James Chappellaz - Xavier Chavelet

Health and Biology

How health and biology are important to the society for the future of the COVID-19
pandemic ?
The coronavirus showed the world that we were unprepared and highly vulnerable to
its ruthless and ferocious virulence. For the governements and the intitutions, the political,
institutional, economic, financial, human, scientific, technical, and environmental
persepectives created a big challenge. There is two phases, the present, or emergency and
another for the future. In the actual phase, medical science has identified the « aggressor »,
wh ich co-habits with us. There is a mission to sustain morally those who are in the front
line, and some other in concern of health, accept and support the strategies of
containement, and comply with health regulations and instructions. For the future we have
to be concern in the indivuduals. We have to focuse on key aspects such as the person and
nature, human sustainability, and the sens and meaning of profit.
Benjamin and Theo spoke about the Medicine & Psychology who were a lot affected with
this crises. They showed us how medecine impact our society and how this crises affected
the people in a psychological way. That's why we are going here to discuss about biology and
health. We will try to explain how those too aspect affect us now and will affect us in the
future.

1. Health
For many years, health was defined merely as the absence of disease. However, it has
become clear that health is an active process that depends on the supportive interaction of
all the body's systems. Reflecting this concept, the World Health Organization (WHO) defines
health as "the state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the
absence of disease or infirmity." Many groups, such as the American Public Health
Association, Worksite Health Promotion, and the National Wellness Association, have
expanded the concept of health further to encompass wellness: the spiritual, social, mental,
physical, and occupational needs for one to live life to the fullest.
The World Health Organization defines health as "the state of complete physical, mental,
and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."
In either sense, health is a state of action that includes prevention, care, and individual
responsibility to achieve optimal health. The first, lifestyle challenges, includes physical
activity, avoidance of excess weight and obesity, abstinence from tobacco use or substance
abuse, and responsible sexual behavior. The second, system enhancement challenges,
include mental health, freedom from injury and violence, good environmental quality,
immunization, and equal access to health care.
In the context of COVID-19, the early experience in countries with large-scale community
transmission such as China, Iran, Italy, Spain and USA showed that COVID-19 required
unprecedented mobilisation of health systems. Countries that have not yet experienced
James Chappellaz - Xavier Chavelet

community transmission may by acting urgently and decisively, can slow down the
transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and have the time to prepare their health systems to mitigate
the impact of the pandemic.
Actually healthcare is engaged in « waging war » against an unknow ghost. Crises pass, men
die from diseases, but many survive, whether they are convalescent, infected, or
asymptomatic. To the human beings it injured to a greater or lesser degree on a psycho-
social-emotional-spiritual level. The articles explain us a way to change , to evolve. Education
can be the most effective way to counteract it. It will help the affected people to adapte to
the circonstances.
We may have a reflexion and see that the Covid 19 isn’t the only threat that we have. Nature
creates some terrible effect like earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, droughts and many other.
Ebola also emerge in our time and now we have the SARS. We can ask the question, WHY ?
Is it random phenomena or something causal ? Human race is an integral part off nature, did
we caused such catastrophe by invading ecosystems, breaking their balance, surpassing the
Biosphere limits.
We created globalization, we made communication between continents more fluid,
exchange of goods and services more efficients. Thoses things finaly act against us as a
boomerang, by favouring the spread of this diseases. When human being wish to satisfy
their personal and social needs and desires, they should also care for an integral and
balanced growth. Any insult to the biosphere will be a cause of self-harm. We need to work
for a sustainable world and that can only be achieved through education.
A « Health Promotion Programme » has already and repeatedly proved itself to be suitable
for this segment af the healthy population. Educating citizens to health from childhood
would make them aware of the need to be more responsible for their own integrity,
collaborating indirectly with the whole system. Working with this program would be as
economical as it is vital. Sustainability is the characteristic of an evolving system that
maintained to safeguard human life and the entire biosphere.

Health is not just an issue that arises when you visit the doctor. It is a value that is lived daily
wherever we are and in every choice that we make. Health is essential for high quality of life,
and is a decisive factor for the social and economic growth of a community.
Health promotion goes beyond health sector, it encompasses other crucial factors such as
political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, behavioural, and biological aspects.
Health Promotion achieves economic optimization to maintain health, and provides a
greater stimilus to the active engagement of the person. Health Promotion is instrumental in
using all available strategies to slow down the processes of biological degenaration. It
prepares people to learn troughout their life to face the disturbance of chronic pathologies
in the stage of irreversibles organic decay.
In summary, the strategic health plan to face the emergence of coronavirus and its
successive stage of recovery and social reorganisation, including health care, must
James Chappellaz - Xavier Chavelet

contemplate all the variables we exposed. Focusing on education towards human

sustainability can lead to true social regeneration and the holistic well-being of the human
king.
2. Biology
Biology is the study of life. In general, biologists study the structure, function, growth,
origin, evolution and distribution of living organisms. Biology is important because it helps us
understand how living things work and how they function and interact on multiple levels.
Advances in biology have helped scientists do things such as develop better medicines and
treatments for diseases, understand how a changing environment might affect plants and
animals, produce enough food for a growing human population and predict how eating new
food or sticking to an exercise regimen might affect our bodies.
Thanks to biology, we can now understand that a small piece of genetic information coded in
RNA, only 0.0005% the size of the human genome, has resulted in infection, death and
economic and societal instability not seen since World War II.
The genetic sequence of the virus was foundin January 2020 and shows a high degree of
similarity to coronaviruses found in bats and pangolins
The SRAS-CoV-2 uses a normal biological processes, it passed from species to species. He
used our own systems against us. The virus particule is some 100 times smaller than a typical
cell. After inhalation of a virus particle, this attaches to a cell on the surface of our airway
and insert its few genes into the cell. That genetic information is enough to subvert the cell
and ordering it to produce more viral particles. It passe form cell to cell and are expelled
perhaps by cough or a sneeze then from person to person.
There are two sources for this contagion : wild animal and farmed animals. Therefore, while
Covid-19 is a public health emergency it has in fact deep roots as an ecological and
environmental issue. That’s a reason why contact with wild animal market in asia and bush
meat in Africa give far greater chance for viral contagion. We are human animals embedded
in an ecosystem, that our human society has biological underpinning. We are biological
creatures, living in relationship with biological and geocheqmical world.
This story is far from unique; bats are also thought to be the proximal host to Ebola and
Marburg viruses; HIV developed from a virus passed from primates to humans in Africa on
several occasions. These are normal biological processes, as viruses are frequently passed
from species to species. Fortunately, they are only rarely able to propagate in the second
species. However, occasionally an alteration in the virus allows it to successfully pass around,
the so- called zoonotic transfer.
The separation of humans from the natural world has accelerated from the industrial
revolution onwards such that each and all parts of the natural world are considered
ressources for humans. It is from this schism between human society and nature that Covid-
19, climate change and environmental degradation stem.
James Chappellaz - Xavier Chavelet

For the Covid 19 case, we think there is three way of preventing new infections and saving
lives. Those have already been made inaction like the public health surveillance for early
detection and rapid response with in France an application, the open door of laboratory with
free test and a 48h response. They also instaur key public health measures of containement
and they instal a risk communication and community engagement with add and TV discours.
To conclude, our society need to understand the importance of the SRAS-2 impact on the
world. We’re starting to understand the viruse and lot’s of people are working on that
because it’s our present threat. But we know that we have to be interested in an other way.
There’s so many things to change. We are here in a huge interlinked networked with biology,
health, medecine, ecology, social and cultural structures, but also economics, geo-politics,
and international relations. We can use that and perhaps best meet the threat not only for
the covid 19 but also other challenges. Everyone can agree on the fact that Covid-19 deeply
affected our way of living and our human relations. As said earlier, we all have to take
lessons from our past, near-past and present in order to better manage and contain
important issues like diseases that are threatening our society.