As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 1st of November, 2020, Croatian professor Gordan Lauc discussed various things to do with the ongoing situation with the new coronavirus. He looked at what stage of the pandemic we’re in, whether or not another lockdown would help us and why some develop a more severe clinical picture and some go through a mild form of the disease.
“One day we’ll learn about this pandemic in school, and it will teach us that our real enemies are pathogenic bacteria and viruses,” said Professor Gordan Lauc at the end of his interview for HRT.
Croatia seems to be climbing in the number of infected people, in Zagreb every second person tested returns a positive result, is the situation really so dramatic?
There’s a really large number of infected people in Zagreb and all of Croatia at the moment. My personal estimate is that at least 5%, and probably more, of people in Zagreb are actively infected. This means that the situation is really dramatic and that we all now have to be maximally responsible and be careful not to get infected ourselves, but also not to infect others because a lot of people are infectious without even knowing it. But the night is darkest just before dawn, and we can already see signs that the exit from this tunnel is in sight.
After a very large acceleration in the spread of the epidemic over the last few weeks, we can see the first clear signs of a change in trend and a slowdown in the spread of the pandemic. This is especially evident in Zagreb, where the daily number of cases hasn’t been growing for a week now. But we mustn’t forget that the increase in the number of hospitalised and dead people is two to three weeks behind the number of newly infected, so in Croatia, unfortunately, in the next few weeks, we’re going to have increasing battles because of seriously ill people, as well as people dying.
Countries in Europe are mostly opting for the so-called lockdown, closures, curfews, what exactly do we get with that?
The virus is spread by it being passed from one person to another. Without contact between people there can be no spread of the virus. All governments across Europe are taking steps to reduce this contact. In some countries these are well thought out and measured measures, while in some other countries they’re panic reactions.
I think that we in Croatia have a well-balanced policy of adapting our measures to the real situation. This is best reflected in the fact that despite the fact that Croatia had one of the mildest measures in Europe all summer, today we have significantly fewer infected people per million inhabitants than, let’s say, the Czech Republic, Belgium or Slovenia.
Some think that Croatia should have stricter measures, but from the examples of countries such as Argentina or Peru, and some cities in Europe, we can see that the imposed measures don’t actually achieve the desired effect. For example, after 5 months of a very strict lockdown, Argentina has almost caught up with Brazil (which had much milder measures) in terms of the total number of deaths per million inhabitants, and according to current trends, it will soon overtake it. In addition, Manchester, which has been under very strict measures for weeks, has very similar numbers as Zagreb, where the measures are much milder.
How much do we know about this virus today, and how much do we not know?
Unfortunately, we still know very little about viruses. Not just about SARS-CoV-2, but also about the flu and thousands of other viruses which live within us. As we haven’t had a serious pandemic for 100 years, unfortunately, not enough has been invested in virus research. In the last eight months, of course, this has changed drastically and now a lot of people are researching the new SARS-CoV-2 virus.
We’ve learned a lot about it, but there is still a lot more unknown about it than there is known. For example, we still don’t know in advance who will develop a severe and who a milder form of the disease, and we don’t have effective therapies.
The Sars-CoV-2 virus causes different symptoms and different clinical pictures, and now it’s clear that it doesn’t even depend so much on the age of the patient… Is there any answer to why this is so?
Unfortunately, we still don’t know much about what happens in the body after we become infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Age, or rather the metabolic status of the organism, is still the best predictor of severe disease, and young and healthy people with severe disease are an exception.
For example, a recently published study showed that about 10% of severe forms of the disease can be explained by the presence of autoimmune antibodies to interferon beta. This is a very rare disorder, but when a lot of people become infected then this otherwise invisible disorder becomes very visible indeed.
There are certainly some other predispositions that we have yet to discover. For example, our research shows that differences in the way people glycosylate their antibodies are also associated with a more severe form of COVID-19, and that’s something we can influence, for example, with a healthier lifestyle.
One of the important things this pandemic has taught us is that it is extremely important to think about your health because people with diseases that are the result of an unhealthy lifestyle are much more likely to die from COVID-19 when compared to healthy people.
Will the Croatian health care system survive this?
The way things are at the moment, the health care system should be able to cope with this, but it very much depends on how we behave in the coming weeks. People who are infected today may get sick and eventually end up in the hospital in 10 to 15 days. Thus, the number of newly hospitalised and deceased people will certainly increase significantly for at least another two weeks.
The number of people in hospital will depend on how we behave in the coming weeks. If growth continues, there is indeed the possibility that there will be no place in hospitals for all those who do become ill.
One day we’ll learn about this pandemic, just like we do with the Spanish flu, in schools. Or maybe we swon’t? Will we now pay more attention to the viruses around us and better investigate them? That is, will humanity be more prepared for the next pandemic?
This pandemic will surely be remembered as the great pandemic of 2021. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that it will be 2021, not 2020, because the hardest part of the pandemic is still waiting for us in the coming months. Fortunately, this is not really such a terrible pandemic as far as the virus itself is concerned, because it could very easily happen that a virus which is much more deadly than this one comes along. I hope we learn some lessons and start investing more in fighting our real enemies, which are pathogenic bacteria and viruses, rather than in weapons to fight other people,” Professor Gordan Lauc concluded.
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