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It's the end of the world!
https://virologydownunder.com/so-you-think-youve-about-to-be-in-a-pandemic/
Above is the calmest and most useful advice re Covid-19 that I’ve seen so far. It also reminds us that we’ve had one before, i.e. SARS or bird flu. The most useful advice of all time is, of course, the Hitchhiker’s Guide advice of “Don’t Panic.” I happen to have had bird flu myself and I have to say it’s one of the easiest cases of flu I ever had. Really didn’t feel all that sick, except that afterwards when I first tried to do exercise, like walking across the room, I went all wonky. Flu has that kind of sting in the tail. And I remember a friend dropping off supplies for me – and sitting out on the veranda to talk to me, while I stayed inside the house, just in case.
As with SARS, this virus appears to be fairly mild for most people, except those already ill or very elderly, which is generally the case for such illnesses. What’s scaring folk is the speed of transmission and the fact that this is an unknown. Vaccines take months or even years to develop if the viruses are completely new and so anyone could catch it. We get used to being able to ward off coronaviruses (this new one is only the latest in the family) and yeah, I get the free flu shot provided by my workplace every year. Come to think of it, I haven’t had the flu since catching SARS. Below is a short quote from a site called www.smartclinics.com.au :
WHAT’S MORE DEADLY – THE CORONAVIRUS OR THE FLU?
It is extremely difficult to form an adequate assessment of a novel coronavirus that hasn’t had time to settle into the human population. As a new disease, it is possible that it may have a higher death rate as few people will have a defence against it.
Generally speaking, approximately 0.05% of people who contract influenza will die from it. Some very rough estimates of coronavirus lethality put the death rate at 2%, approximately 40 times higher than that of the flu. However, there is very little value in such estimates at this stage of the disease’s progression and it is more likely to drop rather than increase, particularly as treatments improve and previously mild, undiagnosed cases are also counted.
As a long term fan of the zombie apocalypse, I’ve been fascinated to see what’s happening with the spread of Covid-19. Let me add that fascination doesn’t mean approval! I’m looking at this from the point of view of a writer who likes to consider pandemics as a what-if storyline. I didn’t want this to happen for real. [I want the zombies because then I wouldn’t have to go to work]. The long incubation period is unusual; with flu it’s 1-4 days, but with C-19 medicals were saying up to 14 days until they found a patient whose exposure had been 27 days ago. Which wipes out the “protection” of long journeys, since somebody could easily book and take their flight and be in the new place for weeks before falling ill.
I think of the history of the Spanish Flu of 1918/19, where Western Australia was able to partially protect itself because of its isolation. It could literally see the flu coming. Overland, the distances between settlements were a safeguard. Ships were made to stand off the coast until authorities could be sure no one was sick aboard, or if they were, to direct them to a quarantine camp away from the city.
With the advent of easy and quick flights (in comparison with ship travel) we lost a lot of our shield and with Covid-19, I’m not sure we have any special status at all.
I’ve read a lot of apocalypse literature and the collapse of the world economy doesn’t figure large in these books. Mostly you see the scenario of the disease appearing and spreading so fast that the infrastructure of civilisation falls apart overnight, it seems. You don’t see business owners calling factories in China to ask where their parts are, only to be told that no one’s working, the factory has had to shut, we’re in quarantine. Or to get no answer at all. You don’t get restaurants of a particular nationality all but empty because idiots have decided that just being Chinese means they’re at greater risk of spreading a virus that’s mostly in China. No, they tend to jump right to the “fun stuff” of those few survivors trying to get to safety and avoid the sudden dangers that have arisen where they thought they were safe.
The reader always thinks they’d be one of those few, of course. If you had them wander out of their bedroom only to be bitten by a rabid family member, you wouldn’t have much of a story.
I first heard the P word spoken on television on 24 February; made special note of it. They said it twice on the news while emphasising that status hadn’t yet been granted the new virus, as though it was some sporting achievement. It happens when a new virus has spread to two countries beyond the one which reported it, though I can’t find out what the precise numbers of infected need to be. I imagine it varies depending on the conditions of the virus. For instance Ebola, despite the terror the name invokes, is very slow to spread because it requires person to person contact. It’s not airborne. A traditional method for dealing with an outbreak in an African village was to isolate the village and wait till everyone died, because once caught, Ebola is very deadly, with up to 90% mortality rate. So if that one got loose in Europe, say, or the US, I imagine they’d declare before it got out of single figures.
With Covid-19, unless you’re elderly and/or already ill, it doesn’t look dangerous on the details we have so far. Or no more dangerous than catching an “ordinary” flu would be.
I’ve been interested also to watch the cultural responses to this new virus. China’s government was fairly quick and brutal to respond, because they can be. They could lock down an entire city and forbid its residents to travel, which they did. It didn’t work, in that the virus got out of Wuhan before lockdown was declared, but at that time no one was aware of the very long incubation period. They were probably expecting it would be like established influenza, i.e. the 1-4 days with an average of two days.
I can’t help thinking that that wouldn’t work here in Australia because there just wouldn’t be the same automatic obedience and respect/fear of the authorities that there is in China. You would get a lot more people breaking quarantines for whatever they thought were good reasons.
I read one zombie apocalypse story which noted the response of North Korea. In the story, with zombies now spreading worldwide, the NK dictator government orders every citizen to report to medical centres, where they get their teeth pulled out. No teeth, no bite, no problem with zombies. It would work, oh yeah, but conversely it wouldn’t work anywhere but in a total dictatorship.
If you’re not in a dictatorship, people get to be stupid by their own choice. So; have at least a few days extra food around. It’s basic common sense. A lot else can happen, such as bushfires cutting off your only surfaced supply road through the desert. And support your local Chinese restaurant; they need the help right now.
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