A retrospective analysis of plant and human epidemics for COVID-19 comprehension

Abstract

Global retrospective human/plant epidemiology analysis exhibits a reactive cognitive development influenced by casuistic phenomena. Epidemic outbreaks of XXI century evidenced regression of the population-based approach to risk prevention and erosion of Public Health model, successful between 1950-1970. After 19 pandemics and 200 historical outbreaks, neither WHO nor public or private institutions, have not consolidated sustainable preventive models. Urban expansion and agricultural colonialism during the Industrial Revolution accelerated pandemic processes such as Black Death (Yersinia pestis), Cholera (Vibrio cholerae), Potato Blight (Phythopthora infestans) or Coffee Rust (Hemileia vastatrix). These factors contributed to the conception and application of the contagion and prevention principles by Snow/1854 or de Bary/1857, in the hygienism of Proust/1873, and the sanitation of Marshall/1882, before the etiological principle developed by Pasteur/1862 and Koch/1882. The contemporary scientific revolutions strengthened the reductionist hospital vision, with emphasis on cure as a principle, and on health privatization as a business strategy. The central epidemiology paradigm’s population is limited to the individual-patient or plant-damage. The COVID-19 cases curve (‘epidemic wave’) is not inherent to preventive epidemiology, ‘flattening’ lacks infectious basis, ‘healthy distance’ or ‘confinement’ are not sustainable mitigation strategies. The immunological emphasis did not generate the expected individual protection and ‘herd immunity’. Instead, it exacerbated the pharmaceutical-mercantilized vaccine ‘race’ to new variants; geopolitical protectionism; and unequal distribution of immunologicals. The SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic evidenced the rational epidemiological framework deterioration; the absence of Surveillance Systems that articulate clinical detection and viral variants with community risks follow-up, enhanced with genomic and digital technology; the systematic failure of Public Health Systems; and the absence of a pansystemic model to integrate regional preventive models. Maximum case-fatality reduction from 15.2% in 2020 to 2.5 world average 2021, suggests an endemic transitional process. Worldwide reproduction rates Rt > 1 are consistent with more transmissible variants, such as Delta and Omicron, as sublethal survival ability of the virus. The pandemic has not been successfully intervened and its momentum is determined by biological attributes inherent to SARS-CoV-2.