5 Years after the COVID-19 pandemic - Are we still affected today?
By Anna-Magdalena Glockzin, 3 minutes.
Lockdowns, masks, vaccination, distance, online… These are all words we associate with the COVID-19 pandemic and they feel like echoes of a distant past. When the Coronavirus hit the world and spread fast, it caused a pandemic and led to millions of deaths, numerous shocks to economies and health care systems around the world, and much more. The pandemic started five years ago and at that time, several countries had imposed lockdowns on their population. Nowadays, it seems like the virus has been defeated and everything went “back to normal”. But this can be misleading and in the following, it will be explained why. Additionally, it is worth examining to what extent the European Union (EU) has learnt from the global crisis and whether it would be prepared for a similar shock in the future. This will be discussed in a follow-up article.
Picture by fernando zhiminaicela on Pixabay
There are consequences from the pandemic that we are still able to experience to this day. Looking from a medical perspective, Long COVID is a problem that the world has to confront after the pandemic. It is a chronic post-viral disease, which expresses itself through fatigue, brain fog, vertigo, shortness of breath and muscle pain. Every tenth person is not sure whether they have Long COVID and according to a study by the National Health Service (NHS) from the UK almost five percent do suffer from this disease. Moreover, the study found that marginalised groups of society were disproportionately affected by Long COVID, exacerbating health inequalities. In particular, the fatigue syndrome leads to an extreme deterioration in the quality of life of people with Long COVID, as they often lose their jobs and become dependent on others for everyday tasks. Apart from that, the pandemic has also exacerbated the mental health crisis worldwide. Lockdowns, isolation, contact restrictions and school closings caused unprecedented stress and had severe negative effects, especially on women and young people.
Taking a political viewpoint, the consequences of the government's actions during the pandemic can also still be felt. In many countries, like Germany or the U.S., the government’s dealing with the global health crisis decreased the trust in the institutions and exacerbated cleavages in society. This in turn led to a shift to the right and even to the far-right, which became obvious in recent elections in the EU and around the world (see the U.S., for instance). Of course, the pandemic is not solely responsible for the shift, since the causes are rather complex and multifactorial. Nonetheless, COVID-19 fueled the change in sentiment.
It can be concluded that although the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be in the past, we still carry the consequences of this crisis, in terms of political developments and sentiments, and in terms of health conditions. Apart from that, the human toll of this crisis must not be forgotten - over 7 million lives lost worldwide. The question that remains now is, to what extent have European countries and the EU learned from this global crisis? And, would they be prepared for a future one? The next article will address these questions, so stay tuned!
