CONTEMPORARY WITH THE PARADIGMS OF A PANDEMIC

Abstract

Over time, humanity has gone through such moments that have resulted in suffering, loss of lives, economic crises, and social change. Epidemiological theories predict that at an interval of 100 years pandemic events may evolve as a consequence of the phenomena of adaptation of microorganisms and the crossing of barriers between species, some of which cause devastating diseases in the human population. By prospecting the history of these events, in the last hundred years there have been several crisis events with a tendency towards the evolution of new pandemics or epidemic phenomena with pandemic risk. The Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 was followed by the Asian flu pandemic (1957), the seventh cholera pandemic (1968-1975), the Hong Kong flu pandemic (1968), the HIV/AIDS pandemic (since 1981), a new type of influenza A (H1N1) pandemic (2009), but also some epidemic events that had all the chances to evolve towards pandemic manifestations such as: the epidemic of acute bovine spongiform encephalitis with a tendency to spread to humans (1996), localized avian influenza A (H5N1) epidemics (1997), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome - SARS (2002/2003), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome - MERS (2021), West African Ebola epidemic (2013/2014), Zika virus infection (2015). All these culminated in 2019 with the entry into circulation of a new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, different in varying proportions from SARS (genetic similarity of 80%) or MERS (genetic similarity of 50%) (1, 2). These global alerts have surprised the often-unprepared population and an unfortunate experience was quickly forgotten for various reasons but especially by the fact that the 21^st century has installed itself in an effervescence of changes through an alert pace of technology, population movement and information explosion.