With the first anniversary of the infamous Coronavirus pandemic coming up in January, it appears that we’ve only made a few steps toward developing a “solution” to the latest pandemic.

According to a timeline written by Erin Schumaker with ABC News, the Coronavirus first broke out within the first few days of the new decade in Wuhan, China where it was first described as a mystery pneumonia. About 10 days later the first death was reported in China, and 10 days after that the first case was reported in the US. 

Soon, every state was infected with the Coronavirus, and the entire country was shut down by spring break. Schools scrambled to set up online learning, and everyone fretted about what would become of the world we used to live in.

The initial fear of the mysterious, flu-like virus was quite understandable, and the ensuing actions that occurred were understandable. To a point.

Now, one year later, we’re still worrying about this virus just as much as we were when it first broke out.

It’s ridiculous that the Coronavirus still holds such a prominent role in our lives. Yes it’s new and yes it took the world by storm. But we’re living in a world that’s supposedly the most proactive it’s ever been.

The bottom line is that we as an entire world of people are treating this virus as much more than it is.

And before the rebuttal of, “The Coronavirus has killed over a million people; it’s clearly very dangerous” pops up as it inevitably will, there’s one statistic that needs to be brought up front and center. 

According to statistics posted by both the WHO (World Health Organization) and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), the worldwide death rate due to the Coronavirus is 2.0% — 1.2 million deaths out of 50 million cases. That’s 50 million cases out of 7.6 billion people.

The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 in one year had more worldwide deaths than the current amount of worldwide cases. And the world still went on.

With over half a million deaths from the Spanish flu in the U.S alone, our country still won a world war.

So why, if they could finish a war back then, is our world still mostly shut down? The Spanish flu pandemic was just as bad if not worse with a death rate of 2.5%. There are numerous excuses for why we are still attempting to hide from the Coronavirus, but the world will never go back to the normal everyone longs for until we start treating this virus less like the Black Death and more like the common flu.