When I first heard the news about this novel coronavirus in Cantonese on my walks to the swimming pool in early January, it wasn't very intelligible. Even though I knew it was talking about Wuhan, deaths and numbers, it took a second and third take. Once I had the topic, I could use my knowledge of Mandarin to recognise familiar words. But more importantly, because of previous reading and news about contagious diseases, I could anticipate the topic or what usual content would be in a news item so, as previously mentioned, my comprehension of those native speed news items went from 5% to 66%.
I do not know whether the activation of schemata is a terminology in other fields but I can imagine it does in psychology. When you enter a special situation, you access memories of your previous knowledge and experience of things different to it. If you have never been in that situation, you probably access what you have read or the films you've seen. And thus it is with pandemics. We've all vicariously enjoyed the thrill of outbreaks elsewhere but almost no-one has lived through a pandemic. So all we have are the world of fiction to bring the images and themes of what could happen, and they tend to apocalyptic. The empty streets of Milan and probably still the streets of Wuhan will evoke 24 Days Later. The sight of people in dehumanising PPE (the "hazmat" suits) brings back visions of Contagion.
Perhaps it was with these schemata that I've been perceiving our non-fictional world. Perhaps irrationally, I feel a bit dream-like: that the honking cars and bustling people are a bubble that is bursting; that this virus could be enough to make a pivotal moment in history.
At its worst possible extent, at least on the first wave of this disease, the death rate can't be much higher than 5% of those infected, and not all people will be infected. Perfect medical care would keep the death rate under 1% but it won't be. Quoting myself from 30 January: "The logistics of an epidemic are apparent immediately. There is simply no place for a surge in any one kind of sickness realistically. They would not have the redundant space and expertise to deal with even a quadrupling of cases, let alone a septdectupling (don't check the dictionary for this word); no place on Earth can really cope when the inevitable Black Swan outbreak strikes. I was reading a story about families queuing for quarantine and being denied it because hospitals have expected standards for quarantine and can only accept a maximum. "Come back tomorrow to check if there's space." Hubei will be a bloodbath." Iran and Italy are repeating this. Spain and France are about to be repeating this. And when it does, it doesn't even matter if it is Covid-19 that people are dying from, sufferers of all conditions will perish because of a lack of healthcare. And now the economic carnage and paralysis are apparent too. When the globe goes into recession and then into depression, there would be a wave of starvation and civil unrest. Those thoughts of post-apocalyptic disorder remind me of the Stephen King book The Stand, which I only ever read half-way.
Yes, my feelings are steeped in the apocalypse. Another historical scene my mind conjures up is England before the Blitz in the Second World War. Here in New Zealand we aren't impacted, yet it feels like it cannot be stopped. A great darkness beyond the horizon. The government, if I were there, would require 14 day quarantines on everyone (except for well quarantined countries), but not on trade; put strict rules of no fevers or coughs in public spaces, etc. I'd be a tyrant. But for the lack of a tyrant goes Italy. It would be nice to have New Zealand use its isolation to keep a basic civil society healthy.
Last Friday I had some fun with the predictions. It's amazing how fast things change. My prediction for Italy lasted three days. It shows that with this virus 7 days makes a big difference. The quote doubling rate for cases is meant to be 4 days, but for deaths it is some other sort of metric. Italy's death toll increased five and a half times what it was a week ago; Spain and France have shot off in the same direction as Italy, although still behind the 8-ball. I actually thought I was being liberal in my estimates but not a single one was over. When I was wrong, I was outstandingly wrong.
| Actual | Predicted | Actual | |
| 6-Mar | 13-Mar | 13-Mar | |
| S. Korea | 43 | 60 | 67 |
| Italy | 148 | 300 | 1016 |
| Iran | 107 | 400 | 429 |
| Japan | 12 | 15 | 19 |
| France | 7 | 12 | 61 |
| USA | 14 | 32 | 41 |
| Spain | 3 | 6 | 86 |
| UK | 1 | 7 | 10 |
| Switzerland | 1 | 2 | 7 |
| Australia | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| Thailand | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Iraq | 2 | 12 | 8 |
Anyway, there is good news coming out. There are huge moves in cancellation of events. I was fully prepared to deride the authorities for allow Pasifika to go ahead, but now it's off. I'm following the cricket, where there is no live crowd. The key understanding if this is out and about is to "flatten the curve". If all people were to keep their active social lives, the probability of healthy people encountering unhealthy people is lower on average, the average infection rate is lower, the smaller the spike on the healthcare system, the lower the demand for ICU's, the lower the harm to the healthcare practitioners.
I had the privilege/burden of being the Local Pandemic Manager for the our city campus. I have thrown myself into it because if you have read anything I've blogged in the last two months, I really care about this issue. At least on my small scale, I feel I'm doing something useful. My motto is "Don't be a hero", to stop those chronic people who can't bear to take a sick day, and our company has a flexible work-from-home policy, which is being used. We are rehearsing the use of our web-based teaching in case we need to switch off in-class teaching and switch on online.
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