Covid19 Hysteria

Entering week three of our lockdown. In the evenings it's eerie, in any normal time you would never be able to just wander all over the roads and intersections of the small town in which I live. In the early evening, I can dawdle over the roundabout in the middle of town. No one tells me to get off the flower beds and I don't have to dodge the traffic on the other side of the roundabout. It's like a scene from some disaster movie, no cars, no people, no sound at all. The power's still on though, just no signs of life as I make my way home through the damp and deserted streets.

New Zealand went into Level 4 Lockdown on the 26th March 2020 after a 48 hour preparation period. After the usual binge of panic buying emptying the shelves of toilet rolls and hand sanitizer, the spooked public moved on to the presumably less essential things like food, canned beans and potatoes.

The word came down to “shop normally”, the panic disappeared and sedate queuing began. Interesting how in the absence of clear direction, group dynamics and mob rule will fill the vacuum left by an absent authority.  When direction re-appears with the trappings of authority, the people are satisfied and find comfort and familiarity in obedience and conformity.

Things have now settled down into a pattern of semi normality; people stay at home, they go to the supermarket once a week or less and queue at the prescribed distance for an hour or more before they are allowed to snake through the isles in an orderly fashion. Packing their shopping back into the trolley at the checkout,- no re-usable bags allowed, and taking the trolley to the car. Only when at a safe distance from the supermarket are they allowed to pack their shopping into bags for the trip directly home. No deviations allowed.

"Don't Panic!"

As of this writing, NZ has had 9 fatalities Related to Covid19.  (Or “Associated” with Covid 19 as is the preferred euphemism). Seldom do you ever see it written that anyone has actually died of Covid19. Which is weird. Or that Covid19 has “killed” a number of people.

The question at hand is weather the strict economy destroying measures employed by most western governments are really necessary. From the New Zealand experience to date it's hard to argue that the lockdown has not been effective in "flattening the curve".

Peter Hitchens in a number of  YouTube interviews has pointed out that the current Lockdown prescription to cure the malaise is akin to the person who goes to the doctor with a cold and the doctor promises to fix it by cutting off his leg!  The leg is cut off and the cold disappears, and although one may not be related to the other the doctor is pleased to announce he has found a highly effective cure for the common cold!

The pint being, is the cure worse than the disease?

For the sake of context, historical mortality rates in NZ for influenza have been steadily reducing over the years from a high of 1551 in 1985 to 712 in 2016. Link . So hundreds of people die each and every year in NZ from the flu, even with vaccines and established heath care provisions.

Of the 9 fatalities in NZ to date, six have been from the same rest home outbreak in Christchurch, five men and one woman in their 80's and 90's and three other persons of advanced years with underlying age related conditions. This seems to be a pattern in most countries.

The government has spent 20 Billion dollars so far, including 9 Billion on Wage subsidies alone and another 3.2 billion announced today (15-4-20) in tax breaks for struggling businesses. That's 4640 dollars for every man woman and child in a country with an economy projected to contract by 7.2%. Stuff.co.nz The money printing presses are humming again with the quantitative easing program expected to reach 40 billion by May this year.

Lockdown is not the only way of dealing with Covid19. Sweden, for example, has issued only recommendations and advisories. They have a docile and obedient population of 10 million, and so far 1033 deaths. By comparison, if you look at Ireland and correct for population size then the Irish have only slightly lower fatalities, whilst enduring a severe lockdown.

The difficulty in getting a handle on exactly how dangerous and how widespread Coved19 is, is exacerbated by the very different approaches used to testing and recording in different countries. Combined with rampant fear-mongering by the media, a fear on the part of elected governments who cannot afford politically to appear to be not doing enough, as well as the political convenience that forcibly clearing the streets can present to an embattled president Macron, it is possible to explain, if not excuse the implementation of an ultimately unnecessary and economically disastrous shut-down of the world economy.

The stark contrast between the Netherlands and Belgium is a case in point. If the establishment narrative is to be believed then the Dutch authorities are cold heartless bureaucrats without a care for the health of the people. Yet over the border, Belgium, with a smaller population has even more deaths even with a severe lockdown.

The living of life is a series of cost-benefit analysis. We are discriminating and making judgment calls all the time in virtually all areas of life. Whilst it is tragic to lose a family member, the facts remain that in a country of five million people this virus has “been associated” with or “related” to the deaths of only 9 people in their 80's and 90's.

The government and supporters of the lockdown will insist that the reason for the low number of fatalities is the severe Level 4 lockdown and had we not taken these measures then we could have seen many thousands of deaths.

Predictions from Auckland University projected up to 80,000 deaths in a worst-case scenario if nothing is done, while Otago University research projected over 14000 deaths if our efforts failed to contain the virus. Link

Uniquely we have also adopted the goal of  attempting to completely eliminate the virus as opposed to managing and controlling its effects. So the fear-mongering was there, maliciously or not, the effect on the public was to accept any and all measures without thought to the cost.

It will likely become clear as time goes by that our efforts to stamp out the virus are totally disproportionate to the threat posed. In the last 20 years we have had SARS, MERS, Ebola, Swine Flue and the Zika virus, in all these cases the predictions of catastrophic loss of life were outrageously overblown. Yet we did not shut down and deliberately destroy our economies?  Link

With the knowledge of previous pandemic hysteria, and the well established knowledge of the behavior of pandemics (Farr's Law of Epidemics). Should we not, and would it not have been sensible to consider a different strategy? The one we have followed is going to cause large scale social damage for years to come. And the government, having taken this route will be unable politically to backtrack, or to re-assess its options.