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When the Covid pandemic began to rage for the first time a year a regular call was that “Science will save us!” And I had no doubt it would. But what I couldn’t perceive at the time was how fast it would come to the rescue.
It seemed obvious to me that the first step was the centuries old science of quarantine which has been around sing the Black Plague but ultimately the answer was a vaccine.
In my darkest moments I couldn’t see that happening for years. We all feared two or three years. When the former President talked about Operation Warp Speed, we all thought it was wishful thinking.
And suddenly, within the year, there is not one vaccine but four. Seems the scientists had predicted a novel coronavirus so work had started before Covid 19 even existed. Humans are so smart.
Meanwhile, we now hear Pfizer is testing a pill to beat Covid. It’s a protease inhibitor which breaks a virus. Basically when you test positive you start taking the pill and it stops it multiplying and being spread. It’s based on the antivirals that have got HIV under control. Apparently Pfizer is going like the clappers 24/7.
A pill will be a game changer. It would save the people who catch Covid while the vaccine will prevent people catching it in the first place.
And this is the thing with Covid. The game changes every day. What was the right way to play the game yesterday is not the way to play the game tomorrow.
So we hear today of the first tentative steps to open up travel between the EU and America. It could be as soon as July. This is as the US announces that 70 per cent of its population will be vaccinated by mid-June.
We also hear that we are no longer the best place in the world to be in the Covid-19 era, according to an international ranking. That honour belongs to Singapore now. We’re number two. The USA has risen from 30th to 17th.
Things are changing very, very quickly indeed, and while the situation in India is a warning not to take the virus lightly, we are certainly beyond the beginning of the end.
And unless we get a wriggle on, we are starting to fall off the front of the pack.
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