Expert outlook

“The next pandemic will come sooner than we would like”

The empty city center of Graz in 2020. Pictures like this could become reality again, because according to the experts, we have learned too little from the last pandemic.

(Bild: APA/Erwin Scheriau)

Five years ago, Covid-19 changed the world to an unprecedented extent. Experts who have accompanied us through the pandemic look back and draw a very sober balance of facts, mistakes and findings. And even if we can no longer hear it: The next pandemic could be looming sooner than we would like. Keyword: bird flu.

It was actually five years ago that SARS-CoV-2, a virus that was completely unknown at the time (commonly known as coronavirus or Covid-19), paralyzed the world in a previously unimagined way. It was shortly before the turn of the year when the young doctor Li Wenliang was the first to warn of a series of mysterious pneumonia cases in Wuhan. Shortly afterwards, he contracted the disease himself in January 2020 and died from it in early February at the age of just 33.

Although the death toll rose rapidly and the virus spread around the globe like wildfire, it took until March 11 for the WHO to classify coronavirus as a pandemic.

Planes stayed on the ground, people stayed at home
The first coronavirus cases in Austria were registered on 25 February: Two Italians living in Tyrol had contracted the disease in a hotel in Innsbruck. Buzzwords suffice for everything else: Ischgl, lockdowns (people actually stuck to the first one from March 16, 2020). Planes stayed on the ground, people stayed at home. There were balcony concerts, applause for nursing staff, arguments about masks, working from home, home schooling, amateur soccer team bosses switched to virology and explained the world to experts. Going for a walk together? Driving in the car? Only with people living in the same household and one of countless exemptions.

Do you remember the "mayoral vaccinations" and "vaccination pushers" who caused a furor after the vaccination, which was initially hailed as a "game changer" (Chancellor Kurz), was approved?