An update of my previous blog.

“When we get back to normal …”

Not when, but if.

Coronavirus is the virus. Covid19 is the disease it causes. Coronaviruses have been with us a long time. The flu virus is one of them. Some common colds are caused by coronaviruses. Covid19 is caused by a new strain—hence the adjective novel. I dare say, dear reader, that you knew this. But I’m ashamed to say it hadn’t dawned on me until fairly recently. Now on with the plot.

I don’t see any prospect of controlling this pandemic until herd immunity has been achieved. Herd immunity comes from a combination of immunisation and recovery from infection.

• A vaccine is at least a year away and anyway vaccines don’t always work. The first recorded influenza pandemic was in 1510. We haven’t yet fathomed the disease and a flu vaccine is as far away as ever. Furthermore, the common cold, sometimes of coronaviral aetiology, eludes all cures. The polio vaccine took decades to be usable, though we’ve moved on scientifically from then. I’m old enough to remember the polio epidemic of 1957/8. As an asthmatic child often fighting for breath, pictures of children in iron lungs terrified me.
• For recovery from infection we need about 60% of the population to be infected, with the inevitable proportion having life threatening disease and dying. The trouble is that this virus has great propensity to mutate. Its mutated forms could be more vicious than the present one, and herd immunity, or vaccines for that matter, for the present strain won’t necessarily work for new ones. So we are faced with the possibility of wave upon wave of epidemic. Epidemics in general are occurring with increasing frequency (Asian flu, polio, SARS, foot & mouth, Ebola, now this … and more).

And of course there’s always the possibility that new viruses will emerge.

Viruses are clever. They use other creatures for reproduction—their only concern—remorselessly. Just as tectonic plates do the “things that come naturally” leading to quakes and tsunamis, so viruses do the “things that come naturally” leading to morbidity and mortality in vulnerable creatures including humans. It is the natural order.

Viruses are as much part of creation as we are. Praying to a sky pixie for delivery from the pestilence of viruses, as religious nutters do, is no more than human arrogance and hubris. We have viruses in our intestines, necessary for digestion, just as we have billions of bacteria living in us and on us, all necessary for an efficient bioeconomy. Are they asking the sky pixie to discern which bugs to zap and which to leave unhindered?

If covid19 were left unchecked, the best option scientifically, it would amount to survival of the fittest. The trouble is that the burden on the health services would soon be catastrophic. The strategy adopted, distancing and such like, spreads the load over a longer period. But no matter how we get there, herd immunity is needed—and may never be achieved. I suspect that governments have been informed of this, but dare not admit it publicly.

This brings me to the reliability of what we are told. Take today’s BBC news item “New data has added to growing evidence that the number of deaths linked to coronavirus in UK care homes may be far higher than those recorded so far.” Note the vagueness. “Deaths linked to coronavirus” – what does that mean? Deaths “may be” linked. They may not. Just because someone with a cough and pneumonia dies, it doesn’t mean they died of covid19, nor does it mean that the virus contributed to their death. Only testing will tell, so we need reliable tests. Not all tests are reliable. If one reads only the headlines, and many of us do just that, it’s easy to panic.

Ultimately—and I wish people would realise this—we’re all going to die, if not of covid19 this month, then something else later. And let me repeat that as someone with a great future behind him, I would expect a younger person who could get back to work to jump the treatment queue before me. I’m ready to die, though I don’t want to yet.

I don’t much care what others think this says about my morality: to me it’s pragmatic necessity. I acknowledge that I have a peculiar, even brutal, attitude to death. It comes from having seen death as welcome in severely ill people especially babies, having handled cadavers in anatomy dissection rooms for 30 years, and having suffered the death of one of my sons.

Turning from biology to economic and political affairs, the consequences of the pandemic could be serious in Europe, and cataclysmic elsewhere.

• In the west, an economic slump of staggering magnitude is almost certain: some economic historians have said the worst in 10 generations (400 years), others 200 years, and certainly 100 years. As one commentator put it, it’s almost as if the virus were tailor-made to strike at capitalism. The financial markets are in turmoil. What will happen to the banks? Fewer people will be able to buy houses, house prices will plummet (a good thing you might say), savings wiped out, pensions destroyed. Power cuts, shortages, rubbish uncollected, unemployment, poverty, civil unrest, suicides. Back to the middle ages. Governments won’t be able to bail us out: national economies will be in the doldrums for decades after the financial largesse already being handed out. Taxes will rise. This economic reality is already fuelling demands for the lockdown to be lifted so that people can get back to work.
• Elsewhere – a worst-case scenario
  • China is already buying up commodities now that the prices are rock bottom.
  • The US sees covid19 as China’s fault and demands reparations. China says no. The US refuses to pay back interest on its substantial loans from China. China sees this as an act of economic war. Then what?
  • The slump in oil prices destabilises the Middle East, especially Saudi. Oil supplies are cut. Dictators emerge.
  • The Russian economy being too dependent on oil, Putin invades Ukraine for food and the Baltics for minerals. Will Western Europe fight for the Baltics?
  • The peace since 1945 has been dependent upon economic prosperity. When that is taken away nationalism rises and fights are picked.
  • Africa is devastated. Infected migrants hammer at Europe’s doors. Shots are fired to keep them out: many will be killed.
  • I imagine something similar could happen in South and Central America – poor and populous.
  • The already creaking EU disintegrates.
  • Surveillance becomes intrusive (it’s getting that way already).
  • Totalitarian governments take over. Maybe China takes over. Or Russia.

Now, you may say that this is unduly bleak. But none of it is beyond the bounds of possibility.

I could be wrong. Part of me hopes I am. Part of me thinks that our lifestyle in the West is dissolute and decadent and needs sorting. But events that lead to correction of our lifestyle will likely lead to horrific, in human terms, sequelae for the third world—which now includes much of our inner urban areas.

Life is a terminal disease, its death rate 100%. People are going to die of this and other viruses. Measles is coming back. Polio and Ebola and Foot & Mouth lurk in the shadows ready to erupt unpredictably. The best thing we could do for one another is to help each other come to terms with uncertainty and mortality. I did my best from the pulpit and I do my best through my blog.

The fact is that there are too many people on the planet. There are far too many cooped up. Maybe the planetary ecosystem is resetting itself. I’m not a proponent of the Gaia theory, but I know that we reap what we sow. At present we are reaping. As far as creatures of the earth are concerned, apes like us are vulnerable, impotent and expendable.

But never mind. The sun is shining, the sky is clear, riverbeds visible, air cleaner. The night sky is spectacular. This virus is doing the planet a favour. Perhaps too it’s the scalpel that releases pus from the putrid abscess of aggressive capitalism.

I thank James Drever and others for help with this, but please don’t associate them with my prognostications.