People may well throw things at me at what I’m about to say, or would do if anyone in Melbourne was allowed to go anywhere or do anything, but it may be that COVID-19 is, for humanity, a piece of great good luck. Indeed the disease seems almost providential. It’s lethal enough to get our attention, but not so greatly as to tear society apart.
It takes the very old, cruelly, but almost no children, which would be a raw tragedy of another order entirely. It has been slow enough in its spread to allow us to catch up, even with criminally negligent efforts such as that of the Morrison government.
Will we be willing to be lucky and use this opportunity to thoroughly reconstruct our institutions and planning for a world that has just reminded us that our control of nature is more apparent than real? It would seem not. The deep-seated human tendency to see any given level of misfortune as as bad as it’s going to get has been a strong undercurrent throughout the pandemic.
The “once-in-a-century” rhetoric — for the third global SARS outbreak in 20 years — has been used to reassure ourselves that we will simply return to life as it was.
Crucially, this seems to have centred on a presumed relationship between COVID’s rapid and universal spread and its relatively low lethality compared with horror viruses such as Ebola and HIV. That has been reinforced by the claimed lowered mortality rates for the Delta variant, which spreads faster. Many of us have become pretty shoddy amateur epidemiologists in the past year or so, projecting on to the disease the assumption that COVID makes a “trade-off” between rapidity of spread and mortality.
Well, epidemiologists do talk of trade-offs in viruses, but sadly there’s no hard and fast relationship between lethality and COVID’s “R-nought” number (its basic reproduction rate). R-nought has to be above one (each person infects one other) for the disease to spread in its early stages. Assessments of COVID have ranged from 2.8 to 5.7, significantly higher than influenza or rhinovirus (the common cold). In fact, there’s no hard and fast inverse relationship between R0 and lethality. Influenza has a lower R0 than Ebola, the common cold a higher one. Smallpox was both more lethal and more infectious than COVID.
The “trade-offs” that epidemiologists speak of are more complex than this and, of course, consider only the virus’ strategy for maximum replication, not any irrational sense of fairness. Viruses “trade-off” between internal host spread, and external spread — i.e. replicating furiously in a body, or getting to the next one — and it is the rate of internal host spread that is at the root of lethality.
In the case of COVID, this is often through provoking an immune reaction that kills the patient/host through inflammation. Indeed for a few decades it was thought that the rate of infectiousness and lethality were positively related, internal host spread being the motor of both (more viruses inside, more tissue damage, and more exits).
It gets still more complicated than that, but the upshot is that any sense of comfort we might get from some assessment of virus-level trade-off is illusory. It demonstrates how difficult it is to think in a fully Darwinian way, when language is so deeply structured with notions of intent and purpose. There is no trade-off that matches our priorities, or even that of the virus as a species — the very notion of species is a “real abstraction”. There are trillions of replicating machines, throwing off mutations, changing every possible aspect of this virus’ functioning.
What we’re getting wrong at the moment is any sense of relief, or content, in COVID’s limited lethality, and its particular form. COVID’s dirty little trick — purpose creeps back in — is its asymptomatic period, because asymptomatic spread allows a virus to be super-lethal without the penalisation of taking the host out of circulation. The prime example of this is HIV/AIDS, with a years-long gap between host infection and sickness and death. Could COVID evolve strains that take advantage of its asymptomatic lag time? Something like a supercharged MERS, the forgotten SARS, that had a lethality rate of 30%-50% in 2010 (but had a low R0? Or something simply new to the big time, such as the Nipah virus, to which there has been an unsettling turn of attention by virologists.
If the viral dice game comes up with something that combines an R0 of greater than one, an asymptomatic lag, and the cellular ferocity of MERS, then this pandemic will look like the dry run we wasted — perhaps with disastrous consequences. You wouldn’t need the lethality rate of an airborne virus to go up by much, or to spread more evenly, for breakdown to loom, and a total social reorganisation be required.
What we need, and maybe we have, buried deep in government (though I doubt it) is a catastrophe plan. Maybe that’s what the sudden appointment of an army type to run the response was for, rather than just a pre-election khaki flash. If so, the only democratic way to do it would be to make it clear that that’s what’s being done.
The public conversation has to be had at some point. The only rational course of action coming out of this pandemic would be global commitment to an international permanent vaccine development fund, capable of mobilising science on a scale well beyond the ad hoc process that occurred this time, and with an eye to increasing development speed beyond anything contemplated; together with a catastrophe plan, elements of which are public, and would allow for some debate about response, reorganisation, and — pretty dark stuff — what sort of social triage would take place.
This virus came for the very old, and for the younger, chronically ill (who got little consideration). The next one may not. If it “turns its attention” elsewhere, our refusal to take nature’s hint this time round will be revealed as a collective failure, moral and of the will, with few precedents in human history.
We had planning for a pandemic but prime minister Abbott (remember him?) thought it was a waste of money and canned it.
The UK had pandemic planning, even a major simulation exercise in 2016, all ignored by the May/Johnson governments. The pandemic kit stockpile was out of date and stored in commercial premises. The Anglosphere isn’t up for saving its citizens, only its billionaires.
Agree, started with Thatcher and Reagan radical right libertarian socioeconomics based upon a distorted interpretation of Adam Smith, deep seated Lutheran/Calvinist Christianity of his day, cutting budgets, services, taxes and practising eugenics, e.g. lower orders or 99% here need to be ‘quiet Australians’; most voters seem happy to follow orders…..
Yup. In case you missed it – https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/533763/democracy-in-chains-by-nancy-maclean/
Yep, well aware of MacLean, and like Jane Mayer of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right fame on similar (ever present Kochs and their FreedomWorks audit in creating a ‘media assembly line’), has some excellent presentations with Q&A online, especially those Poetry & Prose YouTube channel.
Part of the new strategic mix is to access, influence and even radicalise younger males (and females) into becoming permanent conservative voters and agitators…, in lieu of changing demographics; the ‘great replacement’ and dilution of traditional WASP power.
And, believe it or not, Ayn Rand.
The Victorian State Government had also decimated its contact tracing team before covid arrived.
We are fighting with the limits to growth for our species. In antiquity, excess population would move from the farmlands into the villages. There they would die early or en masse from diseases that had evolved to infest dense populations of humans. For about 300,000 years our numbers have been kept in check by these parasites. Since the end of the last ice age our civilisations have been evolving faster than our parasites so our numbers have expanded exponentially. Recently our urban population has exceeded 50% of humanity, not counting the villages. We can only expect that new parasites will evolve to take advantage of this unprecedented density of hosts.
I’d add that all civilisations collapse. Ours is at the over-mature stage.
The Neanderthal lasted 300,000+ years and flourished for at least half of that, all across Eurasian despite or perhaps even because of the back & forth of glaciers.
https://xkcd.com/1338/
Has to be said. The few green bits in that diagram, the “wild animals” live in the few corresponding bits of wilderness on land. That includes the bats.
Andrew, thank you for the link to xkcd I had forgotten about how wonderfully innocent and plain speaking the xkcd people are.
One would suggest that ‘limits to growth’ is a pseudo science PR construct of the right (via Meadows Institute and fossil fuel supported Club of Rome, debunked by a University of Sussex research team in ‘Models of Doom’), masquerading as environmental, to target humanity of the south or less developed world for blame e.g. inflated population growth for pollution, carbon emissions etc..
Meanwhile e.g. Australians and other first world citizens avoid responsibilities and carry on…. ‘libertarian trap’.
Anyone “debunking” growth limitations on what is unarguably a system of finite resources should be viewed with extreme skepticism, however worthy their politics may appear. The only way the world is going to get through the next bit is by figuring out how to manage and share those finite resources: treating them as an infinite commons is the libertarian figment, however socialist or dystopian the alternative sounds. Let’s start with the Murray-Darling, hmm?
The term, “limits to growth” is well-established in biological theory, where it underpins the concept of dynamic equilibrium. The Club of Rome report was not scientifically based and has been repeatedly debunked. However it appealed to the fears of Europeans, whose trade, including minerals, had suffered blockades during the two world wars. On that popular sentiment it has remained a gospel entrenching their fears. While Europeans have that excuse, Australians do not. We are living high on a wealth of mineral exports, not because they are rare everyone else, but because we and our technology lead the world in bringing the first of an endless supply of minerals to surges in demand.
Far more important than any religious belief in renewability, is the very real knowledge that we must completely replace all use of fossil fuels. We must replace that fuel with nonfossil fuel, and the most eligible is uranium. In Australia alone, we have known deposits that can supply the world’s nuclear reactors for more than 100 years. Anyone suggesting that uranium is in limited supply should be treated, not with the “extreme scepticism” of the deaf believers, but by checking the facts – there is plenty. And check the credentials of any “geologist” who claims we are running out of any mineral. Try substituting their name in the search phrase, “Roger Clifton exploration uranium”, you’ll find that one of us is hopelessly ignorant.
Can anyone show me where ‘Limits to Growth’ been supported and/or replicated by independent peer reviewed research?
Summary of ‘Models of Doom’ from Good Reads:
‘“Models of Doom,” by an interdisciplinary team at Sussex University’s Science Policy Research Unit, examines the structure and assumptions of the MIT world models and a preliminary draft of Meadows’ technical reports. Based on computer runs, it shows that forecasts of the world’s future are very sensitive to a few key assumptions and suggests that the MIT assumptions are unduly pessimistic. Further, the Sussex scientists claim that the MIT methods, data, and predictions are faulty, that their world models–with their built-in Malthusian bias–do not accurately reflect reality.’
Of course it is often if not always applied to (Malthusian/ZPG) ‘population growth’ while ignoring the fact that fertility rates have been flatlining and dropping in most places while much growth is now due to increased longevity not breeding nor immigration.
The 1919 Flu actually “targetted” the young and fit; people were killed by their own immune systems.
Making emergency plans is a routine bureaucratic function, but we have seen how effective they are. Calling in the Army was simply because the military is the only part of the Federal bureaucracy which hasn’t yet been completely gutted of expertise through outsourcing, and even then, I think the armed forces have suffered from their logistics having been privatised.
One of your best Guy. Even a dunderhead such as I, followed without difficulty both content and intent. We humans have never been compliant, mainly because we either lack imagination or, simply entranced by a bar-b-q. Have you ever thought of political leadership? Competition is extraordinarily weak.
Another interesting piece Guy. Didactic maybe, but also with an element that could provoke faux outrage in a particular demographic.
Yes, the conversation is turning back to R0 and how lethal the virus is (or not). On the latter that might also be a function of the segment of the population that is currently being infected. In the ACT half of those currently infected are under 20 years of age and no one is in hospital (yet). However, seeding the the virus into nursing homes or Liverpool Hospital could produce more deadly consequences.
I thought your note was going to push back against the notion that this virus is a sentient being seeking out its prey rather than a self replicating organic compound that survives or fails in a Darwinian world. Your final paragraph dissuaded me of that.
Nonetheless, what I took your message to be, we’ve had a great wake up call and we need to be planning for an eventuality where the immune systems of the young, the health and or the affluent – respond fatally to a mutation of the virus seems sensible to me.
Given how we have failed to address hotel quarantine and mismanaged delivery of vaccines the potential for good to come from this pandemic is diminished in my view. This dismal outcome, however, says more about our political class than it does about scientific endeavour which has excelled itself.