Using Creativity, Diversity, and Iterative Ways of Working to Send the Virus to Lockdown: How to Beat Wild-Card Events by Their Own Means

Background

As the year 2019 came to an end, reports in the Chinese province of Hubei began to surface, describing patients with pneumonia of an unknown origin. The only apparent link was a wet market in the city of Wuhan. Within less than two weeks Chinese authorities published the sequenced genome of the pathogen causing the disease which, in a significant number of cases, leads to severe respiratory distress. And like twice before within only one decade, it became clear that a virus, more precisely a β-Coronavirus, had crossed the species barrier to humans and turned into a pathogen with pandemic potential. Its two predecessors were SARS (Severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome). Despite this stunningly quick analysis and the fast implementation of quarantine protocols across the People’s Republic of China, one month later the first case outside of China was diagnosed. Two months later, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared pandemic status and within the same month the death toll in Italy skyrocketed. Hospitals there were overwhelmed to the level that military units were deployed to transport the deceased.

As we now know, the virus has been spreading under the radar of authorities and researchers, well before any safety precautions could be carried out. Just like in some major historical pandemics, symptomless patients or patients with mild symptoms transported this highly contagious virus to virtually every county on earth (Orent, 2020). Thus, SARS-CoV2 presented itself as an immensely effective virus, i.e. one that achieves maximum propagation by undergoing changes that affect its genome. In short: SARS-CoV2 has evolved and will continue to do so.