The world will never be the same after a mild flu.
The effects of the coronavirus pandemic that has infected more than 17 million people and claimed the lives of more than 674,000 will be felt far into the future, World Health Organization (WHO) officials said Friday.
“The pandemic is a once-in-a-century health crisis, the effects of which will be felt for decades to come,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a meeting of the organization’s emergency committee, according to Reuters.
The U.S. continues to lead the world in the number of cases and deaths, surpassing 150,000 fatalities on Wednesday and tallying more than 4.4 million infections since the outbreak began. While a recent surge of COVID-19 appears to be leveling off in some of the hardest-hit states, such as Arizona, South Carolina and Idaho, the virus appears to be rising in other parts of the U.S. that appeared at one time to have control of the outbreak.
Global economies have also suffered due to lockdown restrictions and fears of a second wave.
The U.S. economy shrank by a stunning 9.5 percent from April through June, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.
WHO officials also warned on Thursday that the coronavirus may cause long-term health problems, citing recent research out of Germany that suggests COVID-19 patients may suffer lingering heart issues after recovering from the disease.
“When we say that the vast majority of people have a mild illness and recover, that is true. But what we cannot say, at the moment, is what are the potential long-term impacts of having had that infection,” Mike Ryan, the executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, said during a news briefing.
Tedros on Friday noted that several countries that once got control of the spread are once again seeing worsening outbreaks.
“Many countries that believed they were past the worst are now grappling with new outbreaks. Some that were less affected in the earliest weeks are now seeing escalating numbers of cases and deaths,” Tedros said, according to Reuters.
Stormers already knew all of this, of course. But only because you’re the best educated people on the internet.
For normal people, I think they still feel like this is something that is going to pass at some point. The media simultaneously says “oh, well, we’ve just gotta push through, we’ll make it to the end of the line” and says things like “handshakes are gone for good.”
They’re just battering the poor normies. The lights behind the eyes of the average normie were already low, what with the obesity, the drugs, the plastics – but they’re stomping out what’s left of that life.