And In china, even more, drastic steps were taken, even if the mortality rate is higher than 1.4 percent. It's still far from the deadly ravages that smallpox presented. with it's 30 percent mortality rate.
There have been worse pestilences in history. That is not much comfort today. One might expect that we would not even have to worry about this sort of threat at all, because competent, modern societies ought to have learnt the lessons from history in how to avoid these situations altogether. However, it looks like we have not learnt the lessons and not taken it seriously. Even as the situation was developing before our eyes, our governments had their heads in the sand.
My angle is this, The panic and fear will kill more people than the Coronavirus if the fear-mongering continues. We all have to pull ourselves together. It's important that we do. Can people not see the context, The Fear is deadlier than the disease. People are dying from taking medicine meant to clean fish tanks, because of this unprecedented fear.
I can't live on a bandwagon of Fear, The panic is killing me literally, I have to Remain calm to stay alive, And others should stay calm as well. I'm keenly aware of this situation and its numbers. but giving people a positive message of hope is not an act of evil. Especially when the numbers and data match that message.
Up until the the 16th of March, the policy of my government had been to encourage 'herd immunity' among the population to this virus, by deliberately allowing 60% - 70% of the population to become infected. Here is a video of a live television interview on Friday the 13th of March with my government's chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, explaining the policy (from about 3:56 onwards):
Rather than suppressing transmission, they thought that they could mitigate it, as if it was just a flu. They had ideas of gradual, slight mitigations to the transmission rate by 'nudging' people to wash their hands, stand six feet from other people, stay indoors for a week if you are symptomatic, etcetera. Only when things got very bad might the government do something so rash as to close schools or pubs, and ban large gatherings. They thought that they could even use schools as sluice gates, opening and closing them to alternately encourage and reduce the spread of the virus.
I had grown increasingly disturbed and anxious by my government's inaction to that point. When I learned what the government's actual policy was, I started panicking.
However, over the weekend of the 14th and the 15th, there was a chorus of scientists imploring the government to change tack. There was also an influential paper (I think it had an effect on the US government's stance as well) published by epidemiologists at Imperial College London, which by mathematical modelling pointed out that the government's policy might kill hundreds of thousands of people (Richard Horton, editor of the prestigious Lancet medical journal, pointed out that the paper does not really illuminate anything better than elementary arithmetic would).
Over the previous week, the private sector had taken matters into its own hands, with many sports fixtures and other large gatherings cancelled, workers told to work from home and even universities started to close. On the evening of the 16th, the government announced some far-reaching measures and I began to feel slightly relieved. The government encouraged people not to go to work if they did not have to, not to visit pubs, clubs and restaurants, or cinemas or any other social gathering spots. That schools would close at some point soon to the children of non-essential workers. Most of these measures were on a voluntary compliance only basis, however.
Earlier this week the government announced a strict lockdown that would be enforced in law. I had mixed feelings about this. It was in fact what I had been wanting. I knew rationally that it was necessary to reduce the toll in lives and misery that this epidemic would cause, and it also offered me some further relief about this worry.
I admit there is also a feeling of unease at legal measures preventing me from travelling outside of my home for any reason I choose that offends me as an Englishman, even though my intention had been not to venture outside unless it was a matter of life and death while this epidemic lasted. That means that we need to fight to ensure that these measures are only temporary and lifted wholly when this crisis is over. And also that lessons are learned so that we never have to do it again.