A Deadlier Pandemic

Even though Covid-19 has been horrible for the planet, the situation could have been much worse. According to estimates, Covid has a 3.4% mortality rate. Now that we have a vaccine for it, we also have certain medicines that can somewhat lessen the effects of the illness. However, there have been many fatalities globally, numbering in the millions. Imagine now that the globe would not have experienced the Covid pandemic. Imagine it being an illness like Ebola.

Since Ebola is a hemorrhagic virus, it essentially turns your insides into liquid and causes you to bleed out. The fatality rate might reach around 90%, making it a horror movie come to life. Due to the horrific nature of the disease, old movies like "Outbreak" capitalized on the Ebola hysteria. You pass away a week or two after contracting it. However, because Ebola outbreaks have been largely isolated up until this point, the movie ended with an optimistic cure and most people were in a secure position. But what would happen if they weren't, if it spread as quickly as Covid did, or if someone turned it—or a sickness similar to it—into a weapon? Or what if it was a more deadly disease like Covid-19, which was novel?

Covid has demonstrated that the promise is real, if nothing else. Any moment a new, potentially deadlier epidemic could emerge. What would we do about it? As a prediction, all we have is what we've seen with Covid-19.