It's been a seemingly unprecedented run of fine weather since December. It has barely rained. When it has rained, it's been barely at inconvenient times. It would be a shame to spend it at work. It would be worse to just spend it at home not going out. During our self-isolation, we had walks and driving lessons. Based on the principle that under lock-down, you should avoid risks that might put us in situations requiring help, we are left with just walks. Walking during a lockdown in a major suburban area is a continuous state of awkwardness as everyone else is desperate to be outside, yet distant, in unusually crowded streets.
Many people though do not self-contain and don't like to be contained. It is not surprising in a country of five million that there are those that either think the danger is overstated, or are complacent about the risks, or feel that the rules do not apply to them. And they stick out like a sore thumb. And are eyesores to boot. And there is the eternal doubt you have for the conduct of others. Three kids playing basketball in a school court. Are they brothers from a same bubble? They're unsupervised. Did they touch a gate on the way in? That one's leaning against a wall. Has anyone else touched it? An adult should really be there if they were brothers. But what can you do?
Of course any one transgressive act have very little chance of random transmission; but in a country even as small as New Zealand it's going to happen to someone. My initial confidence of the strategy has been dampened by the sheer number of infected. It's astonishing to go from 39 cases two weeks ago, just before the level system was introduced, to 868 now, with a death. But it means the timing was right. We can only hope that this lock-down is well-timed.
Friday is a comparison day. In just the last 7 days, the cases in the US have tripled to almost a quarter of a million; deaths quadrupled to over 6000. How's that for a reality check? The biggest reality check was the American people hearing that even with best mitigation practices at least 100,000 people are expected to perish, probably more. Fortunately most states have done what is essential: shelter-in-place orders are in effect.
Compare that with a country less fortunate than us but at least better than the US: Australia. In the same period their cases haven't quite doubled; but deaths have. Even if their method has looked mad, they have seemingly done "relatively" well.
An "interesting" addition in the numbers today was that that the French decided to do something that really exposes the weakness of the numbers. They added 884 deaths to their death toll for yesterday. They thought the deaths that had happened in rest homes up to this point presumably due to Covid-19 should be added even though they hadn't happened in hospitals. The common man screams that this goes without saying, that a death is a death regardless of where it happens. Chinese numbers are suspect not from deliberate obfuscation but the same art of qualifying numbers.
The plain-sight UK version of this is that when their Department of Health and Social Services announce those grim statistics daily with the same explicit qualifier, they say: "As of 5pm on 1 April, of those hospitalised in the UK who tested positive for coronavirus, 2,921 have sadly died." This has been noticed and the common man yet again pounds his fist about the lying technocratic elite. But then again some qualification of the fact is imperative, because there will always be some grey and something has to be stated about the criteria to be counted has to be said for figures to mean anything at all. Numbers must be qualified. And it is only with an announcement like France's that suddenly there are indeed apples and the oranges counted together to give a 53,000 death toll at this moment, reveals itself as a bottom bedrock number on which the real has to be much greater.
Deaths in rest homes would be a feature of any overrun city or country by covid-19. America's early numbers were marred by a king-hit for the virus, which like a ferret seeking out chicks in a birds nest, wiped out a third of the residents of a rest home in Washington State. It was a precision strike, which if it had triggered a national response at the time might have saved at least 100,000 more lives.
When the fog of this is dispelled, the estimates will be scary. It won't be just the undercount of rest homes deaths, but home deaths, homeless deaths, pre-outbreak deaths (in hospitals before countries realised they had it) and post-breakdown deaths when there is no testing available for the already dead, being saved for the still alive. If you don't mind me repeating the analogy, like a ferret hunting and slaughtering chicks in a nest, this virus tests and probes every country and it will ransack the weak and disorganised. My favourite vlogger on the topic calls covid-19 the honey badger virus. I'd call it a ferret and I wish it could just be exterminated.
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