I began noticing strange activity around the time of the Chinese New Year in 2020. This included heat signature maps indicating large 'gatherings' of bodies near/in hospitals, and satellite images around Wuhan indicating increasing, unusual activity at crematoriums.
Many watchers began to speculate as to what was going on. No one would have imagined that many deaths could have been avoided, had someone had the courage to share this situation right away rather than cover it up.
After the Party
One of the strange thing I noticed was after the Wuhan New Years celebrations to welcome in 2020. Attendees began to report on social media that they were prohibited from flying into other Chinese locations.
They were, however, able to fly internationally and they did in record numbers.
Watching the volumes and destinations of these travelers, seemed to mirror the spread patterns of this 'strange' disease.
The problems grew and panic ensued before common sense travel restrictions went into place. Once it became a 'political' issue, nothing seemed normal anymore.
Outbreak
In 1995 there was a film, 'Outbreak', with Dustin Hoffman, that was a precursor warning. The film, released by Warner Brothers, March 10, 1995, was a box-office success but obviously slipped out of our collective memories.
However, the film's popularity did resurge during the COVID 19, ranking it as the fourth most streamed film in the United States on Netflix, March 13, 2020.
Panic Treatments and Horrible Errors
As 2020 began, I started this blog and everyday I scoured the news. I set up an Excel spreadsheet of cases reported, deaths recorded. I spoke with many medical experts and researched as much as I knew how.
Sadly, the disease spread so quickly around the world. Deaths, especially of vulnerable populations, increased in proportions I'd never imagined.
Treatment
At first, victims thought they had the flu or just a cold and did routine things to thwart the disease. As the virus spread, news items brought shocking reports of entire nursing home populations wiped out.
Soon hospitals that had never experienced such patient numbers were storing patients in hallways and struggling with those most affected by the virus.
Because breathing was often critically affected, oxygen cannulas, CPAP and BiPAP machines and eventually respirators and ventilators were used.
But use of medicinal oxygen comes with significant dangers, especially when using ventilators.
Ventilators require patients be placed in induced comas so they don't fight the 'forced breathing' of the machine. That meant for everyone placed on a ventilator, hyper care was necessary.
With hospitals overcrowded and health carers overwhelmed, no one will ever know how the death rate accelerated from these decisions meant to save lives.
Keeping Count
One thing that vexed me was the lack of standardisation and timeliness of reporting and the accuracy of the statistics. Some countries took months to report anything, obviously because saving lives at all costs was more important than reporting numbers.
But Not China
What stood out was that even though the reporting was all over the place as far as reliability of numbers and details, it did cover all of the nations who were now struggling...except for China.
China, you see, reported some sketchy statistics at the very start, I suspect to allay fears of other countries, but these soon stopped altogether. It was enough that it originated there.
From the Start
Speculation grew about the origin of the disease and bounced from those who attended the New Years Eve celebrations in Wuhan being affected by something in the 'wet market'.
Initially, bats were blamed (no one likes the way they look anyway so they get blamed for lots of evils), then pangolins (I suspect because they are so helpless and slow moving) to just an ordinary virus.
It was mostly a blame game to cover up the truth -- it originated in a laboratory in Wuhan. And today, even that is not consistently believed because it has become a political hot potato.
As the New England Journal of Medicine reported:
"Yet well into the fourth year of the Covid-19 pandemic, intense political and scientific debates about its origins continue. The two major hypotheses are a natural zoonotic spillover, most likely occurring at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, and a laboratory leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)."
In the end, I am convinced we will never know the actual toll of this disease. Mostly because statistics were never normalised around the world, and the numbers are from sources that may not have wanted to be accurate.
However, estimates range from 7.1 million to 36 million! So you can see there is a huge disparity of how things were counted!
My sincere hope is that we have learned some important lessons for the future, because as one person has said, the world will likely end with a virus!
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