(gentle music)
In the span of just a few months,
the novel virus known as COVID-19
has wrecked havoc on our world.
The value of shares fell off a cliff.
Creating sudden impacts,
not only to people's health
but also economic wellbeing and general psyche.
Everyone's very fearful at the moment,
and the question mark is where does this end.
The medical crisis which first emerged
in late December of 2020 in Wuhan, China,
quickly spread to more than 100 countries
on six continents.
Confirmed infections climbed above 100,000,
leaving more than 5,000 deaths.
Those most at risk:
older people or patients with underlying illness.
Part of the coronavirus family of pathogens,
named for their structural spikes,
COVID-19 may be related to the common cold
but it can be much more dangerous.
Like the other coronaviruses which caused outbreaks
of severe acute respiratory syndrome
and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome,
SARS and MERS.
All morning, ambulances moved victims
of the new killer virus.
SARS patients effectively in quarantine
until the disease is under control.
These are often quite nasty airborne-spread diseases
that kind of reside somewhere in the respiratory system
and can be quite contagious.
COVID-19 symptoms include coughing, fever,
and shortness of breath.
The virus damages the lungs, causing pneumonia.
And we know that it's replicating quite efficiently,
both in the upper and lower respiratory tract of humans,
so this is a virus that is already well adapted
to replication in humans
and that's why we're seeing the spread that we're seeing.
Every day we're learning more and more and more.
Obviously, because this is a novel virus,
and even though we've been through this rodeo before
with MERS and SARS,
there's still so many unknowns.
And that's why the World Health Organization,
or WHO, declared a pandemic as of March 11th,
after repeatedly stressing
the serious nature of the situation.
This is not a drill.
This is not the time to give up.
This is not a time for excuses.
This is a time for pulling out all the stops.
(machine whooshing)
The fight is on,
and the most effective strategies aim first
to prompt preparations
and then contain and mitigate the damage.
This is not the first contagion we've confronted,
and history contains lessons about what works
and sometimes what doesn't.
Pandemic are a major threat,
but we are in the position now in 2020
to fight a pandemic.
COVID-19 travels through the air
in respiratory droplets,
like those contained in a cough or sneeze.
Exactly how long the exposed virus can survive
is unknown, perhaps a couple of hours.
So touching infected surfaces,
like handrails, doorknobs, or tabletops,
has the potential to transmit the disease,
as do personal greetings.
If you shake hands, you're open to transferring
bio matter that's contagious
and then touching your face,
which can lead to the spread of the disease
in one's own body.
It's extraordinary how many times each hour
we touch our face,
so regular hand washing is extremely important.
Once the virus establishes itself
in a population,
passing person to person,
it's much harder to contain.
So American health officials recognize the crisis will grow.
And then, when you get community spread,
it makes the challenge much greater.
So I can say we will see more cases
and things will get worse than they are right now.
But how might we stave off
the most dire eventualities?
The first things to do is to contain
by lowering the transmissibility of the disease,
and how to do that is
through what we call social distancing.
So it's important to identify cases and infections
as soon as possible
and isolate those people within the right hospital setting
so that they cannot transmit the disease
to other individuals.
But with an average incubation period
of five days
and symptoms often not occurring until day 12,
COVID-19 can move quickly and quietly.
We do know that those individuals
who might not be actually be experiencing
any symptoms of illness
have the capacity to spread it,
which means that public health responses
need to figure out ways
to even monitor the health and potential transmission rates
amongst people who appear by all understandings
to be healthy.
And that will change how we live our lives.
Curtailing large public gatherings like sporting events,
political rallies, even religious services.
(children chattering)
While children appear to be at low risk
to the virus' most dangerous effects,
they could be transmission vectors
and unknowingly spread the virus.
One reason school closures will likely increase.
Controlling contact with potentially infected individuals
becomes critical,
as does the behavior of those already feeling ill,
according to the Center for Disease Control.
You may need to take a break
from your normal daily routine for two weeks,
so staying home when you are sick is really important.
Don't let the illness spread beyond you.
Stay away as much as you can from other people.
The WHO estimated
a COVID-19 death rate of 3.4%.
An alarming figure which may vary country by country,
trending higher in places with older populations
or overloaded health systems.
But many people who contract the disease
may only suffer mild symptoms,
so two weeks self-imposed isolation practices are encouraged
for anyone suspected of coming in contact with the virus.
When it comes to COVID-19,
it's not just your health you need to worry about,
it's the health of those around you
and who you might infect
even if you're not necessarily feeling so bad yourself.
Ultimately, the goal is
to limit the transmission
and keep hospitals open and accessible.
I think there's a well tried-and-tested phrase,
and that is to be alert but not alarmed.
I think the last thing we need is panic about this virus.
You don't want the healthcare system to be overwhelmed,
that's one of the major way to fight the disease.
(guns firing)
In 1918, the Spanish flu encountered
a planet on the brink,
already stretched thin by World War I.
(guns firing)
For an opportunistic disease, this was the perfect moment.
Around the world, resources were scarce,
health systems had been taxed by the war,
and as a result we were not, as a species,
we were not in a great position
to respond to a major global epidemic.
An estimated 50 million people died worldwide,
including 675,000 which occurred in America.
Devastating, but could it have been even worse?
So, what we saw, specially in the United States,
the towns and cities that implemented
non-pharmaceutical interventions
aimed at social distancing earlier
were more effective at preventing the worst effects
of epidemic spread and ultimately death.
Perhaps technology today
will be an ally in this regard.
Some businesses can continue remotely
through mandatory telework.
Students can receive instructions online.
Of course, in other ways,
our modern lifestyles and interconnected world
often benefits our virological opponents.
And as the world has become increasingly more globalized,
the pace of trade and traffic has increased
with faster ships, faster planes,
faster mechanisms of trade.
The concern for epidemic spread around the world
has become even more significant.
And every place in the world is one flight away
from almost all other places.
And as we always say, disease have no borders.
But countries will seek
to protectively seal themselves off from the virus.
Israel now requires all international arrivals
to self-quarantine for a period of two weeks,
and the United States issued new restrictions for travel
for most of Europe.
To keep new cases from entering our shores,
we will be suspending all travel
from Europe to the United States
for the next 30 days.
In the early days
of this public health emergency,
the Chinese government limited travel
during the New Year holiday,
hoping to stem the tide of the disease,
locking down 60 million people in Hubei Province,
including 11 million in the city of Wuhan,
the epidemic's first epicenter.
The bustling mega city quickly turned into a ghost town.
The scale of the quarantines in China
really are on a level that we haven't see as humans ever.
But then, the second week of March saw Italy,
the hardest-hit country in Europe, follow suit,
putting the whole country under red zone restrictions,
all 60 million people.
Drastic times call for drastic measures.
School closings, business suspensions, and curfews.
(gentle music)
This, in the country where quarantines originated
during the Middle Ages to protect poor cities like Venice
from incoming disease.
Where the word quarantine comes from quarantena,
which is basically the withholding or control of ships
or goods or people for a period of 40 days.
And this quarantines were largely imposed
in response to the threat of bubonic plague,
so this was the period around the Black Death in Europe
which obviously was devastating.
Those early quarantines evolved
into the controlled enclosure
of districts impacted by disease.
The city health authority
would attempt to shut down spaces,
control and sanitize the streets.
Despite not understanding necessarily germ theory,
these were kind of early sanitary practices
that would attempt to kind of tidy up
a potential infectious space.
Quarantines, however, can be manipulated
and expand inequities and injustice.
In 1901 in Cape Town, the arrival of bubonic plague
in the city was met with very aggressive
racially-specific quarantining and segregation
of much of the city's black African population.
This model of forced removal really formed the model,
the architecture for what we think of as
one of the quintessential forms of social control
that we saw in the 20th century,
the South African Apartheid township.
In 2020, in order to be successful
against COVID-19,
prevention and preparation measures
must be uniformly implemented.
(mumbles) for everybody,
for the human kind.
We need to think about countries
that might have less ready and prepared care systems,
but there is a lot that we can do.
That requires investment, that requires preparation.
Although it seems a big cost now,
it will be much less than the bill
that a pandemic that goes unchecked will present us.
From 2014 to 2016,
West African nations Sierra Leon, Guinea, and Liberia
endured an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus.
Going in to collect the Ebola dead
is one of the riskiest jobs in the world right now,
but these Red Cross volunteers know
it's one that has to be done.
All the evidence suggests the majority of new Ebola cases
are directly linked to people
who had contact with a dead body.
Burying people quickly and safely is key
to getting this outbreak under control.
The last time a loved one might have seen their beloved
was at the moment when they were taken away in an ambulance,
and because burials had to be taken care of
in a particularly sanitized way,
it often meant that loved ones and families
never got to say goodbye
and, in some cases, may not have known
where their family members were actually buried.
(people speaking in foreign language)
Altering burial customs
took a great emotional toll
and endangered the safety of healthcare workers.
The outbreak killed more than 11,000 people
before health authorities lifted the crisis,
but grassroots education efforts
helped lead to behavioral change
impacting the course of infection.
I think we can look at aspects of the Ebola response,
specially community-led aspects of the Ebola response,
as very successful in West Africa,
i.e. responses that relied on support of the public.
So these were practices like refraining from shaking hands,
the application and implementation of hand washing stations
outside of restaurants, hotels, major buildings,
post offices, et cetera,
to provide access to sanitary and hygienic services,
and also curfews and the limitations
on large public gatherings.
Some of those same practices
can help combat COVID-19.
Washing your hands thoroughly,
minimizing contact with infected people
by employing social distancing tactics.
The beauty of the human spirit
and also the human race as social animals
means that even in the absence
of some of our most basic forms of greeting or interaction,
it doesn't mean we can't figure out new ones
in response to a moment of crisis.
An army of scientists around the world
race to develop a vaccine to combat COVID-19,
but these efforts take time,
and the coronavirus health crisis grows.
Uncertain future, perhaps, but not all is lost.
The bottom line is we're not at the mercy of the virus.
The great advantage we have
is that the decisions we all make
as governments, businesses, communities,
families and individuals
can influence the trajectory of this epidemic.
(tense music)