Outbreaks

Saturday, April 25, 2020, Corvid-19 Lockdown Day #38

In these strange times we’re stalked by a disease, unseeable, unpredictable, and too-little understood. This is clear in Netflix’s one-season Series, “Pandemic: How to prevent an outbreak”. The brand-new series, released last January, predates America’s official recognition of Coronavirus. It focuses on multiple worldwide pandemics of flu viruses and their impacts on societies worldwide.

A pandemic flu virus brings severe illness, disrupts societies, causes medical upheavals, and forces exhaustion and frustration upon front-line responders. The Netflix series details research, scientific and intensive, to discover a one-injection cure for all flu viruses. Ideally, an injection could be as effective as standard vaccinations that control measles and chickenpox, and would eliminate flues.

Viruses start in animal carriers, apparently. The avian flu began in birds, probably in China, before being transmitted worldwide to humans. In fighting that spread of bird flu, humans killed millions of birds, and videos of this are gruesome. Our current struggle isn’t against a flu virus, but instead a coronavirus. This one also began in an animal, most likely a bat, and in China where a diseased animal wound up for sale in a live-animal food market. The one or more humans who consumed that animal started the current pandemic.

Among what we’re learning is understanding that there are other coronaviruses, that another “new one” will infect humans in the near future. Our medical professionals and scientists know too little about coronaviruses, they’re scrambling for information and solutions. We’re learning that incredible numbers of people die quickly in the current Corvid-19 pandemic. We’re learning the necessity of staying apart, and practicing how to accomplish this to avoid infecting each other.

The Netflix Series dealing with flu viruses is much like our experience amid Corvid-19. Watching it is worthwhile and enlightening. The series introduces us to key players in the scientific/medical and research-funding community. They’re all is worth knowing about as we go forward, because before long, there will be more virus outbreaks. Those now involved with searches for scientific solutions will be communicating with and informing us.

Dear Friends: Ongoing semi-confinement, while wearing and depressing, is essential. Diana