[Content Warning - pandemics, medical issues, social economic & other consequences, social division, death] COVID-19

In the 1920s and 1930s, the group of RNA viruses known as coronaviruses (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_coronavirus&oldid=1046216688) was identified (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_coronavirus&oldid=1046216688).

Coronaviruses “cause diseases in mammals and birds. In humans and birds, they cause respiratory tract infections that can range from mild to lethal. Mild illnesses in humans include some cases of the common cold (which is also caused by other viruses, predominantly rhinoviruses), while more lethal varieties can cause SARS, MERS and COVID-19. In cows and pigs they cause diarrhoea, while in mice they cause hepatitis and encephalomyelitis”.

The term “novel coronavirus” is “a provisional name given to coronaviruses of medical significance before a permanent name is decided upon. Although coronaviruses are endemic in humans and infections normally mild, such as the common cold (caused by human coronaviruses in ~15% of cases), cross-species transmission has produced some unusually virulent strains which can cause viral pneumonia and in serious cases even acute respiratory distress syndrome and death.”

The term for “cross species transmission” is zoonotic, which also includes rabies, malaria, Ebola, and HIV.

Novel coronaviruses include:

• the SARS virus, or severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 1 (SARS-CoV-1) (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome_coronavirus_1&oldid=1056596285);
• the New Haven virus, or Human coronavirus HKU1 (HCoV-HKU1) (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Human_coronavirus_HKU1&oldid=1055721823);
• the Middle East / MERS / camel flu virus, or Middle East respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus (MERS-CoV) (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Middle_East_respiratory_syndrome%E2%80%93related_coronavirus&oldid=1057492037); and
• the 2019-nCoV / SARS virus 2 / Human coronavirus 2019 (HCoV-19), or severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome_coronavirus_2&oldid=1057481813), which causes coronavirus disease 2019, widely referred to as COVID-19 (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=COVID-19&oldid=1057626251), which has resulted in a pandemic (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pandemic&oldid=1056517796 - a pandemic is “an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide”) known as the COVID-19 pandemic (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=COVID-19_pandemic&oldid=1057678340).

Standard management of pandemics are containment and mitigation (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pandemic&oldid=1056517796#Management).

Management of the COVID-19 pandemic has included containment measures such as travel restrictions (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Travel_during_the_COVID-19_pandemic&oldid=1057642211) to restrict the spread or rate of spread of the COVID-19 disease, contact tracing of those who have become infected (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Public_health_mitigation_of_COVID-19&oldid=1038957231), improved medical management (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Treatment_and_management_of_COVID-19&oldid=1056817488), and development of a vaccine (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=COVID-19_vaccine&oldid=1057603547) and vaccination programmes (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deployment_of_COVID-19_vaccines&oldid=1057522832) that suffer from lack of equity (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deployment_of_COVID-19_vaccines&oldid=1057522832#Equitable_access) and issues such as the lack of refrigeration in developing regions of the world and what can be nicely referred to as “misinformation and hesitancy” (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=COVID-19_vaccine_misinformation_and_hesitancy&oldid=1056871685).

The impacts (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Impact_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic&oldid=1049467340) of the COVID-19 pandemic and its management measures have included:

• economic impacts (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Economic_impact_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic&oldid=1057653056, but note that death rates, and not only management measures, have had an impact - with deaths being more significant - see https://theconversation.com/the-calculus-of-death-shows-the-covid-lock-down-is-clearly-worth-the-cost-137716,   https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy,   and   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/25/there-is-no-trade-off-between-the-economy-and-health);
• political impacts (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Political_impact_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic&oldid=1057143170);
• mental health impacts (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mental_health_during_the_COVID-19_pandemic&oldid=1057370293);
• social impacts (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_impact_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic&oldid=1053773510);
• human rights issues (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Human_rights_issues_related_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic&oldid=1056399155), although many considerations of human rights fail to note the right to health and life that pandemic management measures are maintaining (see https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2021/10/extraordinary-devaluation-of-human-life.html);
• and protests (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Protests_over_responses_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic&oldid=1057533789), many of which are, in my opinion, poorly conceived, and some are just conspiracy fantasists (see http://gnwmythrsglossary.blogspot.com/2015/06/conspiracy-theories.html) and/or extremism.