It seems that, at least for the moment, there are some places that are less afflicted by Chinese Covid19 than others. As expected, in general the more closely packed the population the more transmission there seems to be of Covid19, although there are exceptions as you will see. Areas that are more demographically White British such as Essex, Suffolk, Dorset and Cornwall, seem to have the lowest number of infections.

Manchester, which demographically is similar in make up to to England as a whole is an exception and has relatively few infections when compared to say, Birmingham for example. Manchester has 55 infections for a population of 547,627 whilst Birmingham has 290 infections for a population of 1,141,374. Birmingham’s infection figure is five times higher than that of Manchester despite only having just over double the population. What could be the root cause of this disparity? Are Birmingham testing more people and therefore uncovering more cases than Manchester or is it something else?

Now the National Health Service is, in my opinion, pretty crap at the best of times, but I’ve no reason to believe that it is less crap in Manchester than it is in Birmingham so that is not a good reason for the difference between the number of cases reported in Birmingham than Manchester. The NHS is a terrible way to deliver healthcare but it is not awful in one area and brilliant in another, for the average patient it’s uniformly crap across the whole country and was crap before this emergency and will continue to be crap after it.

So what could be causing the massive differences between Covid19 infections in various areas. This is not just a difference between Manchester and Birmingham, it’s also the difference between relatively similarly sized London boroughs with 109 in Newham vs Richmond upon Thames with 55 or Ealing with 165 cases as opposed to Havering’s 70 cases.

In this small sample of areas of different types, rural, culturally cohesive, multicultural and urban one particular correllation seems to jump out and that is the more diverse and area is and the more non wealthy transients it contains the more likely the spread of infection. Richmond upon Thames has (or it did when I last worked there) a lot of people who travel a lot for both business and pleasure, as they can afford to do so. There are also a lot of Americans, South Africans, Australians and others from the Anglosphere who are living there. Yet Richmond only has 55 cases when Ealing has 165. Most of these areas have similar populations, give or take 100k or so, to each other yet the numbers of infections are vastly different. I believe that the reason for there being less cases in Richmond than in Ealing is Richmond’s transients and travellers are possibly wealthy and not likely to be in the sorts of places where Covid19 might have been ignored and allowed to grow, places like Iran for instance. Richmond is also probably not harbouring a similar number of illegal and unmonitored migrants as for example Tower Hamlets and Newham are probably harbouring. Ilegal migration is a known problem when it comes to disease prevention as those illegal migrants who may be suffering from a contagious condition may not approach health agencies for help because they may fear being deported. It is quite possibly the larger number of illegals in places like Newham when compared to Richmond may account for at least some of this difference.

One thing that these figures both the above ones and those in the table below, tell me is that there may be some degree of truth in some of the reports I’ve been hearing from various sources in East London about there being cultural problems in social distancing. I’m being told that in Newham in particular local Muslims have been taking a fatalistic attitude to Covid19 and are not only failing to engage in social distancing but also mocking those from other groups that are taking precautionary steps. It has been reported to me that local Muslims in the area are saying things like ‘Allah will protect me’ and ‘If Allah wills me to die then I die’. The streets are apparently still busy and the police seem more interested in throwing their weight around in the less Islamically dominated South of the borough rather than enforce social distancing in places like East Ham, Upton Park and Manor Park. Now I’m not for one moment suggesting or even implying that there is a ‘Covid19 Jihad’ or anything like that. I don’t believe that in that area there are deliberate attempts by extremist Muslims to spread Covid19, that’s not the case. But what is happening is Islamic medievalist fatalism by Muslims is spreading the Covid19 virus both within the borough’s legal and substantial illegal population. I’m being told off cases of outright refusal to take Covid19 seriously by Newham’s Islamic enrichers and I suspect that similar attitudes may be present elsewhere in other Islamic communities.

It could well be cultural and religious reasons that could lie at the heart of why Birmingham is a Covid19 hotspot whereas Manchester is not? These differences are not in my view based on this sample of locations racial in nature but are instead ideological and cultural. Something that can show the ideological and cultural basis for high Covid spread areas is the case of Bradford. Now Bradford is a heavily Asian city, 25% of the population is Asian or of Asian descent yet their Covid19 figures are at the time of writing not excessive, with 23 cases. This suggests to me that although there is one large minority present in Bradford, there may be less of the cultural and religious fatalism there than in Newham or Tower Hamlets which are heavily Islamic and where extremist religious thinking has taken on a bit more than a foothold. It’s a really interesting question why the difference between Bradford and Newham which are both racially similar yet are hit differently by Covid19. I would suggest that generic Asians who follow Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Christianity or even Indian Cochin Jews, are less prone to the sort of ‘leave it to god’ fatalism than Muslims are. This medievalist fatalism from some of the followers of Islam is going to hamper efforts to fight Covid19 and may even make the current situation much worse.  The Muslim community needs to step up to the plate with Covid19, some Islamic groups have but there is still a major problem with some Muslims thinking that Covid19 is nothing to do with them or won’t affect Muslims.

Some Chinese Covid19 Numbers from the UK 27/03/2020

(Notes 1. Data taken from BBC ‘Covid in my area’ tool. 2. Data taken from wikiepedia or local council pages or national statistics. Sources are linked. 3. Included because its population make up roughly mirrors that of England). Sorry about the wonky columns but the info is as far as I can ascertain correct at the time of writing.

The full list that this table comes from along with all links is to be found via this link.. COVID NUMBERS FOR UPLOAD