The coronavirus pandemic attacked the world in 2020 and has continued to impact life as we all know it.
Though the pandemic came as a surprise to Americans and others around the world, the American government began silently implementing a plan of action long before the virus ever grabbed the attention of the country’s population. Two presidents initiated a safety net for the American people, but with a new president and cabinet, the work of the former presidents and their top advisers was obliterated. Now, as the country continues to grapple with COVID-19, many are wondering if there will ever be any relief in sight.
In July 1968, the world was met with the influenza A variant, the H3N2 virus. Lasting until 1970, the pandemic killed an estimated one to four million people worldwide. Before this, the 1957 H2N2 virus claimed 1.1 million lives worldwide with 116,000 in the United States. These pandemics combined were still considered mild in comparison to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic which killed 50 million people across the globe and infected 500 million in total worldwide in just 18 months.
The coronavirus has taken roughly 5.5 million lives worldwide with more than 300 million cases. With no signs of slowing down, COVID-19 is soaring in numbers. Since the official discovery of the virus in America in 2020, the country’s response has lagged due to unpreparedness and the elimination of prior plans laid out by former administrations. With an overwhelmed healthcare system, many are wondering if the end is near.
“COVID is ever-changing and this is unlike any other pandemic in history. You can’t really compare it to other pandemics because it’s its own unique virus and the mutation rate is astonishingly quick because it’s such a large vulnerable population,” said Dr. Allison Weinmann, senior staff, Infectious Diseases, and system medical director of Antimicrobial Stewardship for Henry Ford Hospital.
Former President George W. Bush took office in 2001. With controversy surrounding his eight-year term, from a terrorist attack to a war, President Bush took a lot of heat from political critics and voters. As the 43rd president, he enacted several laws and plans for the American people, including the country’s response in the case of a flu-like pandemic. In 2005, he launched the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza. Under this plan, steps the nation would take to prepare, detect, and respond to a potential pandemic were outlined. The plan also laid the foundation for how the federal government, along with state and local governments, the private sectors, international populations and U.S. residents were to respond.
President Bush warned of an impending influenza-type virus and its potential to overtake global measures. Initially concerned about the H5N1 strand of the flu virus, the president began to prepare for the virus’ spread from birds to humans. Though H5N1 was the focus, the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza was developed as the country’s response for a viral influenza pandemic of any kind.
During his term, President Barack Obama continued to lay the foundation for a speedy response to a potential pandemic. In 2014, President Obama addressed the nation to warn of an impending virus. When Donald Trump assumed the presidency in 2017, America could not have predicted the tyranny and mayhem that would ensue under his reign and the pandemic that would sweep the globe.
“There used to be a pandemic preparedness team, I believe it was under the Obama administration, and that was pretty much disbanded, at least up under the Trump administration and before that,” said Dr. Weinmann. “It wasn’t funded properly and so on. What you’ve got is a bunch of infectious disease doctors all over the country saying we’re going to have a pandemic at some point and there wasn’t an orchestrated response as we saw at the beginning of the pandemic.”
As the COVID-19 virus continues to mutate, new strains with increasing severity are created. Now, the omicron variant has proved to be the most transmissible strain since its onset, but not the deadliest.
“It was a completely vulnerable population worldwide because there was no prior immunity to COVID. The repeatability of spread and the transmissibility, and its high mortality rate, and the fact that our globe is just much smaller. So, pandemics have an opportunity to travel in a way that never before has been the case,” said Dr. Weinmann.
With no prior knowledge of the virus, doctors are working to uncover the mechanisms of COVID. As pandemics have swept the globe and claimed millions of lives before, doctors are unable to predict how COVID will behave in comparison to other pandemics.
“I think it’s interesting to look at other pandemics, but I don’t really think it illuminates what’s going to happen with COVID. Each pandemic in itself is worth studying and I think it’s more worth studying for looking at emergency preparedness before the next one, but I don’t think you can compare one disease state to another to predict what’s going to happen,” said Dr. Weinmann.
With 57 percent of Michiganders vaccinated, doctors are encouraging the remainder of the population to take the necessary precautions to slow the spread, including vaccines, boosters and masks. If the virus continues to mutate, medical professionals fear it may get worse before it becomes better.
“There may, and we all fear this at some point, be a very transmissible form of COVID and omicron is at least two to four times more transmissible than Delta and alpha strains, that is also deadlier and we are not protecting ourselves, certainly as a state,” said Dr. Weinmann.
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