Is the Pandemic Really Over?

Human being’s attention doesn’t keep on for a long time

     I remember how much afraid of SARS-CoV-2 I was two yeas ago; I wore a mask almost all the time. I used the alcoholic sanitizer at the entrance of my place when I came back home and then I thoroughly washed hands with soap. I limited the number of people to see, etc..I checked the two famous websites with the COVID-19 data open almost every day; Johns Hopkins University & Medicine (JHUM)*1 and OUR WORLD IN DATA (OWID)*2.
     However, I recently realized that I became gradually less interested in the number of the cases or deaths than ever. I DON’T think that the pandemic is over, and I DO wear a mask when I go somewhere a lot of people come and go, but it’s also true that I have gotten used to the COVID-19. I’m deeply impressed with the truth that human being’s attention doesn’t keep on for a long time. Sooner or later human beings get used to or accept anything. That’s also one of the ways for psychological protection.
     According to the JHUM data of June 7th, 2022, the number of the world’s cumulative positive cases has reached 532,350,904 and the total deaths 6,300,053. About one out of fifteen people has been infected and one out of one hundred infected people died from the disease. Some demographic data implies that the significant number of uncounted covid victims is included in the excess deaths of some countries. Therefore the real number of death could be more.

Economies matter more than human lives

     Another research has found out that at least ten per cent of the infected people, even they are asymptomatic or with mild symptoms, possibly have long covid. So far it is estimated that around 50,000,000 people in the world may suffer from long covid. The long covid symptoms are in a wide range of physical, neural and mental; physical pains, fatigues, difficulty of breaths, loss of smell, loss of hair, depression and so on. A survey turned out that many of the long haulers have experienced suicidal ideation because the virus affection reaches to every cell of the whole body including the brain.*3 That’s a serious problem not only that it falls individual’s quality of life but also that it will lead to decline the function of our societies; shortage of labor, shortening of people’s life expectancy, increasing budgets of the health insurance and welfare, decline of population, and so on in the near future.
     However, reopening businesses and gaining profits matter much more to some people than preventing infection. Those who say that Ukrainian people’s lives matter strangely ignore their country’s covid victims.
     The situation in Japan is similar. According to the OWID, Japan’s daily new confirmed cases of June 7th, 2022 is 17,347 though that was only 41 of the same day of two years ago. Nobody care about that truth. WHO said that five percent or plus positive rates mean shortage of the number of testing. Japan’s positive rate is 15% now though the worst was 48% of January 15th, 2022. There are very few politicians, scientists or medical practitioners who strongly demand that Japan has to do more tests and the government has to fund more for testing. Far from that, on 10th of this month, the government lifted almost all the entering restrictions and let 20,000 people daily enter from abroad without test and quarantine if they prove they are fully vaccinated or pre-flight negative. However, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) says that foreign travelers are only allowed to enter as participants of a packaged tour accompanied by chaperones, plus, under the condition of wearing a mask indoors. Japan is going to have no protection from the new variants entering from abroad. Some bureaucrats of the MHLW said that as long as it is impossible to make the domestic positive cases zero, there will be no difference if the stricter quarantine measures could prevent the small number of the cases at the international airports.

See no evil, say no evil, hear no evil, and you can pretend there is no evil

     I’ve been thinking that ‘see no evil, say no evil, hear no evil’ is Japan’s forte. However, I felt that western countries are not different when I saw UK and US; The mask mandate was lifted. The COVID statistics isn’t regularly announced anymore. The free PCR tests turned into being for a charge. The most terrible thing, I think, was that the significant numbers of policy-makers and scientists ignored the relevance between children’s severe hepatitis and COVID-19 because they maybe didn’t want the preventive restrictions again, when the cases were reported in the beginning. There are many cancellations of the international flights because of shortage of pilots and flight attendants. Many of them take sick leave for COVID-19 or Long Covid since the mask mandate was removed.
     While they are pretending that the pandemic is over in such ways, SARS-CoV-2s keep on mutating endlessly and new variants go on one after another. Addition to that, other pathogenic organisms may be activated or COVID-19 infection could weaken our immune system somehow. The most horrible scenarios are like followings; other zoonotic diseases could jump into the human societies and spread anytime (see monkeypox)*4, and other human infectious diseases would become zoonotic and return to our communities with more impact.

Where will we go?

     I wonder where we will go. I believe that the pandemic is still going on. Some people think like me but others don’t. Some would say that it cannot be helped that a certain number of people would be infected and die from it, and that’s like collateral damage for recovering the economies but others wouldn’t agree. Some claim that wearing mask is harmful but others are convinced of the preventive effects of the masks. The similar things are happening to vaccination, testing of SARS-CoV-2 and so on. The world is divided into small bubbles according to answers to those issues and knowledge of what’s going on now in the world. And the cruel reality is that there is no common language between people in the different bubbles.
     You have heard following statements; Diversity is good and essential of democracy. Small governments are better for people to guarantee their individual freedom. Wait. Does that include freedom to victimize other people’s lives for gaining money?
     Don’t you think it absolutely ironic that so far only China seems to be successful in controlling COVID-19? The one-party ruling autocracy tries to protect its people’s lives harder than other DEMOCRATIC countries do. At least China doesn’t pretend the pandemic is over. And such DEMOCRATIC countries claim that almost no human right matters in China referring to the Uighur issue.
      I don’t know which is good for people any more. But one thing is true; When people say that it can’t be helped that certain number of people die from COVID, they never count themselves as deaths.

REFERENCE

*1 JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY & MEDICINE https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

COVID-19 Map - Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center

*2 Our World in Data  

Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)

*3 TIME 
https://time.com/6186429/suicide-long-covid/
*4 WHO Monkeypox
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/monkeypox