5 years of the pandemic: 4 positive aspects that left us the «greatest psychological experiment in history»

«The greatest psychological experiment in history».

It was 2020 and the then professor in Health Psychology at the University of Vrije in Brussels, Elke Van Hoof, thus described the confinement derived from the Covid-19 pandemic.

In conversation with BBC Mundo, the specialist in stress and trauma referred to an unprecedented measure that at that point extended around the world and that kept under some type of quarantine to 2.6 billion people globally.

Five years have passed since that Wednesday, March 11 when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Covid-19 Pandemia.

Since then, according to WHO data, this disease unleashed more than 777 million infections and caused the death of more than 7 million people, although the experts of the organization estimate that the deaths associated with the pandemic rise to 15 million.

In the world there are still the countless and deep negative impacts of this pandemic.

However, some analysts emphasize that positive learning of that dark moment also emerged. In BBC Mundo we highlight four.

1. The value of science and revolutionary advances in vaccines

Only 9 months took scientists to find an effective vaccine to combat the SARS-COV-2 virus. And they did it through a method that revolutionized the development of immunizers worldwide.

While the use of synthetic messenger RNA was already studying as an effective mechanism for the development of vaccines for years, it was the Covid-19 pandemic that-in the facts-ended up accelerating its development.

Both Pfizer’s investigations (USA) together with Biontech (Germany) and Modern (USA) used that mechanism to create their vaccines in record time, allowing millions of people to receive doses worldwide.

On December 8, 2020 Margaret Keenan, a 90 -year -old woman from the United Kingdom, became the first person in the western world to receive an approved dose of the vaccine manufactured by Pfizer and Bionntech. Scientists Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, creators of that formula, received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2023.

The career to find a vaccine that allowed the population to immunize and avoid more deaths is one of the largest positive legacies in the pandemic, according to the WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris.

«We witnessed technological advances at an incredible speed, the Public Health expert tells BBC Mundo.

«Messenger RNA technology was already known, but now we are seeing how it is being used to develop other advances, including cancer vaccines,» he adds.

He even step beyond the practical and affirms: «We understood that science is fundamental.»

Devi Sridhar, professor at the University of Edinburgh and author of the book «Prevenible: how a pandemic changed the world and how to stop next one,» he means that the learning of the pandemic have had an impact on a better detection and identification of new outbreaks.

«Our scientific capacity has improved, our platforms are increasingly advanced. If the question we had at the beginning of the pandemia was if there will be a vaccine, the question now is: how fast can we produce? ”, He argues.

The joint collaboration of the countries for the development of these vaccines and the targeting of resources for this process allowed, according to Sridhar, one of the most positive things left by COVID-19.

In addition, there are learning that allow us to be better prepared for the next pandemic, he says. For example, countries that «seem to have done better, were those that had healthier populations before pandemic.»

In March 2020, the microbiologist of the University of Navarra Ignacio López-Goñi was one of the first scientists to dare to point out that there could be positive aspects related to the incipient pandemic.

«The 1918 flu pandemic caused more than 25 million dead in less than 25 weeks. Could something similar happen again today? As we see, most likely not, ”he said then.

Five years, the academic continues to look at the glass half full, especially from the scientific aspect.

«We have advanced a lot … COVID-19 is the virus that has ever been published most, the one that has been most studied from all infectious pathogens, more than malaria, AIDS or any other,» he says.

2. A «new awakening» in education

The catastrophic impact that the closure of schools for pandemic worldwide and, in particular, in Latin America is well documented.

The increase in the levels of school dropout and the delay in the learning mainly in the primary and secondary sections is, according to Mercedes Mateo, head of the Education Division of the Inter -American Development Bank (IDB), one of the deepest scars that the pandemic has left.

However, the specialist emphasizes that this experience also meant exceptional opportunities for the educational world.

«There has been a very positive impact to move the debate of education towards the 21st century, it has served to rethink educational systems,» he says in conversation with BBC Mundo.

An obvious advance is that during and after the pandemic, the paradigm of face -to -face and classroom exclusively as a physical and static space was left behind.

«During the pandemic it was revealed that the education sector was one of the sectors that had less digitized,» says Mateo.

He even says that there was some demonization and resistance to the digitalization of processes and practices, but that COVID-19 forced the way to a more hybrid and flexible education.

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