Mar 12, 2020
Doomsday Dress Rehearsal: Coronavirus Special
I wanted to take a second to look on the bright side of the pandemic. This won’t age well.
As of my writing this, COVID19 — which we’ve all decided to call coronavirus to spite the beer — is a pandemic. That means it’s a disease that’s all over the place. It probably came from some combination of pangolins and bats from a district in China. The Chinese government actually did a great (and democratically impossible) job at quarantining the infected, but they didn’t contain it. Now it’s everywhere, or getting there. It will be everywhere-ish at some point. How deadly is it? Depends on how old you are and where you live. If you’re old, it’s bad news. If you’re young, you’ll get through it unless you’re very unlucky. And if you’re in a country with good hospitals that aren’t overwhelmed by the other infected, you’re much better off than if you don’t get proper care.
Speaking of proper care, there’s no finished vaccine, but proper care can often prevent the worst with antibiotics and respirators and such. This is why we’re doing the whole quarantine thing. It seems like (as of my writing this) people are finally coming around to taking this thing seriously, but I don’t think everyone gets why we are doing it when the virus is already out of Pandora’s stupid virus box. We’re doing it because slowing the virus down gives our healthcare systems time to ramp up and take care of the envirused. And because the virus will evolve over time. It should (probabilistically but not inevitably) get less deadly as time passes. Also, it won’t actually get everywhere. Hard to predict what the ultimate saturation will be but it would not be surprising if we’re stay under 50% globally, even years down the road. Lastly, we will almost certainly have a vaccine within 18 months. It’ll take time to get it ramped up and delivered everywhere, but we’ll have it. That’ll save lives.
As for saving lives, what are we looking at? Right now, the worldwide mortality rate is around 3%. That’s insanely high and will go down over time — the more representative rate, the rate in places where there’s access to testing and more rigorous tracking, is around *0.7%. About 10 times higher than the regular flu. That’s high but not Spanish Influenza level. We’ve had much, much worse.
*This figure changes by the day and by the organization and is on the conservative end. I think the conservative side is more likely to be correct, once things shake out.
Another thing to keep in mind is the rate of contamination. Right now, that’s around 2.5 (if you have it, expect to infect 2.5 other people with it, ya jerk). 2.5 is high but not crazy-high. It’s in the range of being slowed but not stopped, hence what I said above.
Travel bans at this point won’t have a huge effect on places where the virus is already spreading. Imagine ye and yer heartie maties are on yer pirate ship. The scallywags from the navy are a pummellin’ yer ship wit leaden balls and yer takin’ in water. Fact is, yer ship is Swiss cheese at this poin’. As cap’n, ye ken it’s only a matter o’ time ‘for ye all sink down ter Davy Jones’ lair. What do ye? Do ye man all yer remainin’ men at ye cannons to fight off the land-blasted navy scum? No, ye do what ye can ter stay afloat. Ye’s the cap’n.
Once you already have the virus in your community, it doesn’t make sense to prevent people from travelling into your community. The ship has sailed, so to speak. If the point is to slow the virus down — and that’s the point, the only one — you need to burn bridges and isolate. This is why the schools that are shutting down before any known cases are not over-reacting. If they were to shut down after they had a case, it would already be too late. Well, not too late in a morbid way — too late in a way where a bunch of students would already be infected by that point. Preventative acts are the best we’ve got. Reactive acts are much less effective.
Anyway, you likely know most or all of this. The good news is that was just a preamble. If you know me, you know I’m obnoxiously idealistic. Some might even call me an optimist (which I don’t think describes me at all!). I’d call myself a positive realist. I like to describe things in terms of how they actually are, but with a positive slant. This is because I don’t think our media or cultural environment are supportive of this kind of thing. Always look for the bright side. It’s there and it’s being ignored. Let’s harvest it.
So, here are some bright sides to COVID19!
It’s Practice!
We’ve had worse and will have worse. Viruses and living things go waaaay back. They’ve destroyed all sorts of things. We’ve made it out so far. Even though we’re smarter and more resourceful than ever, we’ve made it really hard on our species by building cities and transportation and infrastructure. Without realizing it, we built those for our virus friends too.
Viruses come and go. This one came from bats and pangolins. The next one will come from piranhas and wooly mammoths (after we bring them back in our hubris). There will be one that’s has a higher infection and mortality rate and it will be bad. Worse than this one. But… maybe we’ll learn from this one and prepare ourselves for this inevitability. I know, I know — we already had the Spanish Influenza and that was as bad as what I’m describing and we didn’t learn our lessons from it as we should have. But this time, this time we’ll remember. At least, living generations will remember this time. Maybe those future fools in 2090 will ignore their history brainchips, but we ought to be better prepared for at least a while after this.
(I won’t talk about what preparation actually looks like — that’s boring. It’s all about hospital beds and refrigerators and protocols and regulations.)
So, silver lining #1 — we’re saving future lives by learning hard lessons today. Thanks, pangolins and bats!
It’s Political!
Globally, there have been a wide range of responses to the pandemic. China, as mentioned, did a technically great job at containing the spread. I say technically because they did some martial law craziness to get there. If a democratic government did what they did, that government would rightly be overthrown. China’s example is interesting but not inspiring.
European countries have been all over the map (as they are literally, hah). The common thread, however, is that they were all way, way too slow to respond. Italy got the most unlucky (they had a huge outbreak) but it could have been anyone. My experience in the UK has been similar. Up until the past two weeks, the university I’m at was sanguine about the whole thing. They sent some emails about the current state of the virus.
There’s a virus but don’t worry — it’s far away.
(1 week later)
The virus is contained — don’t worry.
(1 week later)
Not here, uh, yet — we’re keeping our eyes open.
(1 week later)
In the UK, but not up here in Scotland.
(1 week later)
In Scotland, but barely.
(1 week later)
Well, here’s to the lockdown. Pints?
If we were in Italy, we’d be just like Italy. Which is to say in a horrible place (well, the country is lovely, just not right now). We got lucky. Now we have the travel restrictions we should have had over a month ago.
In the US, the reaction has been stupid from the top. The president started out by dismissing the problem entirely. Then he played the concerns off as an attack on him from his opponents — the media and the establishment, whoever they are. Next, he spent most of his messaging time trying to talk nice to investors since the economy was tanking. As of just now — months in — he finally addressed the severity of the problem and instituted a travel ban from Europe. (We’ve been over why this is nonsense — the cannonball-shaped holes are already in the ship.) But he said everyone can be tested and a bunch of other malarky. And his proposed solutions are mostly aimed as steadying faith in the economy. He’s months behind. But he’s not the only one. There are bad leaders all over the place doing the same thing.
So why is this a silver lining? Because you learn a lot about your leaders when they are faced with real trouble. I think it will be good for every country with bad leaders to take note of this and vote against them as a response. This could be a time of very positive political change, away from reactionary, angry populism and back to political boringness, i.e., stability. We need steady hands for our pirate ship.
It’s unifying
The worst thing about pandemics is that they affect everyone everywhere. The best thing about pandemics is that they affect everyone everywhere.
I don’t want to undersell the bad parts of COVID19 — people will suffer and some will die. That’s tragic and always will be.
But we’re hardy and there are a lot of us and most of us will make it through. And, crucially, we’ll make it through together. This is a great time to come to understand our shared mortality — humans, all. COVID19 doesn’t discriminate and I think there’s a chance we come away from this a little more like COVID19 in that respect. This is a bad way to come together — just like a funeral — but we’ll all be ever-so-slightly happy we came.
What was that about vaccinations?
There’s a significant stubborn portion of every population that doesn’t want to get vaccines.
PSA: Guess what? They work and you’ll want one this time for sure. I know you didn’t want the other ones that could prevent your kids from getting disfiguring diseases, but this one could do worse. Get your vaccinations. End PSA.
COVID19 should help raise awareness and acceptance of vaccinations. It will save and improve lives as a result.
Hooray for COVID19!
No, don’t celebrate it! Bad header!
Those are just a few positives that might pop out of a bad thing. Let me know of any you can think of — it’s important we do this. That’s the difference between being proactive and reactive. Always look on the bright side! Leave the professionals to look at the other side. Stay safe. Don’t shake hands. Quarantine yourself to save people. Don’t stay in school! Be a hero-in-hiding.
