Coronavirus

I think it has complicated things that this was presented in a different way at first, while the mortality rate still seemed to be very high in China. Since a few weeks, the aim is instead to spread the number of cases more evenly over a longer period. Not because that many people are likely to die, but to keep the pressure on the health care system down and keep from having to select who lives and who dies, as you run out of medical equipment. But as you say, the initial fears fortunately didn't manifest.

Traffic 3400 per day
Diabetes 4300 per day
Respiratory diseases (including lower infections) other than Covid-19 - 17,800 per day
Cancer 26,200 per day
Cardiovascular diseases 48,800 per day

I am very concerned about the number of posts suggesting that Covid-19 is nothing to worry about. Try telling that to the people in Northern Italy and Spain. Spain now has 4,000 deaths out of 56,000 known cases. Not all of them were previously at 'death's door'. It is true that some people are lucky enough to have mild symptoms, but the indications are that there are different strains now in the community, and there is evidence to suggest that surviving one strain does not provide immunity against other strains. It is true that most deaths occur in elderly or comprised people, but there are also young, previously healthy, people now fighting for their lives on ventillators. It is important that we heed advice to isolate, otherwise the pandemic will surge and there will not be enough ventillators for those who need them. A long slow outbreak will do much to reduce the total deaths, but a fast upsurge, like New York and other US cities are likely to experience in the next few weeks if Trump follows through on his threat to lift restrictions, could be catastrophic.

Comparisons of total Covid-19 deaths with deaths from other causes (or the Black death) are totally spurious. Unless we can dampen the spread of Covid-19, we are still looking at the tip of the iceberg at the beginning of the pandemic. If one infected person infects 2 other people each day, you will have 1.073 billion new infections on day 30 (i.e. 1 month). If we can reduce this to one infected person infecting only 1 other person per day, there will only be 1 new infection on day 30. Even a death rate of only 1 per cent would result in 10 million deaths amongst those infected on day 30 unless we can reduce the basic reproduction number (which for Covid-19 is currently believed to be between 1.4 and 3.9) to less than 1. The case for isolation is overwhelming.

Bob - have a listen on Youtube to Peter Hitchens being interviewed by Dan Wooton on London's talkRADIO. He puts a very different perspective on the issue.

I hope you're right, but I fear you're wrong - it's equally likely there'll be people (our Boris, and your Donald among them) having to explain why they delayed implementing key public health measures, and how many of their citizens have died as a direct result. In most democracies, terminating voters isn't a good look for a politician. Personally, I find it hard to believe that the WHO and 99% of world governments have got this wrong and that we're making a mountain out of a molehill. It's tempting to wish away the fearful reality with bullish arguments about manning up and not jeopardising the economy, but what good is money when you're dead?

I couldn't agree more.

One unexpected phenomenon of the Covid-19 pandemic in the age of the internet is that we have a whole heap of people with zero medical knowledge all making wholly speculative pronouncements as if they were hard fact. I spent 7 years at med school yet certainly don't feel qualified to make sweeping (and quite frankly ridiculous statements) suggesting that it's all nothing to worry about unless your over 80 and with underlying health issues. What I do know is that there are plenty of people under 80 without any health issues who have died from it. Accordingly I think the best thing we can all do is exercise caution in helping to not spread either the virus or misinformation about it.

Panic buying has become the norm in my area. It's hard to find paper products such as toilet paper and tissues. Also there is a run on meat and pasta. Some of the stores have begun limiting purchases and offering special hours for seniors'

Makes me wonder how much T.P. one person can use.

Quite so! I've been wondering for some time what it says about our 'western' culture that the product we fear most being without, in the context of a disease that has little if anything to do with excretion, is BOG ROLL (Brit slang for toilet paper). You can understand people fearfully grabbing more Paracetamol (Tylenol) than they need, or long-life milk and staple foods, but... ... BOG ROLL?

(I should add that supply lines are starting now to rectify the shortages round our way, so perhaps people are realising there was never any need to panic buy in the first place).

Another interesting aspect of the pandemic is that it has made some commercials unshowable. KFC had one showing people enthusiastically licking their fingers which I haven't seen lately. There was another one (I think for used cars) which showed a woman having some disastrous dating experiences, one being a man who kept obsessively sanitising his hands. Now, of course, such a man would be seen as a "keeper" or even husband material.

Or they may have just run out of money or storage space!

Thanks Severin. I had a listen to Peter Hitchens, but I am afraid he said nothing to reassure me - just the usual red herrings. In the absence of a vaccine, the only sensible course is to try to contain Covid-19 through isolating. If we succeed, we can argue afterwards about whether a catastrophe was avoided due to pre-emptive action or whether the problem was over-stated in the first place. However, my fear is those that survive will be arguing over whether more should have been done when there was still a chance. Whilst the number of deaths are still relatively low, the problem is not what is happening now, but what could happen if we do not take steps to contain it.