It has always seemed inexplicable to me that the Axis nations in World War II duped their populations in to turning a blind eye — or worse — to genocide and expansionist wars. But the people of Germany, Italy and other nations didn’t have data to work with. Facts were scarce, media censorship high, and propaganda a high art.
But what of now? We’re being duped and we DO have the data. We know that, putting aside people with comorbidities, you basically won’t die from COVID-19 if you’re under 70. (That’s not to wish the elderly any ill will — or wish for anyone to die from this terrible virus.)
And yet about half of us seem to be convinced we are in the gun.
An April survey by the Department of Neuroscience at Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University in Turkey found that 44% of respondents were scared for themselves, while 80% were extremely scared that someone they knew would contract the virus.
A sentiment tracker from Travel Daily released on Monday found that 44% of people are scared to travel domestically, while health economist Stephen Druckett claimed in The Age over the weekend that without lockdowns “at least 40% of the population — those vulnerable Victorians identified by the government as being at higher risk from coronavirus — [would face] restricted movement and limited participation in community life.”
It seems around half of us are very scared of COVID-19.
But should we be?
Let’s take the high watermark of COVID-19, the United States. The US is heading towards 200,000 deaths from COVID-19. But even with New York’s aged care fiasco and the unwillingness of red states to lock down, well under 0.1% of the population will likely die from COVID-19 this year. Sweden had an almost identical death rate.
Looking at the other extreme, in Singapore, the death rate is approximately one in 250,000 people. In Australia, the death rate is 0.0024%, or around one in every 50,000 people.
So half the population are worried about something that kills one in 50,000.
But averages cloud the real picture. COVID-19 is a very discriminatory killer. Almost 75% of deaths from COVID-19 are from those aged over 65. Moreover, around 84% of people who die with COVID-19 have a comorbidity.
In Australia, 40 people under 70 have died — virtually all of whom had pre-existing conditions. If you’re under 70 and don’t have specific pre-existing conditions (especially diabetes or hypertension), your chance of dying from COVID-19 is less than one in a million.
The chance of dying from a specific cause is measured in micromorts, which is equal to one in a million. Developed by Stanford professor Ronald Howard, it’s a useful measure for unusual causes of death.
If you match the conditions above — under 70, no pre-existing conditions — your chance of dying from COVID-19 is about 1 micromort.
Now let’s compare that to your chances of dying each year from some other things:
- you’re more likely to die by sitting on a chair (1.3 micromorts);
- you’re around 12 times more likely to die by drowning;
- you’re around 30 times more likely to die while driving a car;
- you’re 170 times more likely to die during a Caesarean.
Cities around the world have cancelled marathons due to fear of COVID-19, even though the very fit participants of a marathon are far more likely to die from the race (seven micromorts) than the virus.
Micromorts for different activities are cumulative, so for most of us we’re racking up many micromorts of risk every day just by doing regular stuff like getting out of bed or going for a walk or drinking a glass of wine.
That’s not to suggest COVID-19 is some sort of hoax. It’s real, novel and highly contagious, and certain cohorts — like those aged 80 with diabetes — have a relatively high risk of death if they contract the virus. But for almost all of us aged under 70, doing almost any kind of activity presents a far higher chance of death than COVID-19 does.
This is why a blunt instrument like lockdown, which impacts the entire population, is so foolhardy. Forcing kids out of school (statistically zero chance of dying) and 25-year-olds out of work (also virtually zero chance of death) to protect those who are genuinely at risk (aged above 75 or with multiple pre-conditions) is utterly nonsensical.
Lockdowns do save some lives, but there are other ways to save those lives (as Singapore and Taiwan have demonstrated) that don’t involve such broad, untargeted measures. If we’d rapid tested everybody walking into a nursing home instead of locking down, a lot less people would have died.
Leaders like Dan Andrews would by now be well aware of this, but politically they’ve staked their reputations on lockdowns being effective. Changing tact now would be an admission they unnecessarily destroyed economies and ruined lives.
It’s much easier to continue with the lie.
Once again, why is Adam Schwab allowed to publish such a narrow article that’s tagged health given that he has no credentials in this area?
Schwab continues to focus on death or survival being the only possible outcomes of being infected. People who survive the virus may have complications that may last for months.
Young people are more likely to survive but it’s still a gamble most people want to avoid.
Schwab ignores the fact currently there are no other effective controls (tracing and lockdown) to control the spread once a virus has taken root above a certain percentage of the population.
Koff wrote: Schwab ignores the fact currently there are no other effective controls (tracing and lockdown) to control the spread once a virus has taken root above a certain percentage
As seen in Victoria, for example, where tracking and tracing were overwhelmed once the daily case-rate hit scores, with around 20% community transmission. (And that also doesn’t include what happens when primary health gets overwhelmed and public infrastructure breaks down.)
Your point is well-made, Koff: lockdowns and border closures are instantly reversible if we find a better way; Adam’s laissez-faire let ‘er rip approach isn’t.
Great comment.
Rubbish. A terrible comment. Nobody is saying “let it rip”, just that most likely there may be better ways than lock downs which cannot work forever unless we have a militarized state.
Shonks wrote: Nobody is saying “let it rip”,
Yes, Shonks — some folk are. Adam has in fact argued toward that end twice in recent weeks in this very journal and sketched in this article that the cost of doing so might not be so bad.
Shonks added: most likely there may be better ways than lock downs
Lockdowns are horrible socially, psychologically, economically, for physical health and for our culture.
If they have any saving grace it’s only as a least worst choice.
If there are better choices we need to consider them and review them periodically against what we are learning about the Sars-Cov-2 virus and its epidemiology in our national context.
After being serially disappointed several very poor articles lacking in domain expertise, rigour and an appreciation of journalistic standards I believe we need better than a glib, agenda-laden, attention-seeking innumerate like Adam to lead that conversation here.
Adam has other journalistic strengths — he has written some good business and investment articles for Crikey. But he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that he’s miles out of his league in Covid-19 health policy analysis.
It’s an important topic. We need better.
Ok Ruv, it is indeed an important topic. Beyond the understanding of our current government. They made a terrible error again today requiring impossible numbers before they will allow Victoria to relax.
Lockdowns are only a temporary answer, may I ask, do you think a semi permanent lockdown is in any way acceptable?
It would probably be a point of difference with our opposing views.
My view is that it would be unforgivable.
Shonks wrote: They made a terrible error again today requiring impossible numbers before they will allow Victoria to relax.
It’s certainly a decisions with a serious cost, but if you’re saying it’s an error then you are saying you have better modelling than the medical advice informing this policy,
If so, I don’t believe you.
They’ve done many hundreds of models using multiple disparate methods before making this decision. Anecdotally most models saw a high risk of wildfire outbreaks if the initial daily case-rates was too high.
I agree that fifty cases a day (say) doesn’t look huge in comparison to the daily case rates.
The problem is, case-rates rapidly explode if they’re not detected and quarantined. What got Victoria into this mess was actually very low case-rates (scores — not even fifty) with around 20% community transmission.
It’s the community transmission that are the problem. Local transmissions are easy to track and trace; community transmissions can require days or even weeks to track down — at which point they can double every six days.
A key reason Victoria is in lockdown today is that by early July, trackers and tracers were a whole week behind on community transmissions. That’s enough to spawn another generation of infection which snowballs the problem, and they never caught up. I was tracking the data at the time for my weekly report to friends and family, and saw the problem coming around three to four weeks in advance, long before the major infection sites (like tower blocks and quarantine) were identified.
I am in no doubt the epidemiologists did too.
Shonkseer, what comphrensive policy or policies are suggesting or supporting as alternatives?
What are the predicted outcomes of those policies?
What your article fails to take into account is that that “1 in 50,000” chance in based on the current circumstances – the restrictions that we now live under to combat the spread of covid.
Were those restrictions to be removed, those odds would rapidly – and catastrophically – worsen.
Yep, the ‘current circumstances’. This joker has made the same mistake in every article he’s written – the circular argument that, ‘Look, so few deaths! We didn’t need to have the lockdowns.’ It’s idiotic.
No there are some excellent free statistics courses online that may help you understand why he has a point.
No the odds would stay the same. Just more people would Be exposed to them, with roughly 99% of this who do catch covid not dying from it. The talk of further complications of covid is merely speculative fear mongering without scientific support.
All of the comparisons given are bogus.
I can’t catch a drowning from another person, nor a car crash, etc so comparing the probabilities of them are irrelevant.
People are scared of COVID-19 because we’ve been told it is very contagious, and quite lethal (depending on age and co-morbidities).
It is not as simple as whether I die or not. I may be likely to survive the virus but endure long term and very unpleasant effects. If you don’t mind, I would rather not catch it.
It is as simple as whether you die or not. Nobody wants to catch anything.
There are people with COVID in their 30’s suffering with chronic fatigue-like symptoms months after first infection. Ventilation can leave you with lung scarring. You could factor in the risk of these scenarios too and still decide that you don’t want a lockdown, but they are definitely a factor.
This may be the biggest load of nonsense I have seen in Crkey. Adam Schwab has no science qualifications and in some countries there is a much higher risk than this. The plan here is just let everyone die who is older and Sweden and the US prove that it will do just that. There are hundreds of cases of people not recovered fully and the youngest to die so far without complications in the world is 8. In Australia we have seen health care workers in ICU aged mid 20s. I can swim well, I drive a bit an I am never going to have a caesarean, being male. I am 66, work full time and have two risk factors one of which is beyond my control. I’d rather stay alive for a couple of years yet. The school kids risk is not to them, but of infection which abundant evidence now shows they do.
Let the young have a life. Adam makes some very good points. Nobody wants people to die, no matter what their OPINION is.