dying. And that's when it ended for many of us.
I believe most people were grateful to the various governments and agencies who placed the restrictions on the public during the early stages of the pandemic when so little was known about the disease or how to treat it. We were willing to put up with the "Nanny State" and stay at home and do things the way the CDC said was best. For a while.
We also can be somewhat grateful to the continuing evolution of the virus itself. A virus needs a home and a dead host is not one; therefore, the virus mutated, sometimes becoming more contagious but each iteration of the virus also seemed to be a little less deadly. That is the way viruses work. In order for a virus to stay alive, propagate and thrive, it needs a living host. Killing the people or other organisms it infects is bad for business.
On the other hand, if we ever suffer invasion from an alien race, it might well be the virus that is our best defense. I don't know if you ever read "War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells. In that science fiction masterpiece, mankind is helpless against invaders from Mars. It is the lowly virus that comes to our rescue as the Martians were not adapted to handle our diseases. What man could not accomplish in fending off the alien invasion, the virus did.
While viral mutation is a widely known fact, what is fascinating is how does the virus "know" when to mutate? It doesn't have a brain or even an internet for viruses through which it can communicate with other members of its group that happen to be infecting another host. It's a great mystery to me, though if someone hasn't already figured it out, you can bet there are people working on it now. Who knows, maybe quantum entanglement works for the virus like it does for particles. Paired particles can communicate instantly across space and time without actually doing so in a manner recognizable to humans.
No matter what, or why, I'm really happy that we have learned to live with COVID-19. I like eating out, going to games, going to the movies, meeting people in public places. All those things are great and have helped make us who we are as a race. If you think about it, those social interactions are what permit us to advance as a civilization.
The flip side is that when we are driven hard by an external force such as a virus, mankind has learned to adapt, and not merely to adapt, but to overcome the negative force and grow from the experience. No doubt, during research to find effective ways to treat this disease, we have learned things that will prepare us to face and overcome the next obstacle. Certainly, if negative factors such as pandemics have a positive effect in the long-term, that is it. We fight, we endure, we overcome and we are stronger as a species from having won the battle.
Gary Cosby Jr. is the photo editor of The Tuscaloosa News. Readers can email him at gary.cosby@tuscaloosanews.com.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Who gets to say when coronavirus pandemic is over? | GARY COSBY JR.
