Some thoughts on Coronavirus

Imagine if you will, that there is a disease, a terrible disease, one that kills between 30% and 100% of those who are infected but untreated. This disease primarily affects those in rural parts of some Western nations but is present in other countries as well. Imagine also that this disease afflicts one one particular nation causing over one thousand cases every year and is present in Africa, China and the United States. This infection is so dreadful and so long lasting that those exhuming the bodies of the victims of this disease have to take biosecurity measures even when the particular corpse has been in the ground for 400 years or more. This destructive infection is linked to the deaths of millions in the past and although today primarily confined to rural parts of the world does and can be shown to have the capabilities to run rampant in towns and cities unless prompt action is taken by health authorities to stop it. There is a vaccine for this disease but there have never been any proper studies into its effectiveness and its effectiveness has never been measured prescisely. The mere mention of the name of this disease brings on in those who hear of it a sense of fear and dread such is the destructive power and grim reputation of this condition. It’s a disease so bad that it has been considered as a bioweapon and was tested as such on unwilling victims by one of the Axis powers during World War II.

So what disease am I describing here? Am I describing influenza, or SARS, or MERS or HIV or even the novel Coronavirus that has caused both trepidation and panic over recent months? The answer is none of them, I’m describing Yersina Pestis or The Plague. The Plague has not gone away, it’s still with us. It’s a problem for China where there were a number of cases in 2019 and in Madagascar the number of infections of Plague topped 1000 last year. It’s also present in the South Western parts of the United States and in upland areas of various South American nations.

Untreated, Plague kills far more of those it infects, 30% at the lower level, than Coronavirus where the death toll hovers around 2-3%. Also if Plague in a person who is infected turns into its pneumonic variant then it becomes, like flu, SARS and coronavirus, capable of infecting other humans not by its primary transmission method, the fleas of rats, but by airborne transmission. When Plague becomes pneumonic and person to person infection becomes more likely, that is when disasters happen. With pneumonic plague a cough or a sneeze from those infected means that the Plague becomes remarkably easy to spread.

The reason for me writing on the subject of Yersina Pestis is to put Coronavirus in some sort of context and perspective whilst at the same time not minimising the impact or potential impact of Coronavirus. Yes Coronavirus is bad, it kills some of those who contract it and like the flu is spread by the airborne route both aspects of the disease that scare people and make them panic. It’s something that national governments need to tackle as a healthcare problem with treatment for those afflicted by it and measure taken to prevent its spread. It’s also a condition where governments and private industry should be working together in order to fund and carry out research into a vaccine against it, which in my view is the only certain way to eliminate this virus just as vaccination eradicated Smallpox.

Without a doubt Coronavirus is a challenge as are all novel diseases that pop up now and again due to natural selection. That challenge is compounded by the fact that air travel has made the world smaller than it once was and therefore it is much easier for a novel virus or bacteria that appears in one part of the world to be transmitted to places outside of the area where the disease originated. Trade routes have always been good transmission methods for diseases and that applies just as much today with Coronavirus as it did during the years of the Black Death in the 14^th century which brought Plague from areas where it was endemic to areas where it had not been seen so much.

Coronavirus is having an impact on the world and not just on those who contract it. I’m seeing large drops in the share prices of airlines, cruise lines and companies that have their manufacturing base in places like China. On a personal note I’m also seeing lengthening lead times for products manufactured in China with one radio charger I looked at having an estimated delivery date rise from the usual 7 to 14 days to a month or more. Prices for Copper have dropped and that may well be down to an expected lessening of demand from one of the world’s major users of Copper, China, at least in the short to medium term.

Although Coronavirus is bad and does kill we should be thankful that it’s not anything like Ebola where there is no cure and at present no vaccine and where the death rate is 90%. We should also be thankful that we live in modern times and not in 1918/1919 when doctors were trying to deal with Spanish Flu without any idea of what the causitive agent was. None of the medical or laboratory techniques available at that time could even see a virus let alone come up with a treatment regimen to deal with it. Coronavirus has appeared at a scientifically fortuitous time. We are living in a post Watson and Crick world where scientists can map DNA and RNA with an accuracy that would have been astonishing to the doctors dealing with the flu at the early part of the 20^th century. Even I am astonished at how quickly the Coronavirus’s structure was mapped and it makes me wonder how many lives would have been saved and how different the world would have been had modern biotech knowledge been available to those trying to cope with the Spanish Flu pandemic?

I don’t think that we should be complacent about Coronavirus, it’s a novel disease with a death toll associated with it after all, but I also don’t believe that we are, at least at the present time, in a time where we should be ‘heading for the hills’ in panic. That there is panic at the moment is very plain and to a large extent I blame that panic on the way that the Chinese government handled the initial outbreak. Their obsessive secrecy and, lets be frank here, dishonesty over the extent of the infection has fuelled this panic and also the spread of this disease as well. I think that we should take care not to catch or pass on this disease if we can by taking the usual biosecurity measures that we should be taking over any disease such as not coughing in people’s faces or engaging in regular hand washing. There are precautions that I’m taking to protect my own family such as not taking my son to places like London until this infection either burns itself out or it is conquered by a vaccine, that’s not panic, that’s just common sense. It’s no different a course of action from not sending a child who has vomited to school for at least 48 hours following the last vomiting episode in order to stop the spread of whatever has afflicted the sick child.

I’m old enough to have either seen the nasty after effects of previous epidemics, such as Polio and Whooping Cough or the emergence of new and frightening diseases such as HIV, SARS, MERS, Avian and Porcine flu, along with the problems of old diseases taking advantage of modern road, rail and air communications such as Ebola. This experience has not made me complacent but neither has it made me want to put on a tin foil hat, cover myself in sackcloth and ashes and scream how the world is going to end, which is what some are doing. I’m going to continue to take reasonable and sensible precautions and wait and see how this plays out. It could just burn its way through all those who are likely to be afflicted by it and then die out beaten not just by medical science but also by the human body learning to recognise and fight this viral invader.

Coronavirus is without doubt a bad thing, but it’s not Yersina Pestis which wiped out one third of Europe’s population, it’s not multi drug resistant Tuberculosis and it’s not influenza which killed 32000 people in the United States alone in the flu season of 2018/2019. So far Coronavirus doesn’t look like it is anything as bad as these diseases, at least not outside of China, but that doesn’t mean that it definitely will not get worse, it could do. But, because of modern medical science we are in a better position to counter Coronavirus today, than the world was when HIV emerged in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s and in a position that is infinitely better than that faced by scientists trying to deal with the Spanish Flu pandemic. What I believe will cause problems and cause panic is poor quality healthcare systems such as Britain’s National Health Service. The NHS is a bloated behemoth of the very worst kind where money that should be spent on things like ICU beds or on mothballed emergency medical facilities that can be brought online quickly in an emergency, is spent on useless management layers and even more useless ‘diversity’ officers. If Coronavirus does take off in places like Britain the problems will be caused by a lack of proper medical facilities rather than the disease itself. From what I can see most of the NHS’s Coronavirus response seems to be the erecting of Portakabins to isolate Coronavirus patients from the rest of the hospital. A possible failure of the NHS with regards to Coronavirus may be the final straw that gets Britons away from their worship of the NHS and towards wanting a system that works efficiently.

If Coronavirus is a problem for Western nations or other nations with decent or semi decent healthcare systems come July, then I may reevaluate my current view that the panic about Coronavirus is worse than the disease itself. Until then I’m going to watch what is going on, take sensible precuations and see what happens.

Links

Yersina Pestis today

https://www.who.int/health-topics/plague#tab=tab_2

Influenza deaths in the USA 2018/2019

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html

Live death toll and infection rates for Coronavirus

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Multi drug resistant TB

https://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/drtb/mdrtb.htm

Memories of the panic around HIV in the 1980s

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/aids-crisis-1980-eighties-remember-gay-man-hiv-positive-funerals-partners-disease-michael-penn-a7511671.html

Possibly one of the best update channels on the subject of the Coronavirus that I’ve found, Medcram.