A year ago, the coronavirus crisis was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO).
It happened a day after Michigan confirmed its first COVID-19 cases – and no one, including experts, knew exactly what to expect.
In fact, there were a considerable number of misconceptions in those early days and weeks, including incorrect assumptions by health experts and also by government officials and the general public.
Below is a look at some of the ways in which we were totally wrong about COVID-19 and how the pandemic would unfold.
Misconception no. 1: It is no worse than the flu.
“So, last year, 37,000 Americans died of the common flu. The average is 27,000 to 70,000 a year, ”tweeted then President Donald Trump on March 9, 2020.“ Nothing closes, life and the economy continue. At the moment, there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about it!”
It turns out that the COVID-19 pandemic was one of the deadliest events in the history of the United States, with more than 527,000 deaths to date and about 1.8 million hospitalized.
Misconception no. 2: Washing hands and surfaces are the most important preventive measures.
Experts initially assumed that the main form of transmission of COVID-19 was to get the virus in your hands through contaminated surfaces, such as door handles, which is how most respiratory diseases spread.
Therefore, in addition to social detachment and avoiding crowds, health officials emphasized the importance of washing hands and cleaning everything people touch.
A Grand Rapids doctor even created a video that encouraged viewers to leave shopping outside on a back porch or in the garage for three days before bringing them home. If that were not possible, he demonstrated a surgical sterilization technique for use in groceries. The video had 23 million views in one week.
Michigan doctor says to leave shopping outside for 3 days, if possible, shows how to disinfect
In April, the researchers came to the growing conclusion that the original theory was wrong and that the primary route of infection was probably airborne virus-laden droplets.
The federal website of the Centers for Disease Control now says that “touching surfaces is not considered a common way of spreading COVID-19” and the main mode of transmission is to breathe the same air as someone infected.
Misconception no. 3: There is no need for masking.
In the early weeks of the pandemic, health experts actively discouraged the American public from buying and / or wearing masks.
One reason: the pandemic disrupted supply chains and created a shortage of masks for health professionals, and experts did not want to make that shortage worse. Another factor: as experts did not realize that COVID-19 is transmitted primarily by air, they thought that the effort to get Americans to mask themselves would be more of a problem than it was worth.
“Culturally, the United States was not really prepared to wear masks,” unlike some Asian countries where the practice is more common, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong in a June post on the University of California’s San Francisco website.
On April 3, President Trump announced that the CDC recommended that all Americans wear a mask outside the home. But Trump emphasized that the recommendation was voluntary, adding, “I don’t think I’m going to do that” – starting a political battle over the masks that continues today.
Misconception # 4: Asymptomatic transmission is not a big deal.
Initially, experts found that the key to controlling COVID-19 was Infectious Disease Control 101: Identifying sick people and isolating them so they could not infect others.
So they were truly shaken when it became clear that people infected with COVID-19 can transmit the disease for a few days before they get sick, and some infected people never show symptoms, but are still contagious.
“I think the biggest thing with COVID now that shapes all of these mask guidelines is that we can’t tell who is infected,” said Chin-Hong in that June blog post. “You can’t look at a crowd and say, oh, that person should be wearing a mask. There are many asymptomatic infections, so everyone has to wear a mask ”.
Misconception # 5: we will be without fans.
At the beginning of the pandemic, many were loudly concerned that the pandemic could reveal a terrible shortage of fans. “There are not enough fans to deal with the coronavirus,” said a New York Times headline of March 19, 2020.
But doctors soon found that many coronavirus patients did not do well with ventilators and that the machines should be used sparingly.
This followed another discovery: although the coronavirus was initially seen as a serious but typical respiratory infection, the virus can result in a wide range of medical problems, from kidney and / or heart damage to blood clots that cause strokes, to inflammatory problems long-term, cognitive and neurological symptoms.
Misconception # 6: It will take more than a year to develop a vaccine.
In early April 2020, the White House coronavirus advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, predicted that it would take 12 to 18 months to develop a vaccine.
To speed up the process, the Trump administration unveiled Operation Warp Speed on May 15, a public-private partnership to accelerate the development and manufacture of vaccines against the coronavirus.
This also helped to speed up the process: the coronavirus was so rampant that clinical tests were faster than expected, as enough people in the control group became infected quickly, providing the necessary contrast for those who received the test vaccines.
The Pfizer vaccine was the first to receive emergency use authorization from the federal Food and Drug Administration. The first shipments of this vaccine – made in Michigan – went out for distribution on December 13, just nine months after the start of the pandemic.
How Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine was produced and distributed at the Michigan plant in record time
Misconception # 7: Go away at Easter. No, in the summer. But certainly in the fall.
Especially last spring, it wasn’t just President Trump envisioning a quick end to the pandemic. A year ago, almost nobody predicted that the crisis would last so long and generate such unrest.
“I am a very, very optimistic person,” said Stephanie Hartwell, a sociologist and dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Wayne State University. “But the biggest lesson I learned last year is that hopeful thinking doesn’t always work. If you are optimistic, you are wrong. “
Misconception no. 8: Rural communities need not worry.
In March and April, COVID-19 was devastating several major metropolitan areas, including New York, Detroit, New Orleans, Boston and Chicago. Common sense was that the pandemic was basically a threat in densely populated areas.
The next 11 months dispelled that idea, as communities large and small were hard hit by the pandemic. At this point, Michigan counties with the highest COVID death rates in the past year are Baraga, Iron and Ontonagon, all sparsely populated counties in the Upper Peninsula.
Misconception no. 9: We will run out of toilet paper.
Toilet paper was difficult to find for a few weeks. But we don’t run out.
Read more about MLive:
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