COVID -19 Coronavirus, What Treatments Are Available? You may ask, ‘Aren’t there effective treatments now?’ The answer involves both good news and bad. Antibiotics can cut the mortality from secondary bacterial pneumonias, and certain medications can be effective against some flu strains. There are immunizations that can be helpful in combating a flu virus if the correct strains of it are identified and if the immunizations can be produced in time. Such is the good news. The bad?
The history of flu immunizations—from the ill-fated swine flu episode of 1976 to the production shortage of 2004—has been spotty. Even though medical science has realized momentous advancements since World War I, doctors still do not know of any cure for a powerful virus.
Hence, there is this disquieting question: Could there be a repeat of 1918-19? Note what is said in a paper from London’s National Institute for Medical Research: “In some ways, conditions prevail as they did in 1918: there is a huge volume of international travel due to the development of transport, there are a number of war-zones with their inherent problems of malnutrition and poor hygiene, the world population has grown to six and a half billion and a greater proportion of this population is living in urban situations many of which have decaying infrastructures in terms of waste disposal.”
