The movie “Contagion” is premised on a novel virus breaking out globally. Entire countries went into lockdown. All hell broke loose. People started hoarding supplies. The streets became quiet. Global market had a nose-dive. Democratically elected governments worldwide started to hide information from the people, and the people lost trust in their governments. The rate of death, although not very high, did alarm everyone.
Exclusivity of the SARS-CoV 2
A disease that breaks out widely and infects a huge chunk of the population while also causing deaths is called a pandemic. There has been a good number of pandemics in the past, namely the great plague of London in 1665, Anthrax in 2001 and COVID-19 in 2019. Pandemics can be divided into slow pandemics and fast pandemics.
A fast pandemic is the kind where a huge number of people get affected within a short period of time. The problem with this is that, during a novel outbreak, the hospitals lack the infrastructures to accommodate this large number of people while also trying to find a cure. This means that there is a high chance that many of the patients will die without proper treatment. What this further means is that there will be some patients who would never know that they are infected because of lack of testing kits, so they would remain in local habitats and keep spreading the disease.
During a slow pandemic, the virus spreads wide but at a slower rate. Patients keep coming to hospitals in turns. This gives doctors the time to take care of one batch of patients before the next batch comes in; while also investing resources in a preventive for the disease.
Everything ultimately breaks down to time, when speaking of pandemics. The crucial period during a pandemic is the time required to come up with a cure.
So far, most of the countries have already gone into lockdown. It has been instructed to limit contact with other people. In Bangladesh, there are almost 2000 patients for a single physician per day (NCTB). Hospitals lack bedding facilities to accommodate the pre-existing patients. The probable coronavirus patients are being quarantined. IEDCR (Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research) has been unable to test all probable patients due to the shortage of testing kits. The total number of coronavirus patients in Bangladesh is significantly lower compared to other countries because we just cannot afford to test everyone that needs to be tested. It’s safe to assume that we do not have the means to disclose the actual number, and that we are at a deadly threat.
Are we doomed?
There have been 783,266 confirmed cases of coronavirus throughout the globe as of March 30, 2020 (WorldOMeter). A matter of relief is that only 4.33% of these cases have ended in deaths. 29.18% have recovered from COVID-19. A secondary source suggests that patients that have fully recovered from the disease started testing positive again. The rate of deaths is also going up, whereas the rate of recoveries is going down.
Lucky for us, 165,214 cases have been closed so far of which 87% have recovered.
Statistics suggest that older people are more likely to be at risk for life due to coronavirus. This is because older people have weaker immune systems, which means a SARS-CoV attack would leave their body vulnerable to every other pathogen floating around in the air. Deaths are exponentially more common among older people than the younger ones (see graph).
Bangladesh so far has 49 confirmed cases of coronavirus infection, among which two have died. The numbers are unlikely to be this low in a country that is this densely populated. Although there is no cause for panic, a nation-wide lockdown is in the best of interests according to the opinion of the author.
According to a forecast conducted by Dr. Malay Kanti Mridha, by the end of May, some 8.9 million Bangladeshis could get symptomatic infections of whom 507,442 could die. The forecast has supposedly been conducted independently by Dr. Mridha.
While panic is no solution, this is also true that coronavirus has already established that it is dangerous. Coronavirus has taken lives, and the rate of taking lives has been going up. According to an independent research conducted by the author, the rate of recovery has fallen by 20% in the last week alone. People are powerless, the only thing to do is wait at homes for a cure.
