COVID-19 PANDEMIC

My last posting was on October 2009!  What a time to get back to some bloggings! The entire world is reeling under the weight of the corona virus pandemic.  There are so many facets one can discuss about this pandemic.  One of them is the complacency of the developed countries in assuming that infectious diseases did not need attention. Attention and resources were focused on non-communicable diseases like cancer and cardiovascular disorders.  I am no exception to this pattern of thinking. Infectious viruses do not recognize national borders.  With international travel, every country should have paid greater attention to the possibility of a pandemic originating in a far of continent coming to our shores.

Who knew that global surveillance for potential pandemics is an established activity.  So then, why are we in this current situation?  Could it be because of the irresponsibility of heads of states whose primary responsibility is to ensure such activities are adequately addressed.  It clearly seems like they dropped the ball.    The Global Health Security and Biodefense unit, responsible for pandemic preparedness and established in 2015 by Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice, was dissolved in 2018.  This action likely contributed to the current state we are in.

Each one of us have our own personal perspective of what happened to our daily activities.  As for me, on Friday the 13^th of March is when I started working from home.  One fine day all who could work remotely disappeared from the lab and started working from home.  Since then, in the last seven weeks I have gone to the lab only three times for a few minutes tp get reference books and once for less than a couple of hours to relocate my office. I am hoping to start going to work in the lab soon.

Meanwhile, the whole process of shopping has been revamped.  Hardly any visits to Costco.  Donning a face mask when grocery shopping.  Going forward I plan to use a face mask when traveling in planes – which I started a couple of years ago.  Now I will feel comfortable doing so.

Another casualty of this pandemic was the cancellation of a trip to Spain, that I was very much looking forward to.  As I write this blog, I realize that I am off from work because I had taken this week off to for the Spain tour!  But here I am at home in Irvine using the time to collect some Continuing Education Credits (CEU). The Annual Conference of the American College of Medical Genetics which was scheduled for mid-March was converted to a digital conference.  I spend my time off to go over some of the presentations and gather some CEUs!

We were just now starting to do some travelling with plans for travelling at least once a year.  We did Kauai, Peru and Alaska.  And the December 2018 to January 2019 trip to India! Now, I am not sure when we will start travelling again.