Nanomedicine & Nanotechnology Open Access (NNOA)

ISSN: 2574-187X

Opinion

Nanotechnology Revolutionizing Public Health for the Covid-19 Era

Authors: Ilise L Feitshans JD*

DOI: 10.23880/nnoa-16000192

Abstract

This article examines the operationalization of nanotechnology’s revolutionary promises through the lens of the Coronavirus (“Covid-19”) crisis. As predicted by the USA National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) report to the President of the United States in1999 , nanotechnology has revolutionized how science views physical properties of matter and thus has revolutionized commerce by offering new products and ways to package and transport those products that seemed like science fiction a century before. Heralding a fourth industrial revolution, nanotechnology in everything from mascara lipstick, packaging, instant clothing, 3D printed housing, nanomedicine and meat grown in laboratories in outer space a has impacted health rights and health care from cosmetics to the cosmos. For workers and the families who have school children impacted by Covid-19 Emergency Executive orders to “stay in place”, nanotechnology is both a friend offering employment and elearning as well as a foe: enabling people to continue remote working; but increasing their financial hardship when people must absorb their own workplace overhead without additional support from their employers, oversight by safety and health regulators or investment back-up. For workers who did not originally intend to be telecommuters but are now finding themselves obliged to work at home, nanotechnology provides rapid communication but also enables a barrage of fake news and disinformation. Nanotechnology as an accelerator of travel in global commerce may, if unfettered by nanoregulation, present civil society with unacceptable levels of risk. Nanotechnology and nano-enabled medicines also make possible rapid telehealth communication at home, in-home. ehospital monitoring, transfer of data in remarkably large quantities, implementation of new risk communication models and galvanize scientific collaboration without regard to borders or geographic differences. Lessons learned from pandemics of the past underscore that work health and the survival of civil society are inextricably linked. Civil society is brought to halt whenever the quality of human life is threatened by pandemic, and Covid-19 fits the playbook of pandemic paradigms from the Great Plague of 1665-6 to the HIV/AIDS pandemic of the late twentieth century that has not been stopped or erased by Covid-19. History teaches that commerce in civil society stops, courts close, and already strained governmental infrastructures become dysfunctional to the brink of anarchy when pandemic forces citizens to self-isolate or quarantine to stop spreading disease. Therefore the link between health, work and the greater economy within society becomes impressively clear during pandemics. Lessons learned from historical precedents of pandemics and from the progress of Covid-19 across the globe demonstrate that a need for disaster planning to provide coordinated response to pandemics is not unprecedented but are sorely needed. And, a false dichotomy between health care costs as a commodity juxtaposed against competing economic concerns is inapposite: commerce cannot survive without healthy people to work, consume products and services and cleanup afterwards. These same issues appear universally across legal systems, regardless whether the governance structure is a tyranny, monarchy, democracy, fascist or an admixture of governance strategies. Thus, the Covid-19 crisis illuminates the significance of health as a civil right akin to the rights of people with disabilities, even in nations where health rights are not protected under the national constitution. Abolishing this false dichotomy of health versus economic growth is therefore a first step towards recognition of the need for public health capacity building, and then developing political will to support public health infrastructure.

Therefore the Covid-19 pandemic will inevitably shape the future of civil society from the standpoint of popular perception and actual delivery of public health. One impressive example of future trends involves the coming together of stakeholder global citizens, multinational corporations, medical experts from around the world and iconic rockstars from three generations to show support for health care workers in a planetary concert made possible only by nanotechnology for communication and nano-enabled techniques. At the same time, a rainfall of cascading Executive orders at the national, state and municipal levels in jurisdictions large and small across the globe underscores a lesson about the interdisciplinary relationship between law, science policy and the delivery of public health protection to society, glaringly made obvious by the pandemic in 2020 from Covid-19. Covid-19 therefore offers some hope of unity for humanity despite its tragic impact upon a civil society, unprepared for this battle. In conclusion, the Covid-19 global crisis provides a tragic example of a rude wakeup call to civil society regarding the underlying need to address public health infrastructure inadequacies in locally internationally and in countries large or small. Nanotechnology and nano-enabled products have been instrumental is sounding this vital alarm. Nanotechnology has also been a key player in heralding the revolutionary techniques that can bring treatment, vital information and potential vaccines for Covid-19. Future trends for pandemic preparation are therefore likely to build innovative approaches using nanotechnology, such as: enhanced data transmission to recognize and track disease, to bring music, ehospital communication and compassionate messages to people who are isolated, 3D printing for shelters, masks, hospital equipment and food. The inescapable conclusion remains that health is fundamental to civil society and therefore requires protection in every corner of the world. 1 Developments in these emerging fields are likely to change the way almost everything – from vaccines to computers to automobile tires to objects not yet imagined … Such new forms of materials and devices herald a revolutionary age for science and technology,” National Science and Technology Council Committee on Technology Subcommittee on Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology, National Nanotechnology Initiative: The Initiative and Its Implementation. Report to the President of the United States of America, July 2000 Wash, D.C. 2 Ilise L Feitshans Global Health Impacts of Nanotechnology Law, Panstanford, Singapore 2018 3 Pasi Penttinen, ECDC expert in infectious diseases, 3 ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-events/covid-19- ecdc-updates-case-definition-eu-surveillancestresses how travellers can help prevent further spread of COVID-19: April 2020

Keywords: Nanotechnology; Covid-19; Public Health

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