The Unsurfaced Risks of Covid-19
The last semester of my sixth grade was fun - as I learned to play instruments in a band, made new friends, and looked forward to school dances and sporting events that all middle school kids get excited about - until that one day in April 2020 when schools closed nationwide and classes went virtual. A virus called COVID-19 took over the world by storm. The world changed quickly - closings of schools and businesses, travel restrictions, masks, social distancing, quarantine, testing, virtual meetings and diminishing supplies quickly became the norm for many. Pandemic left all of us uncertain and concerned for the path ahead of us.
Fast forward four years, and life has almost completely returned to what it used to be pre-pandemic: empty shelves of sanitizing supplies in stores are now stacked, social distancing has become an obsolete expression, students are back in their classrooms, and travel regulations are no longer strict.
Now that we have lived with the virus for four years, its direct effects may not seem as visible anymore: the death rates and infection rates are drastically lowering, and the disease is having a diminishing effect on daily life. However, there are still debates among many on how to handle COVID-19: do we treat it as a seasonal virus like the flu or do we take more precautions with the virus?
To understand whether the coronavirus will become a seasonal one, we must understand what makes a virus seasonal. Seasonal viruses such as the flu mutate very slowly, allowing the immune system and vaccines to change accordingly to mutations and defend against the virus effectively. Another contributing factor would be aerial-born droplets, which are more present during the winter, causing a rapid spread of respiratory diseases. Some research even suggests that the immune system may become weaker during the winter.
Additionally, weakened immune systems in the elderly and in children may cause these viruses to be especially detrimental. Similarly, we had no immunity to the virus when it first started spreading, causing the incredibly quick diffusion of the disease globally. As vaccines were developed, the original strain of disease could be prevented easily as our immune system adapted; however, COVID-19 has a tendency to change quickly enough to nullify the efforts of the immune system. This is the reason that Covid cannot be a seasonal disease such as the common flu. And unfortunately, it is hard to keep up with developing and responding to the effects of Covid as it mutates too quickly for our immune systems to catch up. Subsequently, new variants of the disease are quickly hospitalizing thousands of people globally, and replicating the effects of the original strain on the world.
The unpredictable nature of the virus, hence, enforces us to take extra precautions. We need to stay wary of the disease’s progression and gain more knowledge about it. Although its effects have grown drastically obscure over time, the virus is still spreading and can mutate at any given moment. To prevent a potential second wave from happening, we still need to take these extra precautions until we are sure we are able to train our immune systems to defend against the Covid or until the virus falls into a safe seasonal pattern in which we can prepare to defend against it.
The 2020’s has been impacted very heavily by the global takeover of Covid-19, and how the disease will play a role in our future lives remains a critical question to be answered. If we are able to keep precautions, developments of research and an increase in immunizations the disease may just become a seasonal disease, yet until then, given varying factors regarding mutations and our immunities, we still need to keep a careful eye on the virus.
