Unpopular Opinion to #1000DaysOfCovid: SARS-CoV-2 is, as much as it is a dangerous, deadly, and debilitating pathogen, more on the “lighter” side of what pathogens can and could do to humankind.

The past precisely 1000 days since the first WHO recommendations almost all communication, medially but also medically, has been tainted by greed, simplification, demarcation, side-taking, politicking, and sloganeering.

Development of measures was led by financial and corporate interests, measures were hyped or put down, depending on feelings and sensitivities, not the commons and public health where first to be considered but elections, income statements, and cronyism.

Because SARS-CoV-2 is, as far as dirty bastards go, not the worst that could have happened to us, we are coasting OK. Not great, not fine, but OK. But whatever the next pathogen to emerge, and one will emerge, might be much more injurious.

We had a chance to make this right. To communicate clearly, to focus on the commons and public health, to state harsh but true realities rather than playing with hopes and fears to manipulate.

The spread of pathogens is a function of the mobility of humankind and moderated by it. The more mobile we become, the more likely a debilitating pathogen will go from small epidemic, the likes of which we have observed and largely ignored for decades, centuries even, to global pandemic. The bubonic plague killed 200 million people, in a much less mobile world (but mobile enough for it to spread).

We can’t dial back mobility, we can’t become xenophobic, cloistered, tribes again. But we can learn from this, accept (and this includes everyone, not just the antivax morons and antimasker idiots) that we were too led by fears and hopes, by simplification, by media click baits and politicking this time, and that we need to, urgently, all change how we deal with pathogenic spread.

We need to accept that social norms may not be medically and scientifically the most beneficial scenario, but that rather than dismantling society, we need to find ways to fight around them. We also need to become MUCH more sensitive to antibiotic stewardship (my money is on a resistant bacterium being the next big killer, they already are but don’t generally murder the kind of person that makes for good click bait articles).

We need to take health threats such as the rise of obesity related clinical overload and deaths, pollution related health problems, and nosocomial infections MUCH more serious. We need to sensitize each other for good hygiene and employers against the drive to place employee presence over employee health. And, yeah, we should probably normalize wearing medical masks if you feel sick or have a cough.

It’s been a 1000 days since the WHO announcement. Monday, March 2 2020. 1000 days since I wrote, to much hate mail from all corners of the Internet since, my first #mediverse post about SARS-CoV-2. And nothing much has changed.

1000 days is a hell of a long time. It’s a shame how little we’ve advanced since.