The subject of Coronavirus is a difficult one for me to write about. It’s difficult not because I don’t comprehend the science behind the illness, I do, although molecular biology and virology is not my particular field, I can get by when it comes to understanding. No, what makes writing about Coronavirus difficult is I have to try to write about Covid19 in such a way that neither encourages mindless panic nor is unnecessarily complacent. I want to encourage neither the ‘it’s nothing ’ attitude nor the ‘the world’s going to end buy gold/guns/food/toilet paper’ (delete not applicable) as some have done.

The situation at present

Where we are at present, in Britain at least, is that we have had hundreds of infections and five deaths so far. All the deaths that have occurred so far are deaths of people with underlying health conditions or other health challenges related to age. Whilst these deaths are tragic for both the individuals and families involved, this death pattern is not the same as for the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic which unlike some influenza strains, killed the nominally healthy and the young. Back then with Spanish Flu, a person could be taken ill and die within 24 hours of less such was the virilence of this type of Flu. We are not seeing that situation at present with Coronavirus at least in the West and we may not unless this virus mutates into a more harmful form, something that will need to be monitored and guarded against for years to come. The death rate of Coronavirus is more than seasonal flu but also much less at 3.4% than either SARS or MERS. The death rate for MERS is, according to Worldometer, a staggering 34%. The 1918 flu had a case-fatality ratio of 5% but this rate was made worse by the ease of transmission of influenza. Social circumstances also made the 1918 outbreak bad as there were many troop movements due to WW1 and bad decisions made by politicians regarding quarantine helped spread the virus. In addition, those fighting the 1918 pandemic had no knowledge of the existence of viruses nor of modern molecular biology, something that is different from today.

The medics and scientists of 1918 were, compared to today, little better than witch doctors when it came to efficacy in tackling Spanish Flu. We should be thankful that we live today and not back then but we should also remember that the Spanish Flu came in three waves caused by viral mutation, a relatively minor one with few deaths, a much more virulent and damaging second wave and finally a third wave that was less lethal. We must guard against this situation repeating itself if the Coronavirus mutates into a more lethal second stage. We could be living thorugh only the first stage of Coronavirus at present and the worst is to come but that may or may not happen.

The Government’s response.

Watching HMG’s response to the Coronavirus outbreak causes one particular word to pop into my mind. That word is ‘slick’. HMG’s public response to Covid19 has indeed been very slick with ministers and senior health advisors very notably singing from the same hymnsheet, with very few loose cannons mouthing off. This suggests to me that the possibilty of a novel disease afflicting the UK has, like other major challenges of a natural, military or societal or economic nature, been heavily ‘wargamed’ within Westminster. The slickness of the Government’s approach to Covid19 looks both practised and competent as if it had been previously drilled by the Government in a similar way to how Britain’s response to a nuclear weapons attack were wargamed during the Cold War. It is I believe standard practise for governments to think in great depth as to how they would manage the country at a time of crisis and this preparation is not anything that I would call ‘suspect’ or indicate malevolence on the part of Government with regards Covid19.

So far the script and the plan as to how to deal with Covid19 from a government point of view appears to be working. Out here in the sticks I’m seeing some panic buying of toilet roll but no panic buying of fuel or other items. As regards why toilet roll is being targeted for panic buying I believe that this is a symptom of social contagion where a herd of people worried about Covid 19 are focusing on an item that is large and highly visible on supermarket shelves and panic buying that rather than food or water or fuel. If I was advising the government on how to respond to this Covid19 virus I would tell them that the toilet roll thing is a psycholgical symptom and that keeping the shelves full of toilet roll could reduce a lot of the idiotic panic over toilet rolls, a panic that could spread to other items.

It is said that battle plans rarely survive their first contact with the enemy, but that is not a hard and fast rule. At present the Government’s plan for dealing with Covid19 and its effects is holding up but how it will hold up in the future if Covid19 and the panic about it gets worse is another question? Whilst the vast majority of people may contract Covid19 and have very little long term ill effects from it, some will have bad effects from it and if the number of people in the second category is significant then even the best formulated plans of government may fail.

My own view is that the weak link in controlling the spread of the Covid19 virus and treating those who have contracted it, is the National Health Service. Those of us who have had to have dealings with the NHS either as patients or watching relatives and friends deal with the NHS, know that far from being the ‘envy of the world’, the NHS is pretty crap. It’s a top heavy sclerotic beauracracy which doesn’t offer patients any form of meaningful choice (you get what you are given) with dozens of highly paid diversity and inclusion managers but the least number of Intensive Treatment Unit beds in Europe. A decent healthcare system is not so bad that you have to spend the night in the hospital with a sick relative just to ensure that they are not ill treated or treated poorly or have a person with cancer put into a side room festooned with soiled linen. That has been my family’s experience of the NHS. The NHS is crap and it’s likely that the general crapness of the NHS will be highlighted and magnified should Covid19 get significantly worse than it is at present. In that scenario with more people making more use of the NHS and experiencing its failings, its poor management and comparitively poor treatment when placed alongside other nations heathcare systems, Covid19 could be the one event that makes people fall out of love with the NHS and stop treating it like some state secular religion.

Provided that the Covid19 outbreak does not cause the predicted 20% absentee rate from workplaces and that absentee rate’s effect on public services, then the Govt may be able to steer the country through to a time when a vaccine becomes available for this virus and new antiviral medications come to market. A vaccine against Covid19 would be the most cost effective way of dealing with this disease as an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Antiviral drugs are in short supply and are expensive therefore I’d like to see more effort put in by both government and private industry into finding a vaccine for the currently identified strains of Covid19.

If the situation does reach a worst case scenario, something that is not at all guaranteed to happen, then the Government is going to face some significant challenges. Quarrantine, movement restrictions and other measures that the government may need to take might not be as easy to impose on the public as similar measures on movement etc were to impose during the last World War. Unlike back then, Britain has morphed from a high trust society where people trusted their peers and those in authority into one where there is little trust between ordinary people and a rapidly shrinking trust in the government. The last three and a bit years with the Establishment trying to thwart Brexit has done a great deal to make the government’s job of dealing with the Covid19 outbreak much more difficult. It’s relatively easy to seal off whole areas of a nation in wartime and with a biddable and homogenous population but much harder to do so in a multicultural and multi-viewpoint society where there are multiple foci of interests, loyalties, cultures, opinions and lifestyles instead of a society where the country’s management are looked to for guidance and presumed to be competent. If Covid19 gets worse then the government will be dealing not just with the virus and the immediate effects of it but also with a culture of distrust for government a distrust that those in authority have done a lot to foster and create. It appears to me to be the case that the outcome of having governments that have lied to the people over such issues as the European Union, immigration, Islamic Rape Gangs and a whole host of other similar stuff, is that when the government needs the people to trust them, the people will not. This lack of trust in government could not only lead to societal disruption but also may aid the spread of the Covid19 virus. Neither of those outcomes would be of any long term good.

Conclusion:

Covid19 does pose a threat and should be treated accordingly. It is after all a novel disease that kills some of those it infects, sensible precautions should be taken against it and research into Covid19 and similar viruses should be prioritised and funded. Judging by its method of transmission, which is airborne and via infected surfaces, Covid19 does have the potential to spread widely. However it still looks as if most of those who contract it will have a bit of a rough time with it but will recover and some may contract Covid19 and it would only have the effect of a nasty cold. Many of us could have contracted Covid19 and recovered from it wihtout even realising it was Covid19, if we contracted a minor infection of it. This virus,whilst we should take precautions against it and need to find a way of stopping it, could end up affecting many but killing very few but only time will tell if that is going to be the outcome of this Covid19 outbreak. I’d like to leave you with a quote from the blogger Flaxen Saxon, who is a retired research scientist who said that whilst we should not be complacent about Covid19, we should also remember that although this virus is bad, ‘it’s not The Black Death.’