As a disease ecologist, this has been a very unusual year. Every year, I teach my students in my疾病生态山地阶级about infectious diseases, the basic reproduction number and pandemics. However, it has been surreal to live through a pandemic myself! As a scientist, particularly a disease ecologist, living through the pandemic is the most exciting thing ever! But as a human being, it feels like a nightmare I can’t wake up from. I vividly remember theemail I was reading on ProMed-Mail一年前，大约有一群奇怪的呼吸道疾病病例与中国武汉的湿市场有关。虽然我已经看到有关邮寄邮件的许多类似报道，但事实证明这一点并不重要，但我记得对此有一种奇怪的感觉。我还记得，在美国华盛顿州据报道，在美国华盛顿州据报道，在1月底，在1月底向学生讲授气候变化对传染病的影响。那时，我天真地假设中国边界的关闭和侵略性感染控制将阻止19日的传播，并防止全面的大流行。我只意识到情况的重力Nancy Messonnier at the CDCannounced that we will have to focus on mitigation instead of containment as COVID-19 already escaped or will escape containment. As they say, the rest is history.
This year was definitely one of the worst years in recent memory, only comparable to World Wars and previous pandemics, such as the Spanish Influenza in 1918. As of 30 December 2020, according to theCOVID-19 Dashboard at the Coronavirus Resource Center at Johns Hopkins University，82,655,924人被官方感染了全球，有1,803,942人死亡。但是，我们知道案件报告的报道不足约7至10倍，因此，真实案件的数量接近十亿美元，1/8thof the global population. The lockdowns and other restrictions imposed in reaction to the coronavirus pandemic,同时挽救了数百万的生命, had other side effects, such as the loss of employment of hundreds of millions of people and subsequenteconomic crisis。这进一步加剧了其他种族和政治危机在某些国家。最后，尽管我们希望减少的经济活动能够减少全球温室气体的排放，但这并没有发生，我们对正在进行的自我造成的影响进一步困扰climate crisis，例如狂暴的野火和创纪录的飓风季节。很难理解人类今年经历的危机和痛苦的巨大性。人们倾向于对所报告的数量脱敏，恰恰是为了保护我们的心理免受当前情况的压抑重力。
尽管今年的大流行如何处理，无论是在美国还是其他国家，危机都犯了很多错误，但危机强调了大多数人在面对逆境中遭受挑战并坚持不懈的意愿和能力。医护人员不懈地奋斗，以挽救生命，有时会反对压倒性的赔率，冒着自己的生命和家庭的危险，尤其是在大流行开始时，当有效治疗的信息较少时。公共卫生专业人员竭尽所能教育并说服我们遵循我们必须控制传播的少数有效指南，以抵消社交媒体的错误信息（Infodecity），并反击政治动机对公共卫生指南的抵制。科学家们不懈地努力开发以创纪录的速度开发治疗和疫苗，完成产品开发和临床试验（通常需要5至10年），为我们提供了安全有效的疫苗。像我一样online teaching methods in the Spring和continuing to develop effective learning environments since. Ordinary citizens sacrificed seeing their families and friends and limited their interactions in order to reduce transmission, while also helping others in other ways, from making masks to delivering meals to donating money.
Bugbitten的编辑和作者都坚持不懈地贡献了帖子，无论其情况如何。在我们坚定的总编辑中，编辑和撰稿人之间写了六十个帖子希拉里·赫德（Hilary Hurd）。We also welcomed a new editor,Daniel Parsons。Many of the posts mentioned COVID-19 (see这里和这里), specifically how the pandemic impacts the amount of resources and attention given to other diseases, especially vector-borne diseases. By focusing so much of our attention on COVID-19, it’s easy to forget that other infectious diseases, such as malaria and dengue are still with us, and will become more prevalent with lack of attention on controlling them. While some other infectious diseases, such as influenza, do also get impacted by the methods we use to control COVID-19, such as masks, this is not true for vector-borne diseases. We hope that our posts have also provided a much-needed break from the constant deluge of COVID-19 coverage, especially for scientists whose work in the lab might have been disrupted.
当我们进入新的一年时，我们必须应对接种疫苗后返回“正常”的诱人距离的矛盾情绪，以及全球大流行的直接破坏影响。在试图恢复和重建我们损失的东西的同时，我们需要认识到这场危机带来的机会，重建到更美好的未来，一个拥有更多的公平性，更少的障碍在人们参与之前就在人们面前放置。我们需要使这个流行病成为“可教的时刻”，就像我在实验室中分享一个错误以激发学生做得更好时。我们需要考虑我们从这场危机中学到的知识，尤其是在我们与自然，与科学和彼此之间的联系中，因此下次我们会做得更好。这不是最后一次大流行，下次我们需要做好准备。
Good Riddance 2020，让我们准备2021年！
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