The World Health Organization (WHO) is discussing next Friday whether Covid is still a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” (PHEIC), the highest alert level and theoretically the highest level of legal commitment and commitment worldwide in dealing with any public health emergency, including epidemics . On January 30, 2020, Covid became a PHEIC.
Scientists around the world say it would be too soon to announce the end of the global emergency, if only because the disease will bring shame to China, which has ended its “Covid Zero” policy, and will have many infections and deaths .
If it decides to end PHEIC, the WHO does not want to say the pandemic is over, although such a decision would have some practical consequences. Would it have a symbolic effect?
Maybe not. As it seems intuitively, the world has been adapting to Covid for some time, having grown tired of knowing or worrying about the virus. In countries like Brazil, since the middle of last year, the disease has become even more invisible. It became as invisible as the older and weaker.
In the last month, Covid has killed 3,938 people, 131 a day, according to official records. At the height of the horror, in April 2021, it killed more than 85,000 people in 30 days.
Even with these low numbers, Covid still kills as many as murderers (the average murder in 2021, the latest data, was 130 per day).
The disease may seem invisible except to the sick and their families because it mostly kills people who are elderly or who also already have another disease, still and always heart disease and diabetes, in most cases (in São Paulo, 73% of deaths had comorbidities).
In the last quarter, 81% of those who died from Covid in São Paulo state were over 60 years old (65% were over 70 years old). About 85% of those killed from influenza/pneumonia in 2019 and 2020 were over 60 years old.
As has already been written in these columns, it is as if Covid has become a major killer flu, especially for the elderly who are willing to let it die like a Bolsonaro would. In São Paulo, Covid killed more than 1 in 40 people over the age of 70.
Vaccination made deaths in younger people very unlikely, that’s true. Despite Jair Bolsonaro and army generals and colonels commanding the Bozist occupation of the Ministry of Health, vaccination has progressed thanks to SUS and most states and cities.
For example, Brazil performed as well (or better) than France, Germany, Italy and Spain when applying the first two doses or equivalent. But it is well below the booster dose (57% of the population, among major European countries). The case of the United States is a shame.
Vaccinations are therefore still necessary, also as part of a great campaign for national regeneration, information and health care, for the proliferation of any kind of vaccines, programs that have been damaged because of the degenerate Bolsonarists.
Besides this truism, there are three others that are forgotten or accepted as natural fact.
Almost 60% of people who have had Covid continue to have symptoms a quarter after acute infection. Many of them, we have no idea how many, were left with disabilities or other serious consequences. Families are also torn apart because they have lost their supporters, mothers, fathers or grandparents. We have to take care of these people.
The other shame is that of education. It seems such an old, stale, boring topic because there is so much repetition. However, it is brand new as almost everything is still to be done.
Priorities still include debolsoning health and bringing Bolsonaro and his generals and colonels to justice. No amnesty.
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