This is just what I’ve put together from various sources, to make some things clear, which do not seem clear in much public discourse about the coronavirus so far… It also represents a change of view for me. This is a general consideration of disease. If its wrong, or seriously inadequate then please let me know, so I can change it…. I’m not an expert.
Probably not good to think about, if you are truly scared in the first place.
1) The problem with disease is not just the death rate. If for instance a virus has 100% death rate but kills one person, then it’s probably no big deal.
2) An important factor/problem is the contagion rate. If the disease is communicated to 80% of the population, as opposed to 10% of the population then its death rate, even if smaller, may be more serious than that of a disease which is hard to catch. If for example it infects 80% of 24 million people that is 19.2 million people. If the death rate is 1% then that is 190,000 people dead and a hell of a lot of overfull hospitals and overworked medical staff. If the virus spreads quickly which it probably will with a high contagion rate then all of these cases happen in a relatively short period of time, further overwhelming the health system (and probably most other social systems). Another virus may have a 10% death rate but be harder to catch and only be communicated to less than 1% of the population… 1% of 24 million people is 240,000 people, 10% of that is 24,000 dead. The first virus is probably more significant, even with a lower death rate – everything else being equal.
This is the big difference between coronavirus and SARS. SARS is far more lethal, but it is much harder to catch. Coronavirus seems very easy to catch, and so will spread further and probably kill more people.
3) The third problem is what I’ll call the incapacity rating of the disease (there is almost certainly a proper medical term for this, but i’m not a doctor – as should be obvious). This is when, perhaps, few people die, but lots of people are really seriously ill, need care, or would die without treatment. Theoretically a disease could exist which may not kill or injure people if they had decent hospitalisation. So the hospitals fill up with people who would probably recover. In this factor we can include diseases which do not kill people, but leave them severely disabled, or incapacitated – this stresses social and medical mechanisms, again – especially if patients all turn up in a short period. Diseases can have both high death rates and high incapacity rates, there is no reason to assume its one or the other.
Many people and politicians seem to be only interested in the death rate, and ignore the serious problems that arise from points 2 and 3. Even if the death rate is low, there can be a case for physical isolation.
4) The fourth problem I know of is the mutation rate. Viruses are particularly prone to mutation. This one has apparently (and the apparently means i don’t know for sure, its just something i read) mutated from an animal virus, to an animal to human virus, to a human to human virus, and now to a multi-variety virus. It is much harder to develop immunity and vaccines against such viruses. This is one reason why we can be affected by flu year after year.
There is a possible good thing about a quickly mutating virus, if it can propagate without killing people, and killing or injuring people stops its spread, then it may well evolve to be less harmful in the long run, but more easily catching. However, this cannot be guaranteed, and a lot of people might be severely incapacitated in the process.
5) Pandemics may need to be treated seriously, even if they do not seem so bad at first, until we work out all these different factors.
Tags: Anthropocene, Disinformation, disorder, pandemic
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