COVID-19 - An Essay
Today starts my COVID-19 essay project. There is so much information out there that I want to condense it down to a long-form post and offer my opinion on all. As I want to publish this later on my Medium account, I will start with a brief introduction and gather my notes below. Comments are heavily welcome but keep in mind this article will stay as a work in progress for quite some time.
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COVID-19
Corona is everywhere in the news. Newspapers, TV shows, blog articles. Everybody is talking and writing about it, it’s my turn now to put even more words out there. The following article is based on my personal experience and information I received. Facts might be false by now or aren’t correct in any way. All statements without guarantee.
Let’s start with a brief introduction of myself. My name is Philipp, I’m a 24-year-old Web developer from Austria. In my free time, I work as a volunteer paramedic at the Austrian Red Cross. Besides my paramedic training, I don’t have any medical experience and I apologize in advance for stuff I’m probably going to mess up.
Virus
Many things can lead to sick or injured humans. Accidents, bacteria, and Viruses to mention the largest three groups. One of the latter the so-called “Corona Virus” is putting huge pressure on worldwide health systems.
Let’s dig a little deeper into the start of this epidemic and pandemic disease. I’ll start with referring to the first published “Situation Report” by the WHO. According to it the WHO was informed about patients with pneumonia that was based on an unknown cause on December the 31. Through January the 3rd a sum of 44 patients evolved on this then-unknown cause.
Finally, on January the 7th, a new genome along the Coronavirus family was identified. Yes, there are more of them. The genetic sequence was quickly shared by 12th January so international research could begin.
By the 20th of January, there were a total of 282 patients. The virus was already spreading as cases started to evolve in other countries.
TODO graphic of patient count worldwide (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1\_qpkj\_oEHABRu20ETeOCkx9fAuaQrG0CPEPgUYAnE\_M/edit?usp=sharing)
It wasn’t long until the first patients showed up in the US (2020-01-24) and the European Union (2020-01-25). At that time I think nobody was expecting such a fast spread across such a large area. Depending on how you define “globally”, it was already spreading out everywhere and new cases popped up everywhere.
The outbreak in Europe, Italy the epicentre
At the end of January, Italy had its first cases. Nobody would have known that the epicentre of Europe will be there. The health system collapsed as more and more people got infected. It seemed like the government was reacting, but a little bit to slow to put a hold on new infections. Schools stayed open, the life of people almost continued normally at first. A national quarantine was ordered by the Italian government later on.
On the 11th of March, the WHO changed the declaration from an epidemic in China to a pandemic globally.
The outbreak and effect in Austria
On the 27th of February, the first confirmed case of the Corona Virus was announced in Vienna. A 69-year-old male. Not only was he the first confirmed infected, but also the first who would die in Austria by the side effects of the virus.
Just like in other countries the virus was spreading through Austria at a fast pace. The fact that a hospital in Styria has been directly affected and put under quarantine quickly spread a large panic on the people of the country.
People started to hoard toilet paper and canned food. The Austrian government reacted quicker than the Italian one. On the 09th of March, they put a hold on events with more than 100 people inside and events with more than 500 people outdoors.
This was not only affecting concerts but also cinemas and night clubs. Nobody had imagined such large restrictions. Other countries set their limits for events to 1000 and 5000 people. But that wasn’t the last restriction made by the government.
On Wednesday the 11th of March they continued to set restrictions. This time schools and kindergartens were restricted. By the start of Monday the 16th March, they were closed down. They also order people to use the opportunity of telework (home office), if their job would allow it.
TODO Closedown of markets not needed for supply, gyms and stuff for at least one week also by 2020-03-16
TODO Politics
TODO research some stuff on the history
TODO failure of the European Union
TODO https://outbreak.cc/
TODO https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
TODO https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports