The coronavirus (covid-19) has stolen every landscape in the world today, with an outrageous threat of sweeping the world clean from human existence. Nations; both the mighty and puny, are reeling before the Wuhan-native and SARS-like virus as they aversely count corpse of their citizens daily – an avid reminder of how our health system has failed to provide any treatment for coronavirus.
One of the most confronting challenges is the growing short of health workers as new cases of covid-19 patients surge across many Nations. Over 2 million confirmed coronavirus cases have been recorded globally as of this writing. In the United State, for instance, many states have recalled some of their retired health workers just to come up with a fair fight against the growing number of covid-19 patients.
But have we really recognized what we are dealing with? According to the United Nations in a tweet, “The #coronavirus outbreak could cost the global economy up to $2 trillion this year.” This is just a tip from many other postulations focusing on how much the world could lose to covid-19 financially. Considering the virus’ rate of spread, this could be a time to learn from the mistakes of our ancestors in a similar outbreak.
Lessons from the past
Bubonic plague remains the world’s most devastating pandemic ever recorded in human history, with total deaths of between 75 – 125 million, according to George M. Gould’s Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine. At its peak, between 1347 and 1670, Black Death was a “major demographic regulator” across Europe. At least 60 percent of Bremen and Hamburg citizens gave up their existence to Black Death. Italy lost nearly half of its population, while Florence crumbled with a loss of about 80 percent of its human count.
Of course, the world has changed a lot in recent times, into a place that’s fairly well-advanced to accept such a catastrophe. We have seen vast improvements in medicine and most importantly in the hygiene level across our streets. But it seems we are more concerned about our self-made laws than confronting covid-19 with a level of force that could be enough to flatten its rate of spread while we remain sane enough to handle preexisting challenges.
Social distancing is not new. It was fully practiced at the time of the Black Death pandemic, according to Knopf’s narratives in A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. To reveal the shocker, our modern-day buildings are, by far, more clustered than what the 14th-century citizens of the world had. And who were those allowed to treat patients with Black Death? Of course, professionals in health care.
Do we chase the smoke and leave our fire?
Short of health workers is not only threatening our capacity to absorb cases of covid-19 in many nations but has imposed a more-pitiable health-care system on us. Patients with other health challenges now struggle to gain the attention of health care providers, as the chase to save more patients with coronavirus intensifies. Yet, there’s no cure for covid-19.
According to many recovered patients (I saw on YouTube, but can fetch any at the moment), the only available treatment for coronavirus is to treat the symptoms. Really? Hence, recovery is strictly based on the patient’s immune system and the level of care received. This gives us a better chance to handle then.
Drop the license
I think it’s time to consider deploying more forces by recruiting pseudo-health caregivers to covid-19 patients from related fields. This should increase our chances of remaining afloat since the treatment is more like a routine practice, which almost anyone knowledgeable about how diseases spread can handle, with a little training. While the licensed healthcare professionals remain in charge of how each patient would be treated and the drugs to be administered, these specially trained covid-19 healthcare givers (pseudo-nurses) would help to reduce the pressure on our doctors and nurses.
Adopting pseudo-health workers for covid-19 should not only serve as a conscious move to remove routine-like practices in treating coronavirus patients on the neck of the overburdened health sector. It would help the world to circumvent the covid-19-induced challenges in our various health sectors, which is gradually taking away the normal hospital system where patients with other health issues are treated.
Further reading
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century – Knopf
“The Black Death: The History and Legacy of the Middle Ages’ Deadliest Plague” – Charles River Editors
Coronavirus world map: which countries have the most cases and deaths? – World Meters
Anomalies and curiosities of medicine – George M. Gould
Retired health workers urged to return as US coronavirus cases set to spike – The Guardian
How much the coronavirus will cost the world’s economy – World Economic ForumThe Black Death, The Great Mortality of 1348-1350: A Brief History with Documents – John Aberth
