If you guys saw my post from last week, you would know that I was pretty sick for a couple of weeks. I just read a blog post that talked about a different point of view on illness, which I thought was interesting.
The post follows a non-human and their encounter with disease, a completely foreign concept to them. They talk about how they are so grateful that their home plant has no “silent killers” like disease. This point made me think about the extensive network of research that has been created over the past several decades to combat these “silent killers”.
While it may seem bleak whenever there is a new outbreak or new disease, it is important to think of how far humanities medical expertise has come. It is always devastating when there is a pandemic, but death rates have significantly lowered in just a few decades. The introduction of vaccines was a turning point in our ability to prevent and fight back against diseases that had plagued humanity for decades. In the past century vaccines became so powerful that we were able to eradicate smallpox, and lower the number of people who were affected by a variety of diseases such as whooping cough and chickenpox.
There is also always new technology and advances within the field that leads to impressive results and discoveries. This year there has been the notable rise of the coronavirus, that has been rapidly spreading and has led to 10% of the world’s population to be quarantined. While that is genuinely worrisome, there are some amazing solutions that could hopefully cure those afflicted with the disease. There is a new process to create vaccines that is currently being tested, where all one needs to do is add the virus to a piece of genetically modified DNA. This could speed up vaccination creation to as little as 14 days. If this technology does work disease would become a fragment of the past.
Currently the period of time it would take to create a vaccination for the coronavirus is 3 to 4 months. The vaccine would be immediately ready to use, and could definitely help thousands of people who have been afflicted. That is still an incredibly quick turn around for a disease that has only recently been discovered. While I do agree that diseases are incredibly terrifying, it is amazing how humans have found a way to combat something so deadly in such a short amount of time.
What is concerning is the movement that wishes to stop any form of vaccination, the anti-vaxxers. This ever growing movement is extremely detrimental to the health of every human on Earth. The lack of knowledge around science is concerning, as a growing population is starting to treat science as an opinion instead of fact. I can only hope that with the rise of education, that people will turn away from this conspiracy theory since we humans have the real possibility of eradicating so many diseases that have killed and harmed millions of people.
Here is a link to the blog post that I read:
Gemma: The New Girl in Town 