It will be the start of a new year, 2023 in another ten days and the whole world is looking at putting the last painful three years behind them. However, we may not be that lucky going by what’s happening all around. Yes, it is about the Covid pandemic that continues to haunt us from time to time. Originated in Wuhan, China in December, 2019 the world continues to bleed from the pandemic and its aftershocks even after three years with no end in sight.
There’s some disappointing news coming in now from China, United States, Brazil, South Korea and a few other countries about resurgence of covid infections. Particularly China since the pandemic has again assumed dangerous proportions. While the rest of the world more or less had been vaccinated and started living with the virus, China adopted a strategy of zero covid till now, where even few infections prompted Chinese authorities to impose strict lockdown. Herd immunity is a combination of immunity gained from vaccination or prior infection, that slows down the further spread of the diseases.
China made vaccines have been less effective and the virus didn’t pass through the population widely so that people can recover and be immune from then on. Hence, after wide protests, China abruptly lifted all restrictions and what the world faced two years ago, China is facing now. The flip side is when the virus again infects millions at once, more is the likelihood of new variants. This is how the Delta variant originated in India in 2021 and created havoc everywhere. Now the science community is looking at the alarming cases in China and getting ready for new variants. At a time when it was thought that we have put the worst behind, the rapid surge and the possibility of more deadly variants arising from China, is giving a scarier picture.
Epidemiologists are predicting at least two million deaths in China in the next three to four months alone. People from all over the world have been looking forward to a less burdensome 2023 and here we are. Still, there’s some hope that if travel from China is curtailed, it can be a bit normal. But the resurgence of infections from other parts of the world is worrying everyone once again. The only hope is to once again mask up and get booster doses of vaccination.
