PARIS, 27 FRANCE. – When the world greeted the new decade in the midst of the joy and fireworks of January 1, no one could imagine what would happen to us. brings 2020.
In the last 12 months, the new coronavirus has paralyzed economies, devastated communities and locked up nearly 4 billion people in their homes. It was a year that changed the world, like no other in at least a generation, probably since WWII.
More than 1.7 million people have died. Close 80 million have officially contracted the virus, although the real number is certainly much higher. Many children were orphaned, families were torn apart and the disease was stronger than thousands and thousands of elderly people, who in many cases died in total loneliness because visits were forbidden because of the risk they posed.
All over the world, family gatherings around the Christmas holidays have been hampered by traffic restrictions or health regulations, due to the emergence of a new virus strain in the UK that appears to be more contagious.
“This pandemic is a unique life experience for all current inhabitants of the Earth,” said Sten Vermund, an epidemiologist and dean of the Yale School of Public Health. “Virtually no one was spared.”
But covid-19 is not the deadliest pandemic in history. The Black Death destroyed a quarter of the world’s population in the fourteenth century, at least 50 million people died from the so-called Spanish flu of 1918-19 and 33 million people died of AIDS.
But to get this coronavirus, something as simple as breathing in the wrong place at the wrong time is enough.
“I went to the gates of hell and came back”says Wan Chunhui, a 44-year-old Chinese survivor who spent 17 days in hospital. “I saw with my own eyes how others failed to overcome it and died, which shocked me terribly.”
No one could have imagined the magnitude of the global disaster when on December 31, China reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) 27 cases of “viral pneumonia of unknown origin” that puzzled doctors in Wuhan.
– The first case in Wuhan –
The next day, authorities closed the Wuhan animal market, originally linked to the outbreak. On January 7, Chinese authorities announced that they had identified the new virus, which they named 2019-nCoV. On January 11, China announced its first death in Wuhan. Within days, there were cases in Asia, France and the United States.
At the end of January, the countries began to repatriate their fellow citizens from China. The world’s borders have begun to close and more than 50 million people living in Hubei Province, of which Wuhan is the capital, have been quarantined.
AFP images of a dead man in the middle of the street, with a mask and a plastic bag in his hand, have become an expression of fear, although the cause of death has never been officially confirmed.
The same happened with the cruise ship “Diamond Princess”, anchored off the coast of Japan, in which over 700 people were infected with the virus and 13 died.
As the horror spread worldwide, the race for the vaccine began. A small German biotechnology lab called BioNTech has set aside its cancer research to start another project. Your name? “Speed of light”.
On February 11, the WHO named the disease covid-19. Four days later, France confirmed the first death outside Asia. Europe watched in horror as northern Italy became the European epicenter of the virus.
“It’s worse than the war,” said Orlando Gualdi, mayor of the Lombard city of Vertova in March, where 36 people died in 25 days. “It was absurd to believe that there could be a pandemic in 2020.”
First Italy, then Spain, France and the United Kingdom were closed. WHO has declared Covid-19 a pandemic. The US borders, closed to China, have also been closed to most European countries. For the first time in peacetime, the Summer Olympics have been postponed.
– Quarantine –
In mid-April, 3.9 billion people – half the world’s population – had to face some kind of closure. From Paris to New York, from London to Buenos Aires, the streets were filled with a silence often broken by the sound of ambulance sirens, which reminded us that death lay in wait.
Scientists had warned for decades about the risk of a global pandemic, but almost no one was listening to everyone, even the richest countries, fighting an invisible enemy.
In a globalized economy, supply chains have stopped. Consumers, in panic, emptied the supermarkets.
The chronic lack of investment in health has been blatantly demonstrated by hospitals ‘difficulties in coping with patients’ avalanches and the collapse of their intensive care services.
Health workers, often underpaid and with brutal workloads, fought a battle without the necessary protective equipment.
“I graduated in 1994, and public hospitals were completely abandoned then,” said a doctor in Bombay, India in May. “Why does it take a pandemic to wake people up?” He wondered.
In New York, the city with the most billionaires in the world, doctors had to carry garbage bags to protect themselves. A field hospital was erected in Central Park and mass graves were built on Hart Island in the East Bronx.
“It looked like we were living a horror movie,” said Virgilio Neto, mayor of the Brazilian city of Manaus in the Amazon. “We went from a state of emergency to a total disaster,” he said, as the bodies piled into refrigerated trucks, waiting for cars to finish digging common pits.
Business has closed its doors. Schools and universities. Sports competitions have been canceled. Flights have been suspended and the sector is facing the worst crisis in its history. Shops, bars, restaurants and hotels were also forced to hang the “closed” sign.
In Spain the closure was so severe that the children spent weeks without being able to leave their homes. People were suddenly trapped in small apartments for weeks on end.
Those who could, worked from home. Video conferencing has replaced meetings, business trips, and holidays. Those who did not have the opportunity to commute by telecommunications had a choice between taking risks or losing their jobs.
By May, the pandemic had wiped out 20 million jobs in the United States. The global recession could push 150 million people into extreme poverty by 2021, the World Bank has warned.
– Violence and recession –
Inequalities, which have increased in recent years, have been exposed as never before. We stopped kissing, hugging and shaking hands. Human contacts are now made behind screens and transparent masks.
Domestic violence has increased, as have mental health problems. While those with financial means and means spent time in their comfortable residences in the country or on the beach, the stress increased among many who were caught in the cities and the anger took to the streets. Governments have often shown their helplessness in the face of this unexpected and gigantic crisis.
US, which does not have a universal health system, it became fast the country most affected by the pandemic. More than 330,000 people died by the end of December, but President Donald Trump often downplayed the threat, advocating questionable treatments such as hydroxychloroquine or even suggesting the benefits of injecting a disinfectant.
In May, it launched Operation Speed of Light, for which the US government dedicated $ 11 billion to developing a vaccine against COVID-19 by the end of the year. Trump described it as the largest American project since the atomic bomb was created in World War II.
But the rich cannot buy their immunity, and in October Trump hired COVID-19, as did Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in July. Overseas, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent three days in intensive care in April.
Tom Hanks and his wife, football player Cristiano Ronaldo, world number one tennis player Novak Djokovic, Madonna, Prince Charles or Prince Albert of Monaco, among others, join the list of well-known characters who contracted the virus.
– The vaccine for 2021 –
The first vaccines arrived at the end of the year. Too late, however, to save Trump from his defeat to Joe Biden in November.
The American giant Pzifer, associated with BioNTech, announced that it has obtained a “90% effective” vaccine. The market is in turmoil, and governments are rushing to guarantee millions of doses for their citizens. One week later, the American laboratory Moderna announces that its vaccine is “95%” effective.
Governments are preparing to vaccinate millions of people, including the elderly, health workers and the most vulnerable, before launching massive campaigns that appear to be the only way to restore normalcy.
In December, the United Kingdom became the first Western country to license the vaccine developed by BioNTech and Pfizer. Russia and China have already started vaccination campaigns with their own vaccines.
The United States imitates him days later, and the European Union begins its vaccination on December 27.
Rich countries have secured millions of doses for their populations, and in 2021 there is likely to be a global race for vaccines, in which China and Russia will try to win the market and influence the cheapest, especially in Latin America and Africa.
It is still difficult to calculate the consequences of this pandemic. Some experts warn that it will take years to build the herd’s immunity through mass vaccination. Others predict that normalcy can be restored by the middle of next year.
For many, the pandemic has changed the image of telecommuting. If telecommunications has become normal, what will happen to office buildings in many cities? Is it possible for urban centers to be emptied when people do not have to physically go to work every day and migrate in search of a better quality of life, away from crowded public transport and closed spaces?
Others predict that the fear of high concentrations of people could have profound consequences, especially in tourism and travel, leisure or sporting events.
The impact on freedoms is also worrying. The Freedom House think tank warns that democracy and human rights have deteriorated in 80 countries as many governments have abused their power to control the virus.
“I think there will be profound changes in our society,” predicts Sten Vermund of Yale.
Difficult times are also waiting for the global economy. The IMF has warned that the recession will be worse than the one following the financial crisis of 2008. But for many, the pandemic heralds a much more lasting and devastating catastrophe.
“Covid-19 was a great wave that hit us and behind it is the tsunami of climate change and global warming,” says astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell, author of “Open in the Event of an Apocalypse,” a paper on how come back after a global catastrophe and on human endurance.