What I’d like to be writing in 6 months from now.

What I’d like to be writing in 6 months from now.

FABRIZIO CACCIATORE·FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2020·2 MINUTES10 Reads

What have we learned from the COVID19 incident?

In the last 20 years or so we faced a number of worldwide health menaces. Ranging from SARS in 2002 to COVID19 in 2020. We could count over 20 epidemics (NOT pandemics) since 2001. The highest toll any of them took was the 2009 influenza, counting 203,000 deaths worldwide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic . We called it the Swine Flu. In the early years we had bland reactions and small outbursts of panic in response to the news of such diseases posing a danger to all of us. As time progressed, and information started travelling faster and swifter, we started increasing our emotional level of response to the reports. Humans have always experienced epidemics of all sorts through the ages. Today we are able to find out everything about anything in real time, but a new virus needs a new vaccine to be stopped, and we do not have vaccines for new viruses. Rightfully, we tend to panic a bit.


A new virus will do its job regardless of what we Tweet, nonetheless,we can protect ourselves with knowledge by staying home when we know the virus is around our zip code; or we can refrain from exposing others if we fear we may be infected. As the Corona Virus ended with casualties smaller than the regular flu, shouldn’t we gather our thoughts and decide we are going to start reacting with a grain of salt to the media assaults? (pun intended).


50 years ago, or even before, when there was an epidemic in another country, the most we’d see would be a line in the local paper about a neighbor cancelling their trip to China. I am not saying we are over-reacting today. I am saying we are over-rationalizing the information we fagocitate. Once a virus starts community spreading, you may stay home, you may wear masks, you may binge buy toilet paper, but the virus will take its course and go away when it is done doing what it needs to do. This has happened through the centuries to all humanity.

I understand that this sounds naive and unrealistic, but it’d be advisable to just chill, and let life go by as it is supposed to.

My 2c.