How to evaluate the epidemic situation in 2020?

Today is 65438+February 3 1, the last day of 2020. I sat silently in the school library, feeling the quiet time under the cold winter and the north wind. In my mobile phone, one side is such news-epidemic prevention and control | good news! COVID-19 vaccine is free for everyone. On the one hand, the White House has always been responsible for the news that the number of confirmed cases in COVID-19 in the United States has exceeded 20 million, and the increasing death toll is comparable to 9 1 1.

As a professional in preventive medicine and public health, I think it is necessary for me to write something. Because when we look back, we find that the past 365 days have changed history-and we are all witnesses of this history. COVID-19 epidemic, as the largest world-class infectious disease epidemic in modern history since the end of World War II, has reached the realm of "breaking through imagination"-even I, a public health student.

Before the COVID-19 swept through, we didn't pay much attention to the prediction made by Bill Gates in the 20 15 Ted speech (see: Bill Gates' super-visionary ted speech: we are not ready for the next explosion), because we always believed that we were blue stars armed to the teeth by modern civilization in the 2 1 century.

From high-rise buildings to high-speed rail, from tanks and rockets to computer phones, what else is beyond human reach? As for the words "plague" and "epidemic situation of infectious diseases", they should have been thought by the "weak" ancients hundreds of years ago or 1000 years ago, and have nothing to do with us modern people.

However, in 2020, COVID-19 refused to accept the rule of tyranny, and was good at crushing the arrogance of "the essence of the universe, the soul of all things is long": whether you are a "chosen person" or a "western aristocrat", whether you are a popular star or a politician in a high position, this time, you will still be beaten all over with a dry cough-even hard enough to send you to see God. Wise people among us will find that from one point of view, compared with our ancestors, they faced the second world Black Death epidemic in the14th century.

This time, there seems to be no essential difference: when human beings face infectious diseases and pathogens, their bodies are still so fragile, unbearable and small-this is the saddest, cruelest and truest first fact. And the second fact we have to admit is that our life trajectory after the COVID-19 epidemic and the national trajectory of various countries at present, just like their life trajectory after the Black Death epidemic and the national trajectory of their country at that time, have been changed forever:

From personal micro-lifestyle, work content, social habits to national macro-political, economic, industrial and commercial, diplomatic public opinion, changes have taken place (I want to add here that many people will compare the COVID-19 epidemic with the Spanish epidemic of 19 18;

However, as far as the impact on later generations is concerned, it seems that the biggest and highest impact of the Spanish epidemic of 19 18 mainly lies in the end of World War I, and it is more like a subordinate relative of this major event of World War I, but the epidemic of the Second World Black Death is more like this major event itself, and it is the initial factor that completely changes the trend of world history in the next 300-500 years, and the latter's influence degree is far ahead. At this moment, as at that time; That moment, just like this moment.