Covid-19 saga is our failure, why?

In a previous blog I refused to let corona virus mess my life. 

How wrong I was!

This small virus turned the world upside down.

But why? and how? is it a killer virus stronger than Ebola? is it very dangerous, more than Ebola or SARS? 

We compare it to the Spanish flu. But, didn't our medical sciences advance tremendously over the last century?

COVID-19 is not a killer virus. 85% of people who get it do not show signs or show very mild signs, 

15% need hospitalization, 5% need ICU care, and death rate does not exceeds  1-10% of confirmed cases which means less than 1% of the overall infected people. So not much different from the flu.

So why is it causing the world to take measures such as self isolation, suspending economic life, thus generating a crisis that will take time and time to solve and might change our world forever?

Simply because we do not have yet built our immunity against it and it is a very aggressive virus whose life outside the body is long which means ease of transmission. It spread quickly.

The New England Journal of Medicine just published a study that tested how long the virus can remain stable on different kinds of surfaces within a controlled laboratory setting. They found that it was still detectable on copper for up to four hours, on cardboard for up to 24 hours, and on plastic and steel for up to 72 hours.

Meaning that it is almost impossible to prevent infection, it has to take its course until the population builds its immunity against it.

Covid-19 symptoms vary widely, and undertesting in many countries means that many people may have already had the coronavirus without having received a positive diagnosis.- The Guardian 1 April 2020

So why billions of people have found that they are now faced with unprecedented restrictions. 

In many countries across the world Police have been given licence to control behavior in a way that would normally be extreme even for an authoritarian state.

In some countries we are witnessing violence and humiliation used by police to impose coronavirus curfews, often affecting the poorest and more vulnerable.

Because, we need to flatten the curve. 

Health systems in most countries around the world, even the most rich and wealthy cannot accommodate the 15%  infected that need hospitalization and 5% that need ICU care, in addition to the regular hospital workload. 

If we look at death rates versus health care preparedness, we understand why we need to flatten the curve. Best examples are Germany and Austria in comparison with Italy and Spain and the US.

This is why we need to spread the infection rate, rather than stop the spread. And this what we are doing by self isolation and lock downs; in parallel destroying our way of life and economy.

Because we failed as governments and societies in taking proper preparation measures though SARS, Ebola, and the Swine Flu were warning signs.

For many of us, the coronavirus pandemic seemed to come out of nowhere. Institutions and people around the world have been caught completely off guard by its impact. But for years, Bill Gates has been warning about the risk of a deadly pandemic much like this one — and raising the alarm that our societies weren't prepared to handle it.
In a CBS News interview three years ago, the billionaire philanthropist talked about the potential for a worldwide health crisis and the fact that we are largely unprepared.
"The impact of a huge epidemic, like a flu epidemic, would be phenomenal because all the supply chains would break down. There'd be a lot of panic. Many of our systems would be overloaded," Gates told CBS News from the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "But being ready for epidemics of different sizes, there's a lot more we should do." CBS news: Bill Gate epidemic warning readiness

How come humanity never learns the lessons from history. 
It was not so long ago,1918, that the Spanish flu began to spread around the world. By 1920, Spanish flu is thought to have claimed the lives of up to 100 million people. 
The Guardian podcast: Lessons from the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic

In fact corona virus would not be dangerous if we were prepared. 

Compare resources governments allocate to medical research and the investment made in health systems to those directed towards military spending and consumerism, then we can understand why humanity has failed being prepared.

Let's take the US as an example:

Defense versus health care

Defense spending accounts for 15 percent of all federal spending while health care spending is 18%. Yet this is not accurate as half of discretionary spending that represents one-third of the annual federal budget is also spent on the military. So in fact we need to add 17% on military spending. 

We end up in about of 33% spending on the military versus 18% on Health care.

As to medical research, it is puny. 

Data derived from industry sources; federal, state, and local governments; academic and research institutions; hospital research centers; and grant-giving entities, found that the total amount that the United States spent on medical and health R&D in 2016 reached $171.8 billion only.