Covid-19 Blog Series #3

Update 3 - Some Correspondence

My third update on the Covid-19 Pandemic was originally intended to be either a screed on the economic ramifications of the pandemic or a discussion of the testing protocols.



I am still working through both of these, but I owe you the discipline to be confident that what I am writing is factual and I am still working through some issues that are not clear. I will almost certainly come back to these topics but in the interim I thought it might be worthwhile to respond to some of the mail I have received on the topic.

Below are some messages, emails and letters I have received from around the world and my response. For each I have shown the relevant portion of the message followed by my answer.

---

Dear So Called Blogging Person

Didn’t you say this whole corona thing a bit overblown??? Now there are thousands of people dying!!! You told me that it wasn’t a big deal not so long ago!!

Karen
Adelaide

---

Karen

Thanks for the extra punctuation. I will put it to good use.

It’s true that in February I held the view that the whole thing was a bit overblown. In some private conversations I guessed that it would be a relatively minor matter in world events and that there would be maybe a few tens of thousands of deaths.

I was wrong in that opinion and remain grateful that I only shared it privately at that time. I rarely share my opinion publicly unless I am very confident, and this is one of those occasions when I have been pleased with this policy.

The fact is that this is a very significant outbreak and will have an impact on the world for a very long time. As I type this, there are over 2,000,000 infections reported and over 120,000 people dead. Both numbers will rise a great deal before we are done, so it is indeed a serious matter.

Cheers

---

Dear Person of Blog

Will the lockdown be worse than the virus? Will it kill more people than the virus?

Len
Sydney

---

Len

I don’t know. My opinion used to be that it would, but I am less confident in this opinion than I once was. The lockdown will prevent some people from dying and the economic impact of the virus will cause some people to die. The main question is which will be worse? I don’t know. [1]

There has been a strong argument that the extent of the lockdown was too great. Sweden was generally held out as a counterexample. In Sweden the lockdown extended only to those that were at high risk (ie the frail, the elderly, those with pre-existing weakness of their immune systems).

Initially it appeared that the Swedish response had worked well but more recently this is being reassessed. It’s not possible to make a pronouncement but it seems that anything short of a total lockdown will not be effective in stopping the virus from spreading. Whether stopping the virus altogether is a worthwhile or even achievable goal is another question.

Cheers
[1] I wish more people would learn to use this phrase.

---

Dear Non-Asian Person

It’s China’s fault! Why can’t I call it China Virus? Huh? Every other disease is named after the place it originated!!!

Deng
Wuhan

---

Deng

You can call it anything you like.

Not every other disease or pandemic is named after the place it originated. Some are named for the believed animal source (eg Avian Influenza, Swine Flu), some adopt a common name based on the scientific one (eg AIDS) and some are named for the symptoms (eg whooping cough).

Most people at present appear to be calling it coronavirus or covid-19. I suspect the common name will end up as one of those. Some people are calling is China Virus or Wuhan Coronavirus or even Wuflu. In the end there will be a common name that will be the name that refers to this specific disease.

The medical name for the disease is Coronavirus Disease 2019 (abbreviated COVID-19) and the virus that causes it is called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (abbreviated SARS-CoV-2).

Cheers

---

Dear Pretender

Why are you writing about Coronavirus? You’re not a doctor!

Kewby
Brussels

---

Kewby

In general, I have been writing more about the disease from an economic and statistical perspective. I don’t think I’ve commented on the virus itself or the symptoms and similar matters.

For those matters as I have seen fit to comment, I am generally assessing the view of experts or reporting of historical fact.

Cheers

---

Dear Oblivious to Australia's Faults Person

You keep saying that Australia is doing such a great job right?

Well I haven’t been able to get a test for corona even though I have the EXACT SYMPTOMS that it says I should have on the website! How can you know? Maybe everybody that hasn’t been tested already has it? On the tests we do now, 2% of people HAVE THE DISEASE ALREADY.
That means that about 50,000 Australians have probably got it! Plenty of other countries are doing better than us. Australi is awful.

Karryn
Murray Bridge West

---

Karryn

Yes, I do believe Australia has had a great outcome in relative terms. Whether that’s through good work or good luck is a longer conversation but we have certainly gotten ourselves into a very happy position.

I am very sorry that you can’t get tested for coronavirus. I imagine you would also struggle to get tested for bubonic plague or leprosy. Australia (and the rest of the world) have more demand for covid-19 testing than supply. This will change over time and already in Australia many jurisdictions opened the criteria for testing. I suspect that sometime in the next few months you will be able to be tested for coronavirus as much as you want.

The current positive rate of around 2% is unlikely to be replicated across the wider community. Saying the infection rate is 2% across Australia would be an example of “selection bias”. The current group (those *likely* to have coronavirus) is not comparable with the wider community. This is now being shown with recent (wider community results) coming in around 1.6%.

In terms of other countries, there are no *comparable* countries doing better than Australia. There are no countries with a population larger than say 1,000,000 people that have a testing rate as high as Australia AND are reliably and regularly reporting their test results that have better results.

Cheers

---

Dear Right/Left Wing Blogger

The coronavirus is because of [insert political leaning here] and because of their complete failure.

Why didn’t [insert political figure] act sooner or delay action until the facts were in? Why didn’t anyone listen to [insert opposition political figure]. Seriously this is a crime against humanity!

Clyde/Gordon
Gordon/Clyde

(Note that I received almost identical messages but naming opposite political figures. Weirdly, one was from Clyde in Gordon and the other from Gordon in Clyde. Go figure.)

---

Clyde/Gordon

The Coronavirus Disease is not because of your reviled political bête noire. It is because of a virus known as SARS-CoV2-2 that probably originated in bats.

The response to the pandemic is about what we would expect on a global scale in the sense that some countries are doing better than others. The countries doing best seem to include those that have a social culture of wearing facemasks during illness and those countries that have either no land borders (eg Australia, Japan) or very hard land borders (eg South Korea).

It does appear that the early warnings on the pandemic came from Taiwan and Hong Kong and that the WHO were a little slower to act. At the same time, by the end of January, the WHO had issued their highest level of alert. So we are seeing a large and unwieldy organisation go from first learning about a disease to realising that it was a serious pandemic in the space of a calendar month.

The most suspicious character in this saga remains (for me) China. Evidence of whether or not the Chinese government has been truthful in their reporting will come out in due course, but for now it is fair to say that the numbers look odd.

Cheers

---

Dear Blogging Artiste

Why did you stop making graphs and tables for facebook? They were really pretty.

Jackie
Kuala Lumpur

---

Jackie

When I started making those graphs it was very early in the outbreak and there weren’t many decent charts or tables available. There also seemed to be a lot of data and very little analysis. So I did it myself.

There are lots of nerds on the job now that are much better than me at making graphs and tables, so I stopped.
For a global view look at the Johns Hopkins site (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/) or Our World in Data (https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus). Johns Hopkins is a highly reputable US research University and Our World in Data is done in conjunction with Oxford University (which you might have heard of). Both sites are well referenced and easy to validate.

If you want to play with data from Wikipedia or worldometer (or any of about 20 others), that’s cool but keep in mind that in both cases you’ll need to carefully vet the data. It’s often unreliable.

Cheers

---

Dear Blogging Person

Are you going to write something about the George Pell case?

Kheff
St Leonards

---

Kheff

Yes I will write but I am unlikely to publish anything.

There is very little that I can add to existing commentary and it is a subject that few people can approach with an open mind. The Pell conviction was overturned by the full bench of the High Court in a unanimous decision. The full judgement is available online and if you plan to comment, I suggest you read it carefully as it’s very well reasoned.

Another article that covers the circumstances exceptionally well is from Jeremy Gans at “Inside Story”. Gans is an attorney and academic and has a good understanding of the issues. You can read it here -> https://insidestory.org.au/pell-in-purgatory/

Cheers


---
image courtesy Petar Milošević / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Writing_a_letter.jpg