Have you ever wondered why people say, this story or that video has gone viral instead of saying it has gone bacterial or fungal for that matter? There could be a reason for it. I think.
Suppose you hear a juicy rumor and you cannot keep it to yourself and you tell your friend. And your friend can not keep it to himself either and the next day, he tells it to his friend. And that third person tells the rumor to another person the following day. As you can see, the rumor is passing around through one person in each passing day. That means, by the end of the month, 31 people will have heard about the rumor.
Let’s change the rate of passing the rumor to two people each day instead [you tell two people] where the two people each in return tell the rumor to other two people in the following day [it means, by day two already four people have heard about the rumor and by day three, eight people will have heard about the rumor] and so on. Get this: by the end of the month, over two billion people will have heard about the rumor. [It is taken from Quanta Magazine.]
The difference between the two scenarios is again the rate of change where the former is linear and the latter is exponential. And that is exactly how viruses multiply as in the latter or exponential. The strategy in battling a spreading virus [Measles virus the most and highly contagious, for instance] is to reduce it to linear rate of change—and of course through vaccination—for it is incredibly difficult to eradicate it all together except the small-pox which was completely eradicated in 1980 where the last case was I believe in Somalia.
There is a growing theory of interest with an ecological bent, however. The question is, why do certain viruses keep coming back, Ebola virus, for instance. If the natural habitat of a certain virus is in wild animals, say, baboons or gorillas and if you clear out their niche including the animals, the virus would look for a host and it would infect humans. As such, if the wild animals including their habitat is left alone or preserved instead, there won’t be any reason for the virus to spread out and become virulent.
And there was Covid-19, a deadly virus that shook the world. Dr. Tedros Adhanom has shown a stellar leadership in leading the way with courage when he was stymied by the previous US administration as well and most of all he remained pro-active educating people about the virus with clarity and transparency when nebulous conspiracy theories flew here and there. That said, it all started when he was Minister of Health [2005-2012] in Ethiopia…..
In September 2000, 189 world leaders from United Nations signed eight Millennium Development Goals [MDG] to be met by 2015. They are:
*End poverty and hunger
*Universal education
*Gender Equality
*Child Health
*Maternal health
*Combat diseases HIV-AIDS including Malaria
*Environmental sustainability
*Global partnership
When Ethiopia under the EPRDF government was in a breakneck pace to meet the deadline including to transform the nation into a middle income state with in the next 10 years, child and maternal mortality decreased dramatically when well trained health care workers were mobilized practically in every village with clinics opened up with in reasonable distances between villages. Ambulatory services were also made available when the roads were made accessible as well. Moreover, the average lifespan in the country jumped to 65 when it was barely mid 40s in the early 90s.
The hands-on approach to colossal challenges including to bring about a generational change for the better in a country like Ethiopia with population of over 100 million is not an easy feat even though in the end, political expediency set in, laced with perfidy, ought right denial and cruel ungratefulness. What matters is however, the world recognized to the very least the remarkable change in the health sector under the leadership of Dr. Tedros Adhanom and awarded him the prestigious position to lead World Health Organization in 2017. And equally today, the world re-elected him for he has done what it was expected of him—effective leadership, integrity, and courage or as we say it in Tigrinya—ጽንዓት.
Congratulations a million times and more!