The burden of freedom

In a fatigued blink of an eye, three days of work nicely announced my resumption of normal, unquarantined life. It contained logistics of moving campus, a case of student-on-student sexual harassment, de-escalating a feud over inaccurate book-keeping, gaining approval for a new programme and also lots of hugs to welcome us back, usually accompanied by my fake coughing. It's good to be back. Back into hyperdrive.

The world churned just as quickly when this happened, but the preoccupation with the million and one interruptions meant that it seemed like the world was again rather simple.

The Covid-19 outbreak in China is now in clear decline with cases dropping. Time is still doing its grim stocktake as the bad cases in each province turn into fatalities, but the majority are recovering. Hubei is still racking up 100 deaths or more a day but with cases falling, this will inevitably fall. And for our business's sake we hope that the travel ban for Chinese to New Zealand will be lifted this week. I would if I were in charge. In perspective of a country of 1.4 billion people, the risk of sick tourists is low and majority of the population are from provinces without any recent cases. Hubei still deserves to be a customs pariah for some time yet though.

And should they be smart enough to lift the ban on non-Hubei Chinese, they should slap a temporary travel ban on South Korea and Japan where the virus is now loose and, worse, the authorities do not know how some of the cases caught the virus. There would have been some anomalous cases in China, presumably, but majority could be traced back to Wuhan, Hubei or another infected person. Both Japan and Korea are the only countries with more than 100 known, reported cases. Singapore has the fourth most cases and anecdotally, people don't seem to be taking the same degree of precautions, even though it is probably also got some local spreading. (There was the amazing story of the British businessman who caught coronavirus at a conference in Singapore, flew to France for a holiday and infected a bunch of British in the chateau, accounting for a large number of the French cases.) There is also the odd case of Iran, where 18 cases have been reported including 4 fatalities, the country with the most fatalities outside of China.

This could be alarming. The chance to decimate the virus's presence in the human species might have gone and we might just have gained a new thing to catch and watch out for. There is the argument of diminishing potency for lethal viruses. Viruses that are too lethal or too quick to be noticed tend to kill the host or incapacitate them too quickly to spread to too many people. The strains that spread fast but more mildly have the advantage in getting out to the world and may be far less likely to kill lots of people. (Thank you, Hubei, and sorry as you may have borne the brunt for the benefit of others.) Or not. Generally speaking I think it'd be good to do some shopping for potential similar restrictions to what happened in China just in case. Freshen up the good ol' civil defence supplies, with Vitamin C.

New Zealand has been hugely lucky not to have any cases at all. If there should be a case, it'd be imperative to be able to track where those people have gone and me and put them self-isolation and observation. I hope our country has learned the Chinese lesson.