• Question: Did you thought the coved-10 was going to go so far?

    Asked by anon-256945 on 15 Jun 2020.
    • Photo: Eleanor Williams

      Eleanor Williams answered on 15 Jun 2020:

      I must admit I thought initially it would be more like the MERS and SARS outbreaks before where it spread differently and thus was easier to contain.

    • Photo: Evelyn Greeves

      Evelyn Greeves answered on 15 Jun 2020:

      Hi Iago! I’m no expert on viruses or epidemiology (the study of how disease spreads) but I can try and answer your question on a personal basis.

      I definitely didn’t think the pandemic would go on so long. I study biology, so the science-y part of my brain definitely knew it was likely to go on a long time. However, the other part of my brain, which likes seeing my friends and living a normal life, didn’t want to believe it. You might have experienced something similar at the start of the pandemic. It can sometimes be really difficult for our brains to process big, sudden changes, so they protect us by pretending nothing is happening!

      As time went on and I got used to our new, socially-distanced way of life, I was able to accept the probability that the pandemic would go on a long time. I don’t like it, but I don’t worry about it as much as I used to. I hope it’s the same for you.

    • Photo: Luke Hillary

      Luke Hillary answered on 16 Jun 2020:

      Hi Iago. At the start, I was relatively relaxed, but once it spread outside of China, I began thinking this was going to be big. We were overdue a big pandemic and a lot of people thought that it would be flu that caused it, so weren’t prepared for a coronavirus. Thankfully, the measures different governments have taken have limited it so far but it’s far from over. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a second wave of cases in Europe. The only way this truly ends is if we can develop an effective vaccine, and that probably won’t be widely available until 2021.

    • Photo: Martin Coath

      Martin Coath answered on 16 Jun 2020:

      It was impossible to know in the early days if this was going to be another outbreak like MERS and SARS (as Eleanor mentions). These both looked like potential world problems, but people, thankfully, got on top of them.
      I was due to run a series of workshops in northern Italy in March/April and many of my contacts there work in hospitals. And I also play in a string quartet (violin) and one other member is an ICU consultant. I was getting strong messages from the mid February that this was something that was going to affect everyones lives. 🙁

    • Photo: Anabel Martinez Lyons

      Anabel Martinez Lyons answered on 16 Jun 2020:

      In short (at least for me), no! Early on, there were many scientific models to predict just how ‘bad’ the COVID-19 outbreak was going to be. Some of these models predicted infection rates, others predicted the death tolls per country, but the reality has been quite different to all of these I think. Governments in different countries have introduced lockdown measures at different times and with different guidelines, and this has resulted in different rates of infection and death depending where you are in the world. Another factor that has greatly affected these numbers are who actually gets sick (the elderly and those with certain other medical conditions, for example). So populations that have more elderly or ‘vulnerable’ people (think of nursing homes in the UK) have had a far worse time of it than other groups of people. Hope that helps answer your question! 🙂

    • Photo: Melanie Krause

      Melanie Krause answered on 16 Jun 2020:

      Hi! 🙂
      I am a virologist and at some point in February/March the WHO declared that by the end of 2020 up to 70% of the world population could be infected. At that point I was pretty sure it would get as big of an issue as it did. But in January already we heard that the incubation period was very long (the time where you don’t show symptoms but often can already spread the virus) and that many people had no symptoms at all. That is different from MERS and SARS so as a virologist I already thought then it would be a huge issue.
      However, that it got as big as its did in some countries (especially the UK, USA and Brasil) is to a large part down to how late and incorrectly the government reacted… that I didn’t see coming.

    • Photo: Aisling Ryan

      Aisling Ryan answered on 16 Jun 2020:

      Honestly, I had no idea! Even though I can understand how viruses work I still could never predict how long it would take for us to overcome this one. Every single virus is different, so it is impossible to know in advance. I think the problem with COVID-19 is how easily it spreads. If it didn’t spread so easily it wouldn’t be so important to lockdown countries and keep everyone safe at home.
      Although it has been going on for a long time, this also means we are closer to being out the other side! Lots of scientists and nurses and doctors are working really hard to keep us safe from this virus and all we can do is trust them and listen to all of the new advice that gets shared everyday 🙂
      We are all in this together!

    • Photo: Donna MacCallum

      Donna MacCallum answered on 22 Jun 2020:

      I had no real idea that COVID-19 was going to be a serious as it has ended up being… It traveled much further and faster than other recent epidemics (like ebola and SARS and MERS)…

Comments