PARIS, 27 FRANCE. – As the world welcomed the new decade amid joy and fireworks on January 1, no one could have imagined what would happen to us. Bring 2020.
In the past 12 months, the new coronavirus has paralyzed economies, devastated communities and trapped nearly 4 billion people at their homes. It’s been a year that has changed the world, like no other in at least a generation, possibly since the WWII.
More than 1.7 million people have died. Almost 80 million people have officially contracted the virusalthough the actual number is certainly much higher. Many children have become orphans, families have been torn apart, and the disease has outpaced thousands upon thousands of elderly people, who in many cases have died in total solitude because visits were prohibited due to the risk they represented.
All over the world, family gatherings around the Christmas holidays have been thwarted by movement restrictions or sanitary regulations, also due to the emergence of a new strain of virus in the UK, which appears to be more contagious.
“This pandemic is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for all of Earth’s current inhabitants,” said Sten Vermund, epidemiologist and dean of the Yale School of Public Health. “Hardly anyone has been spared.”
But Covid-19 isn’t the deadliest pandemic in history. The Black Death wiped out a quarter of the world’s population in the 14th century, at least 50 million people died from the so-called Spanish flu in 1918-1919 and 33 million people died of AIDS.
But to get this coronavirus, something as simple as breathing in the wrong place at the wrong time is all it takes.
“I was at the gates of hell and I came back”says Wan Chunhui, a 44-year-old Chinese survivor who spent 17 days in hospital. “I saw with my own eyes how others failed to overcome it and died, which shocked me terribly.”
No one could have imagined the magnitude of the global disaster when, on December 31, China notified the World Health Organization (WHO) of 27 cases of “viral pneumonia of unknown origin” that baffled doctors in Wuhan city.
– First case in Wuhan –
The next day, authorities closed the Wuhan animal market initially linked to the outbreak. On January 7, Chinese authorities announced that they had identified the new virus, which they named 2019-nCoV. On January 11, China announced the first death in Wuhan. Within days, cases emerged in Asia, France and the United States.
At the end of January, the countries began to repatriate their fellow citizens from China. The world’s borders began to close and more than 50 million people in Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, were quarantined.
The AFP images of a dead man on the street, with a mask and a plastic bag in hand, became an expression of fear, although the cause of this person’s death could never be officially confirmed.
The same happened with the cruise ship “Diamond Princess”, docked off the coast of Japan, where more than 700 people became infected with the virus and 13 died.
When the horror became global, the race for the vaccine began. A small German biotechnology lab called BioNTech set aside its cancer research to start another project. Your name? “Speed of light”.
On Feb. 11, WHO named the disease covid-19. Four days later, France confirmed the first death outside of Asia. Europe watched in horror as Northern Italy became the European epicenter of the virus.
“It’s worse than war,” said Orlando Gualdi, mayor of the Lombard city of Vertova in March, where 36 people died in 25 days. “It was absurd to think that a pandemic could break out in 2020.”
First Italy, then Spain, France and the United Kingdom were imprisoned. The WHO declared Covid-19 a pandemic. US borders, closed to China, were also closed to most European countries. For the first time in peacetime, the Summer Olympics were postponed.
– Lockdown –
In mid-April, 3.9 billion people – half of the world’s population – had to respect some form of confinement. From Paris to New York, from London to Buenos Aires, the streets were filled with a silence often broken by the sound of ambulance sirens reminding us that death was lurking.
Scientists had been warning of the risk of a global pandemic for decades, but hardly anyone listened, and now everyone, even the richest countries, was fighting an invisible enemy.
In a globalized economy, supply chains stopped. Panicked consumers empty supermarkets.
The chronic lack of investment in health was clearly demonstrated by the difficulties hospitals face in coping with the avalanche of patients and the collapse of their intensive care units.
Health workers, often underpaid and with brutal workloads, fought a battle without the necessary protective equipment.
“I graduated in 1994 and the public hospitals were completely deserted by then,” said a doctor in Bombay, India in May. ‘Why does it take a pandemic to wake people up?’ He wondered.
In New York, the city with the most billionaires in the world, doctors had to carry garbage bags to protect themselves. A field hospital was built in Central Park and there were mass graves on Hart Island in the East Bronx.
“It looked like we were living a horror movie,” said Virgilio Neto, mayor of the Brazilian city of Manaus, in the Amazon. “We’ve gone from emergency to total disaster,” he said, as the bodies were piled up in refrigerated trucks, waiting for the machines to finish digging the mass graves.
Companies closed their doors. Also schools and universities. Sports competitions were canceled. Flights have been suspended and the industry is going through the worst crisis in its history. Shops, bars, restaurants and hotels were also forced to display the “closed” sign.
In Spain, imprisonment was so strict that children spent weeks without being able to leave their home. People were suddenly locked in small apartments for weeks.
Those who could work from home. Video conferencing has replaced meetings, business trips and celebrations. Those unable to telecommute had to choose between taking risks or losing their job.
By May, the pandemic had wiped out 20 million jobs in the United States. The global recession could drive 150 million people into extreme poverty by 2021, the World Bank warns.
– Violence and Recession –
Inequalities, which have increased in recent years, have been exposed as never before. We have stopped giving kisses, hugs and handshakes. Human contacts are now made behind transparent screens and masks.
Domestic violence increased, as did psychological problems. As those with the means and the financial means spent confinement in their comfortable homes in the countryside or on the beach, stress rose among the many trapped in the cities and anger took to the streets. Governments have often shown themselves to be powerless in the face of this unexpected and gigantic crisis.
U.S, which lacks a universal health system, soon became the country hardest hit by the pandemic. More than 330,000 people died until the end of December, but President Donald Trump often downplayed the threat, defending questionable treatments like hydroxychloroquine or even suggesting the benefits of injecting a disinfectant.
In May, it launched Operation Speed of Light, for which the US government allocated $ 11 billion by the end of the year to develop a vaccine against COVID-19. Trump presented it as the largest American project since the creation of the atomic bomb in World War II.
But the wealthy cannot buy their immunity, and Trump signed COVID-19 in October, as did Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in July. Across the sea, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent three days in intensive care in April.
Tom Hanks and his wife, footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, world tennis number one Novak Djokovic, Madonna, Prince Charles or Prince Albert of Monaco, among others, join the list of famous characters who have contracted the virus.
– The vaccine for 2021 –
The first vaccines will be available at the end of the year. But too late to save Trump from losing Joe Biden in November.
US giant Pzifer, associated with BioNTech, announced it had achieved a “90% effective” vaccine. The market is in turmoil and governments are rushing to guarantee millions of doses for their citizens. A week later, the American Moderna laboratory announces that its vaccine is “95%” effective.
Governments are preparing to vaccinate millions of people, starting with the elderly, health workers and the most vulnerable, before launching massive campaigns that seem the only way to restore normalcy.
In December, the UK became the first Western country to be licensed for the vaccine developed by BioNTech and Pfizer. Russia and China had already started vaccination campaigns with their own vaccines.
Days later, the United States imitates him and the European Union begins its vaccination on December 27.
Rich countries have secured millions of doses for their populations and in 2021 there is likely to be a global race for vaccines, in which China and Russia will try to gain market and influence with their cheaper ones, especially in Latin America and Africa.
It is still difficult to calculate the consequences of this pandemic. Some experts warn it will take years to build herd immunity through massive vaccination. Others predict that normalcy can be restored by the middle of next year.
For many, the pandemic has changed the image of telecommuting. If telecommuting has become common, what will happen to office buildings in many cities? Can urban centers become deflated if people don’t have to physically go to work every day and migrate in search of a better quality of life, away from busy public transport and confined spaces?
Others predict that fear of large concentrations of people can have profound consequences, especially in tourism and travel, leisure or sporting events.
The impact on freedoms is also a cause for concern. The Freedom House think tank warns that democracy and human rights have deteriorated in 80 countries as many governments have misused their power to contain the virus.
“I think there will be profound changes in our society,” predicts Yale’s Sten Vermund.
The world economy is also facing difficult times. The IMF has warned that the recession will be worse than after the 2008 financial crisis. But for many, the pandemic will usher in a much longer-lasting and devastating catastrophe.
“Covid-19 is a great wave that has hit us and behind it is the tsunami of climate change and global warming,” said astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell, author of the book “Open in the event of an apocalypse,” a work on how to recover. global disaster and human resistance.