2020 in as much as it was a challenging year in all aspects, it will go down as a year tons of innovations erupted across the globe. The covid-19 pandemic has accelerated innovations for individual companies, startups and entrepreneurs and researchers to come up with tech solutions and innovations that have shaped the country’s general growth as we prepare for the future.
With over 2 million deaths globally, COVID-19 is no longer a small threat to the global economy and everyone has a responsibility to ensure their won safety and the safety of their loved ones.
As we speak, there are over 105 million coronavirus cases globally and over 2 million deaths. Though the deaths are high, there is hope as over 58 million people have recovered globally and the media has been vocal in covering the pandemic especially its origin, the conspiracy theories around it, social distancing measures and the effectiveness of the vaccine.
Though covered by media across the world, two researchers Margrit Betke and Lei Guo both from Boston University decided to launch computer algorithms to determine what aspect of the virus received the most coverage.
The two, in partnership with the Artificial Intelligence & Emerging Media (AIEM) research group, focused on China, South Korea, the United States, and the United Kingdom and these aspects might be important too to all of us globally.
To many in the medical field, Coronavirus is not a new name and the virus has been around for quite a while.
However, to the masses, coronavirus is a new virus and the COVID-19 pandemic is seen to have started in China in late 2019 and spread quickly around the world by March 2020.
Just a little history. Since 1960, coronavirus strains have been identified and typically cause up to 15 percent of common human colds annually, mostly in mild forms.
The world has been grappling with the unprecedented COVID-19 health pandemic for almost a year now. According to data from The Coronavirus App, As of Tuesday, February 2, 2021, Covid-19 infected 104,117,862 people (+405,882). So far, 2,260,900 (+9,935) people have died worldwide and according to the WHO, there will be no herd immunity in the year 2021 even though vaccines are available.
News of the COVID-19 outbreak spread worldwide in a dangerously fast pace due to the swift advancement in technology and communication platforms. Due to the variability and vastness in different media types, the media played a huge role in circulating information, influenced public behavior, and helped cartel the spread of the coronavirus.
The year 2020 will go down in history books as the year in which a new deadly coronavirus brought the world to a standstill. After the WHO declared that a previously undescribed human coronavirus (SARS-Cov-2) had spread globally, thus qualifying as a pandemic, the world was thrown into a state of shock and panic.
COVID-19 will go down in history books not only as the biggest health and economic crisis but also as a motivation for digitization in fields ranging from manufacturing to healthcare. While the pandemic is creating untold suffering, it has also created a more stimulating environment for change and innovation more than economically stable times.
As with many new and emerging technologies, the advent of 5G network coverage has raised many concerns among people all over the world, so much so, that some anti-5G movements have been emerging in various countries across the globe in recent months.
When the first case of the coronavirus was reported in China and later to different parts of the world, the world economy came to a standstill. The impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been heavily felt in all around the world economies, including Kenya.
The media has played a very huge role in covering the COVID-19 pandemic since the first case was reported in China on 31 December 2019. The media from all over the world was and still is, very instrumental in its communication role in informing the masses about COVID-19, even as new information about the virus continues to emerge.