Covid-19 Opinion

The corona virus crisis and all of the news surrounding it from all over the planet can be bewildering at times.
From cardboard coffins being used in Ecuador, to mass graves being dug in Iran and New York City, to praise being heaped on a few countries like Taiwan and Korea for seemingly "winning the war on covid-19", and scorn on many others for being in the "too little, too late" category, or even willfully misinforming the world (China, Iran).
Meanwhile the reported number of cases and dead keep going up, from a couple hundred in Wuhan just 3 months ago to 2.2 million cases today, with reported death rates wildly divergent across the planet, from 0.3% in Singapore to 18.5% in Lombardia (the worst hit region in Italy) and everything in between.
At the same time conspiracy theories, rumours, and outright lies are part of our daily news diet.
So how to make sense of it all?
Well, first of all it might be good to keep in mind that one day's "outrageous headline" (like with the satellite pictures of the mass graves in Iran, which were deemed to be proof that the situation in Iran was much worse than reported), can be another day's "nothing to see here" newsstory (when New york city had to start digging very similar mass graves on Hart Island).
Next aspect is the wild difference in death rates. I think there are reasons to believe that the true deathrate is pretty much a constant across different countries, of between 1 and 2% overall, depending on government policies regarding lockdowns/social distancing, demographics (countries with relatively old populations will suffer higher death rates), urbanisation level (in urban areas the spread will be faster) and hospital/intensive care beds/ventilator capacity. Basically, as long as medical capacity does not get overwhelmed, death rates should remain between 1 and 1.5%.

So why do we see reported death rates in most of Europe between 10 and 15%? The answer must be that because of testing constraints many many infections are simply missed.
I can offer some proof of that. The Netherlands reports around 30,000 cases and roughly 3,500 dead (11.4% mortality). However, sofar the country reports only deaths in hospitals, none outside, like in care homes. They are planning to change that but in the meantime we can use the deaths statistics from the national statistics office to estimate the difference. My rough conclusion is that the true number of deaths for the Netherlands amounts to about 5,500. That would take the mortality rate to 18.3% of the reported cases. Scary number right?
However, there is some good news, the dutch central blood bank has tested all 7,000 blood donors in the first week of April for antibodies for Covid-19 in their blood and found that 3% of them actually had those antibodies. This is an important number, because it is a very strong indication that the true number of infected people in the Netherlands in the middle of March was around 500,000. Now suddenly those 5,500 dead represent only a 1.1% deathrate, not that alarming high reported number.
Yes there are uncertainties (nobody under 18 and none over 70 among blooddonors, so not quite representative) but I believe it is still a strong indication for the true number of infected.
The reason I think it is important for other countries also is that there is not a single good reason to assume that the virus would behave differently on the other side of a border.
So, the true number of infected in almost all countries (everywhere where a high mortality rate is reported) will be much much higher than reported, and the number of people with minor or no symptons is very high (else hospitals in many countries would have been long overwhelmed).
Nevertheless this disease remains a lot more dangerous than the flu, with a death rate that is 10 to 15 times higher, with older people much more vulnerable than younger ones.
At some point I had hope that the climate might stop the virus in the tropics, but that seems to be idle hope now.
Hope that remains is for an existing medicin to be found effective (developing a new one takes just as long as a vaccine).
In the meantime, until a vaccine or medicin is widely available and priced friendly, the world had better be prepared for a quite different 1.5 meters "new normal" without tourism, with a damaged economy (I read quite a few "worse than the 1930's Big Depression" forecasts).
Governments will have to be very careful when lifting (part of) restrictions, because a "second wave" of infections can come quickly on the heels of the current one. Nobody wants that second wave to be a tsunami after all.

 

I start to develop an allergic reaction when people use the phrase "new normal".

Nobody should ever accept whatever is sold under this label as anything else but temporary measures. Dont call that normal, or else it will be.

 

some aspects of this "crisis" make me worry more than the virus itself, f.e.:
- there might be a step from voluntary vaccination to forced mass vaccination
- censorship is getting common. you have a different opinion, you are out. happens in europe if you don't follow the mainstream you might loose your job or you get hospitalised.
- tracking apps getting implemented. you have to give your private data to the government.
- we might get chips implemented - at least, while debating, we are getting used to that thought.
- protesting in public f.e. against government politics is not allowed anymore because group meetings on the streets are forbidden
- the military can get deployed now in such an exceptional situation, f.e. in germany.
- cash money can carry the virus, so get rid of it and change to electronic payment
this list is not complete and shall just give some hints that I see about changes happening in our civil formerly democratic societies - are we developing into a Brave new - / Big Brother world? it seems to me we are actually giving up a lot of civil rights that our great-grandfathers were fighting for and that were valid and essential for a century - just thinking...

 

The moment someone wants to give me or anybody in my family a tracking chip like a dog we're out of the country. There are boundaries that aren't up for negotiation

I don't worry about the military in Germany, served there, its not a danger to anyone. Kidding aside - military deployment in Germany in this situation means they are going to help distribute goods to quarantined people etc, not keeping people in check by waving guns. In fact they won't be armed whatever they might be doing.

Privacy (apps...) and democratic rights are in danger but strong societies will be able to handle this. Eg in Germany there was a recent ruling that demonstrations are not generally forbidden but must take into account the current situation and respect social distancing, for example.

Some rulers who always wanted to be a little dictator (like orban in Hungary) unfortunately use the situation to enhance their powers. Also not unheard of in our area...
We'll see how that plays out.

 

Oh, forced mass vaccination - as long as the vaccine has been created according to the current state of the art in science (that is, proper studies that its effective and free of bad side effects for the vast majority of people) I would have no problem with that.

 

I had to google that and read https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/long-shadow-1976-swine-flu-vaccine-fiasco-180961994/

From that article I take that 1 out of 100000 people who got the shot suffered from some neurological disorder afterwards.

All the other weird circumstances of that vaccination campaign aside I dont think this is something you can prevent entirely. After all, in this instance you would have had to vaccinate 100000 people and then detect the one case and trace that back to be caused by the vaccination. Its easy to conclude such causation after several millions of people got the shot, but no study with a limited number of subjects can achieve that upfront.

It sucks but in the end it's a numbers game as always. The risk of dying from the virus despite being young and healthy is probably bigger than the risk introduced by the vaccine. so even not taking into account the service you do to the society as a whole by getting vaccinated it might be a good idea. But yeah, lets just use the elderly as volunteers for testing first