Today all 70+ in Sweden were advised to stay home. Many jobs are being threatened or already lost. But I also read today that manufacturing in China has restarted and is well on its way back. Two of the specialist corona patient hospitals that were opened in China have now been shut down for lack of patients. Trials of proposed vaccines have started in a number of countries. Existing medicines which seem promising for supporting the immune system are being tested with infected patients. Some results in Australia have shown very good effects.
In almost all European countries the initial panic response was/is driven primarily, not in the first instance for the saving of lives already under threat, but for the avoidance of the health care systems being overwhelmed. Flatten the curve has become the guiding strategy. In the traditional sense this trying to run away or hide away and avoid the virus describes a classic flight response.
It strikes me that humanity as an organism shows the flight/fight response but initial flight is often to be able to marshal resources so as to fight again.
The initial flight reaction is now shifting to fight.
Flatten the Curve
I expect (perhaps a little optimistically) the world is shifting from flight to fight. But I think human resilience will not allow us to cower and hide and not fight back. That fight involves many battles on many fronts:
- Modifying use or application of existing drugs
- Developing new designer-vaccines
- Increasing ICU places with access to respirators
- Increasing availability of respirators
- Improving treatment therapies to suppress the worst side-effects of the virus
- ……..
It is always dangerous to be too optimistic too early. There are going to be many more deaths. I am sure we have a long recession ahead – perhaps six months. But it is not just doom and gloom.
There is a lot of gloom ahead but it is not doom.
Tags: coronavirus, covid-19
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