The coronavirus pandemic is three years old. What we managed to forget about her, and what we did not know

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus a pandemic. That is a threat to all mankind. Life after that changed quite dramatically, and everyone around repeated like parrots: “The world will not be the same.” Three years later, The Secret figured out what really changed because of the covid, what we learned about it, and what an important question about the pandemic we still don’t have an answer to.

Forgotten Experiences of Spring 2020

Behind all the shocks of recent years, memories of the stress we endured in the first few months of the pandemic have faded. And also about the incredible events of that time. Here are just a few of them:

• To go outside, Muscovites and residents of the Moscow region had to issue a digital pass in the form of a QR code. It has been issued since mid-April to those who need to go to work or to the hospital. Without it, it was impossible to call a taxi and generally be on the street, a fine of 4,000 rubles. Only by June 1, the authorities made indulgences and allowed people to at least go for walks, and even then according to the schedule. A year later, without a QR code about vaccination, it was impossible to get into shopping centers and establishments in most regions of the country.

• Coronavirus patients who did not require hospitalization were ordered to sit in self-isolation for two weeks. Such people were controlled especially tightly. Patients had to install the Social Monitoring application on their phones. It required several times a day to take a selfie and show that the person was at home. Otherwise, a fine of up to 40,000 rubles arrived.

• Oil prices fell below zero for the first time in history: a futures contract for a barrel of liquid cost… −$38! This means that the seller had to pay extra to the buyer to get his oil. The fact is that the storage facilities at that moment were full, and no one needed new raw materials. Speculators had to sell futures on any conditions, just not to physically take the oil after the expiration of the futures.

• Russian military columns moved on army KamAZ trucks through the cities of Italy. Now it is impossible to imagine, but then the Italians were happy to see them – because of the difficult situation with covid, they needed the experience of our military doctors and humanitarian aid from the Russian Federation.

• In total, the so-called non-working days lasted almost two months in 2020 and 2021. They were announced by the president, obliging employers to continue to pay people wages. In practice, many continued to work, just remotely.

Predictions that came true and not

While everyone was in self-isolation, it was time to think about the fate of the world. As a rule, almost all such reflections could not do without the thesis “the world will no longer be the same”.

For example, the founder of VKontakte and Telegram, Pavel Durov, wrote: “The current pandemic poses a threat to our entire species. When it ends, the world will not return to normal. We may be witnessing a civilizational shift that will pass through the generations. We must ensure that the new world that is born is a better place than the one we are leaving behind.”

Microsoft founder Bill Gates was more specific: meetings in a remote format will become equivalent to ordinary ones, the offices will be freer, many will leave the capitals. To a large extent, that is what happened. But Gates also expected people to spend less energy on work and more on communicating with loved ones, friends and acquaintances. It turned out rather the opposite: the level of burnout of office workers around the world has reached record levels.

Among other things, Gates predicted that the world would not return to normal for a long time. Whether this is so is a matter of debate. A popular response to it was the concept of the “new normal” and the meme “Nature has become so pure that …”.

What has the pandemic really changed? Here are some examples:

• Business ethics have changed. Calling partners to a meeting in the office to discuss the details of the project is more of a bad manners.

• Employers now especially appreciate people who easily and without unnecessary sighs adapt to any changes, quickly master new rules and technologies. The ability to self-organize (self-learning, flexibility, resistance to stress) is also important to them.

• For the first time since the 1990s, the ranks of the global middle class have thinned. Amid the pandemic, 54 million people dropped out of this category. The countries of Southeast Asia and the Pacific region were most affected.

• Many Russians were forced to shrink in spending. From the very first days of the pandemic, our compatriots massively turned on the savings mode to the maximum and began to abandon almost all the usual categories of goods. By 2023, this has not only failed, but has become the main strategy of the country’s residents. This was felt even by prostitutes: they were massively asked to lend.

• It was from the beginning of 2020 that Russians began to forget what a vacation abroad is. At first, it was difficult to plan trips due to the unstable situation with the coronavirus and the risk of losing money on tickets. And since 2022, the issue of trips to European and many other countries has disappeared by itself. The “new normal” has become (for the majority – remained) rest within the country.

What we have learned about the coronavirus

Now the coronavirus worries us in so far as. It has become like the flu: unpleasant, lethal for many, but in general you can live with it. And scientists and doctors continue to study the virus and the consequences of meeting it for the body. Here is what we have learned from them in just the last six months:

• Every fifth person who has recovered from COVID-19 suffers from post-Covid. Symptoms range from brain fog and odor problems to numbness in the limbs and menstrual irregularities in women. Often people complain of severe fatigue. Scientists have found the reason for this phenomenon: in such patients, various parts of the brain decrease.

• In other cases, the coronavirus causes changes in the microstructure of the brain. Simply put, the infection provokes serious disturbances in the functioning of the body and reduces mental abilities. Such anomalies can persist in patients even six months after recovery.

• Coronavirus can leave a person without teeth. It turned out that the structural proteins of the virus can provoke periodontal fibrosis. This is a chronic inflammation of the tissues surrounding the tooth. As a result, functional tissue changes to coarse fibrous tissue. And this is usually asymptomatic.

• After covid, you can lose not only teeth, but also hair. This happened to a resident of Pskov. Doctors tried to help her, but nothing worked. Judging by the publication on the website of Rospotrebnadzor, this is not an isolated case. The agency notes that hair falls out not because of the virus itself, but because of stress and damage to the immune system.

• Coronavirus is also dangerous for the eyes: it can lead to conjunctivitis and inflammation of the choroid. The second is especially dangerous: people’s vision falls more noticeably, adhesions appear between the lens and the iris. As a result, covid can even lead to blindness.

• Another side effect is articular syndrome. This is when the joints hurt and move poorly, especially in the morning. It lasts for about six months.

• Green tea appears to repel all strains of the coronavirus. This is because it contains the substance epigallocatechin gallate. But it is poorly absorbed by the intestines and processed by the liver, so tea is difficult to use for treatment. But it can be added to formulations for gargling the throat and mouth.

• Scientists have proven that covid remains in the bodies of infected patients even after death. So it is quite possible for them to get infected from a corpse.

• Does having COVID-19 increase the risk of getting cancer? You can find horror stories on the net, yes. But doctors deny this. In their opinion, the coronavirus could only indirectly affect the situation with oncological diseases, when medical examinations were suspended for a while at the height of the pandemic.

What we still don’t know about covid

More than three years after the first reports of a new infection, there is no clear answer to the question of where it came from. It is known that from the Chinese Wuhan. But what happened there?

WHO experts from different countries traveled to Wuhan. They were in the laboratory of the local institute of virology, and in the market, and in other places, which are often called the place where the causative agent of the disease came from or where it was transmitted to humans. And they did not come to a clear conclusion.

A brief retelling of their report, released at the beginning of 2021: the coronavirus could actually get to humans from bats. Most likely, the chain was more complicated, and there was another link in it, that is, one more animal. And while the virus was passed along the chain, it evolved and became more and more contagious.

Another version: the virus got to us through frozen foods. WHO experts consider it less likely, but cannot rule it out. But they recognized the scenario of leakage from the laboratory as almost unbelievable.

US officials insist on the version with the laboratory. In February-March 2023, this was openly stated by the FBI and the US Department of Energy. The Americans believe that the WHO report is biased because it was written under pressure from the Chinese side. The Chinese authorities, in response, demand to stop discrediting Beijing and politicizing the issue of the origin of the coronavirus.

Meanwhile, recently more than 1,500 Russians every day fall into …