Flying in the COVID-19 Era: Science-based Risk Assessments and Mitigation Strategies on the Ground and in the Air Proceedings of a Workshop (2022) / Chapter Skim
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2 The COVID-19 Pandemic
2 The COVID-19 Pandemic
Pages 5-14
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From page 5... ...
Ashish Jha, the dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University, discussed the pandemic from a public health perspective and offered a stick take on what to expect relative to the pandemic in the future. William Haseltine, the chair and president of ACCESS Health International, spoke about the pandemic from a virologist's perspective and offered a significantly different look at the likely future of the pandemic.
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From page 6... ...
Other countries, such as India, are seeing similar dramatic growth in travel, and global travel from the African continent is expected to grow sharply in coming years. The increase in global travel turns local disease outbreaks into global disease outbreaks, Jha said.
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The improvement in outcomes is partially due to the use of dexamethasone, partially due to remdesivir, but mostly due to vast improvements in clinical practice -- knowing who needs to be intubated, knowing when to turn a patient from lying face up to lying face down, and knowing who needs to be taken care of in the intensive care unit. A great deal of progress has been made in developing diagnostic tests, Jha said, and they have been used effectively as medical tools but not so effectively as public health tools, where they are widely employed for community testing and contact tracing.
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From page 8... ...
"I am deeply worried that without [a global vaccination strategy] , we will continue to see a world where some places are vaccinated, other places are not, and outbreaks will continue to happen," which would make it difficult to restart the global economy, which will ultimately affect everyone.
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From page 9... ...
Outside the United States, he said, things developed differently. The SARS pandemic in 2003 had enormous economic consequence, and China, South Korea, Singapore, and other East Asian countries caused the collapse of South Korea's and Singapore's export business.
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COVID shares two key features with the flu: immunity created from exposure to the virus fades over time, and variants of the virus appear regularly. Haseltine went on to point out that vaccination has not eliminated the flu.
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"But from my many years of fighting hand to hand with these critters, I can tell you, our future is not going to be without a lot of bumps and lumps." SOCIETAL AND POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Dzau begin his presentation by noting, as Jha had, that the COVID-19 pandemic was not a surprise. In particular, he pointed to the report A World at Risk: Annual Report on Global Preparedness for Health Emergencies,1 which warned of the threat of rapidly spreading pathogens creating a global pandemic.
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From page 12... ...
Overall, there was a lack of responsible citizenship, with individualism seen as being in conflict with social and moral responsibility and the public good. Finally, despite the necessity for a coordinated international pandemic response, the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization, and it proceeded to secure vaccines for its own citizens without regard for global equity.
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From page 13... ...
Ultimately, though, there is a need for long-term, sustainable financing so that countries and international agencies do not have to seek funding in the middle of the next pandemic. In addition to obtaining sufficient financing, global vaccination efforts face a number of other challenges, Dzau said.
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From page 14... ...
In closing, Dzau offered the following lessons learned from the current pandemic: a need for strategy and coordination in public health interventions at national and global levels; a need for a coordinated end-to-end research-and-development system for vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics; a need for a multilateral approach with all countries working together; a need to ensure global equity, which is only possible with solidarity; and a need for sustainable financing to ensure pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response at a global level.
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