Hello, thank you for taking the time to read my opinion blog. I am not an expert in the coronavirus and everything on this site is JUST MY OPINION as well as the understanding of a multitude of resources from experts from different countries and my personal experience. I have traveled extensively around the world have lived in the USA EUROPE and ASIA for decades. I have been in China many times and have close associates in China. I have extensive scientific experience working in the medical field for almost three decades.
When I first saw the extraordinary efforts taken by China to attempt to contain this virus I immediately knew that this would change the world. In my lifetime I have never seen anything like this done by any country, which comes at a tremendous economic cost as well as other costs. At that time, in January, there was no information or concerns to be found in other countries media be it USA EUROPE or the rest of ASIA.
In January drastic measures taken for a few month such as 100% travel stop could have contained the virus. That of course did not happen and will not happen. Once a single infected person leaves the containment area or country it then is too late to impose travel restrictions. The only travel restrictions that would be effective would be 100% closures. No VIPs travel, no anyone. Again, this is unrealistic. The virus is now everywhere and can not be stopped with todays technology.
The immediate solution this crisis is and will be a treatment that reduces the severity of the virus in humans. If we can develop a treatment that enables people to not need ventilators or ICU units to survive then we can resume life as usual. Until then we must slow down the virus spread for one and only ONE reason: The world does not have enough resources to treat a large infected population.
Since we don’t know if and when there will be such a treatment available. We must do everything to slow down the spread. At the same time we must increase the resources to treat all infected people by any available means. In my opinion, governments should support everything that is necessary to increase ICU capacity. Health care professional should be supported as a priority over anything else. Governments should strongly encourage the development of potential treatments.
Statistically, the elders and people with preexisting conditions are most at risk. We owe it to our elder and weak population to protect them. Everybody’s individual action has the potential to save lives. I hope that people will do the right thing over there petty self interest.
The biggest dangers in this crisis are ignorant actions that harm the economies and thereby the ability of governments to do their job. Business will have to change and that is normal. No-one is trying to bring the pager or rotary phone industry back. This is the normal course of progress. In this case, normally slow moving progress is greatly accelerated. So we should not be to concerned about different industries. We should however be concerned about the workers affected in these industries. They need our temporary support.
Finally, english is not my first language. Please excuse my poor grammar and spelling. If you get my point there is no need to bring every bad english sentence to my attention. However, if you see any factual error please bring it to my attention.
coronaopinion.com 