Is this THE pandemic?

[vixb1]

Towards the beginning of the pandemic, I remember reading something about us being "due" a pandemic, but this wasn't it - ie this was all a bit tame.

I keep thinking about it. Now that it's got way more serious - is this now it?!

I think I'm just having a day where I'm struggling to come to terms with the direction this is all going in and the thought of having to face something worse in the future is just unthinkable :-(

I'm sure it'll be a deeply unhelpful post for some people. But for me, I think I need it laying out for me!

What do we think?

It's fairly likely that there will be a worse pandemic in the future.

All pandemics are THE pandemic. This isn't the first and certainly won't be the last.

In fact with the size of the global population they are much more likely in the future.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/29/who-warns-covid-19-pandemic-is-not-necessarily-the-big-one

I heard a similar debate from experts on the radio last week. Worrying.

Also something yesterday about the impact of humans on the environment meaning there will be more and more serious pandemics.

Well given the last one was in 1918 I am not going to worry too much about the next one.

As pandemics go the fatality rate for this one is really low. I just hope like hell that they have learnt lessons that they can implement when the next one comes along

Never mind OP, the magnetic poles of the Earth are due to flip anytime now.

Now that really will be fun!

I don't think we can know.
What i fear is that the policies that have been in place during this one will see more of the population coming out of it more unfit and with poorer immune systems and mental health and less able to cope mentally and physically if another comes along.

One of the ways in coping is by focusing on what I can control, which is my own health and fitness. There are very few people addressing this, but I'm pleased to see that Tim Spector ( am epidemiologist in charge of the covid symptom study app) is talking about how important it is to support our fitness, health and how they're finding out more and more about the link with gut health.
5 minutes long.

@NikeDeLaSwoosh

Never mind OP, the magnetic poles of the Earth are due to flip anytime now.

Now that really will be fun!

Erm, what does that mean?! I'm not sure if you're joking or not!

@Scarby9

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/29/who-warns-covid-19-pandemic-is-not-necessarily-the-big-one

I heard a similar debate from experts on the radio last week. Worrying.

Also something yesterday about the impact of humans on the environment meaning there will be more and more serious pandemics.

Thanks for sharing this. Totally and utterly shit. I'm sat looking at my one year old, wondering what horrors she's going to have to face in her lifetime :-(

You can't live your life worrying about what's next. We've lived under the threat of nuclear war for decades - that could happen at any time. Global warming already happening - we could feel the effects here more directly soon. Antibiotic resistance - huge threat to lives, could be imminent. Terrorism - could get into our water supplies for example.
It's totally out of our control so what's the point of worrying?
I used to be an anxious person but I'm actually an optimist now, my worries have sort of burnt themselves out.

@summerstorms

As pandemics go the fatality rate for this one is really low. I just hope like hell that they have learnt lessons that they can implement when the next one comes along

I hope you are right. If this isn't a wake up call that we need to properly fund our public services then I really don't know what is.

HIV and AIDS is the pandemic.

AIDS-related illnesses have killed somewhere between 30 and 40 million people, which is somewhere between a third and a half of the total number of people infected with HIV. It killed almost three-quarters of a million people in 2019.

There's still no cure after over 40 years (although the preventions and treatments are getting better) and the death rate is 100% without medical intervention.

Covid is barely a footnote compared to AIDS.

^Never mind OP, the magnetic poles of the Earth are due to flip anytime now.

Now that really will be fun^

Before that, half of Gran Canaria will fall into the sea and cause a Tsunami that wipes out most of the Eastern seaboard of North and Central America. Then the overdue eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano will happen and that chain of events will cause the poles to flip.

Or maybe the sun will collapse in on itself and die.

All of the above are reasonably foreseeable and no-one wants to be around during or after any of them.

@barbaraofseville I mean this in a non nasty way, how do you actually cope with that knowledge and thinking about it. Reading your post makes a non anxious person like me feel utterly terrified!!

There is a Global risk register, pandemic is always in top 5.

I just looked up the magnetic pole flip and it doesn’t sound too apocalyptic.

www.google.com/amp/s/api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/news/2018/01/earth-magnetic-field-flip-north-south-poles-science

Another pandemic might happen but I would just hope we are better prepared, could take it seriously and tackle it much, much earlier and that the work on vaccines and strides made in vaccine technology would mean it wouldn’t be on the same scale as this one.

The climate and biodiversity crises are a huge worry but I have faith in the younger generations and things getting better rather than worse overall.

The super volcano thing is pretty stressful though!

Que serà serà

Where is the global risk register?

Good point @NastyBlouse absolutely devastating in Africa particularly.
I think in our country we have avoided the worst of a lot of illnesses that are very nasty elsewhere in the world.

I think when people talk about THE pandemic it isn't this. We've been 'lucky' in the sense that children are relatively unaffected, young people get ill but generally recover.
In my mind THE pandemic would affect the young and have a double digit cfr. But that's just the stuff of nightmares and we don't need to worry about something that might not happen.

Well this is a cheery post

I thought the pandemic we were most likely expecting was supposed to be a new flu virus - and that was part of the problem with the planning we had done pre - pandemic.

There are always viruses out there that could cross the species barrier and become infectious - wasn't that long ago parts of Africa were having a really bad Embola outbreak. Embola death rate has been as high as 90% while death rate for covid is overall given as 1% though older you are higher it is and I think New Sceintist has over 85 as having death rate of 16%.

We are learning some very hard lessons from this out break - help us prepare for any future ones.

Beside global warming - possibly causing wars and food shortages and nuclear proliferation especially between counrties with border disputres and growing tensions with Russia and China mean nunclear war is still a worry as well.

As BarbaraofSeville Yellowstone supervolcano and there are a couple of unstable volcanoe islands that may collapse causing huge tsunami - solar storms which are predicted could also take out electrical grids causing global chaos - large astroids could still strike the earth - don't even have to be extinction event level if your country is in their path.

There's a whole range of biological, man made, geolgical and astronomical threats out there.

My grandparents grew up in real poverty and knew hunger and didn't have access to medical services always when sick. My dad was born in the second world war, I was born post cold war in a world which had more nunclear weapons than needed to wipe out all life on earth.

We've made a vaccine for covid in about 18 months faster ever and in this country are managing to vaccinate in a very rapid manner. There are postives and people are studying and monitoring the many risks out there.

reports.weforum.org/global-risks-report-2020/shareable-infographics/

www.weforum.org/press/2020/01/burning-planet-climate-fires-and-political-flame-wars-rage

For the first time in the survey’s 10-year outlook, the top five global risks in terms of likelihood are all environmental. The report sounds the alarm on:

Extreme weather events with major damage to property, infrastructure and loss of human life
Failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation by governments and businesses.
Human-made environmental damage and disasters, including environmental crime, such as oil spills, and radioactive contamination.
Major biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse (terrestrial or marine) with irreversible consequences for the environment, resulting in severely depleted resources for humankind as well as industries.
Major natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and geomagnetic storms.

"Well given the last one was in 1918 I am not going to worry too much about the next one."

We've had a number of pandemics since then. Some are still current.

SARS, Hong Kong flu, Bird Flu, Ebola...

As pp said, the biggest of all of them is HIV-AIDS. Coronavirus is a pussycat compared to it.

Didn’t the poles flip around 2000? Or was it 2012? I can’t remember - I’ve lived through so many Armageddon’s now...

Regarding the OP, I bloody hope so but it’s always a threat. In some ways we would have been better off with a fast moving deadlier disease since it would have burnt itself out quicker (and actually therefore unlikely to reach pandemic level). On the other hand we wouldn’t have fairly comforting survival statistics.