Analysis of Government Strategy

As I've mentioned Covid-19 is the ideal virus.  This makes dealing with it on en masse in a coordinated way is extremely difficult.  Most countries have - after at least some prevaricating - decided to go to (different forms of) lockdown.  If you stop people being close to each other the virus can't be transmitted - simple.  In order to put this into practice, citizens have to accept it and obey.  These programmes have been enacted with a combination of enforcement and shame - but with the Ideal Virus this can be tricky!

The Disease or the Cure?

The fear that the cure might be worse than the disease is very real.  This was understood by governments very quickly and caused delays in lockdown in some cases.  However, after a short period of analysis, almost every government went ahead with lockdown.  Why?

The answer which is put forward is that we go ahead with lockdown in order to avoid large numbers of deaths.  I put it to you that this is not the reason.  I believe (this is my conjecture, without any evidence or supporting data) that in fact governments enact lockdown because the economic effects of other courses would be worse.  I believe that governments have compared models of the likely outcomes of lockdown vs "do nothing" and various other programmes and found that lockdown is the likely least expensive.

Lost Years

First: how can they ignore the huge numbers of deaths?  If you let yourself think it through, this is obvious.  It may sound callous, but in terms of lost years of life, given Covid-19 affects the aged and ill disproportionately, the numbers would be much less shocking than the numbers of lives lost that are projected.
Factor this against the cost - the worst economic shock since the Great Depression at least - and the public might actually be persuaded to accept much more limited control - protection of the weakest, but let the fit go about their business and the economy continue.

Why Lockdown?

Imagine the scenario, in, say, London, Paris or New York: normal life continues - with nursing homes protected.  Nevertheless, many elderly and a few - proportionally but that's many in total - younger fit people get very ill.  They fill all the hospital beds.  They fill temporary hospitals.  For a period of a couple of months at least, they fill stadiums.
A possible sequence of events as a society proceeds up the exponential curve:
Week 1 - no fuss.
Week 2 - sad stories about elderly grandparents passing away.
Week 3 - memes of aghast outrage as ill people told there's no room at the hospital die at home.
Week 4 - fear, distrust, rumour.  Neighbors pitted against sick neighbors; people dying on the steps of hospitals; calls for ambulances not responded to; car accident victims left to die.
Week 5: bodies put out in the streets and left; thousands dying at home alone - people lose confidence; mob protest with corresponding police reaction; looting, army involvement, shootings... society begins to fall apart.
Week 6... 7... 8...

The economic cost would be great - most likely greater than lockdown even in the short term.  In the long term, the cost of the shock, actual damage and lost confidence in government and rule of law is hard to project but would be surely be massive.

That, I believe, is why we are in lockdown.  And we're right to fear alternatives.

Fear and Death

Various statistic on the virus are commonly watched - one is the daily death rate in a region.  My wife asked "but how many people die per day in total other than due to the virus?".  Good question - it is never stated!

It's a very interesting statistic.

Checking the data I find that in 2018 there were 616 010 deaths in the UK, so 1688 per day.  Therefore in the UK now with 938 deaths yesterday, that's an extra 55% making Covid-19 by far the leading cause of death (over 3 times the rate of heart disease and massively greater than the flu)

At the same time, the Covid-19 pandemic by increasing the risk of death by 55% takes your chance of death on any particular day from 25 up to 39 in 100000.  In my mind this means that if you weren't worried about imminent death before Coronavirus, you shouldn't be particularly more worried now - your chance of death remains low.

The Ideal Virus

What a clever little creature it is.

What Makes A Successful Virus

If it were Ebola, there would have been no-one in the streets from day one.  The authorities would have been telling everyone "please, don't let yourself starve - we'll organize spacing in supermarkets".
If it were a novel measles, since it would have been clear that "you will get it", enforcing social distancing policies would have been unnecessary.  But the particular statistics of COVID-19 are just at the sweet spot of doubt: if I get it it won't be that bad... and there's a good chance I won't get it.  After that it's a slippery slope to "just a flu" and suspicion of ulterior motives of governments and the bending of ears to conspiracy stories.

As a result, a long planned holiday it taken here, a visit to an elderly relative there, and that last big one at the pub - and the virus spreads.  The lock down is longer, and the economy tanks.

What I'm saying is that this virus is so successful because its particular levels of transmissibility and severity make it partially a thought virus that spreads in conjunction with it.

In comparison, the more dangerous but otherwise rather similar SARS led quickly to extreme reactions of self isolation without any need for government diktat.  It has died out along with MERS.  Those lulled us into a false sense of security.

"The Cure is Worse Than The Disease"

Economies are locked down.  The population consume but do not produce.  They consume only in specific ways - leaving other sectors of the economy to wither.  Governments make up the difference with debt.  

Less oil is consumed.  Oil wells are shuttered.  Supply is progressively exhausted.

Eventually national economies credit starts to look bad - oil rich states won't drill for nothing - they need an exchange of value, while pounds - or even euros may not cut it.  Fuel rationing entails.  There are rolling brown-outs.  Food prices spike due to the difficulty of transport from farms.  The reason for all the panic buying finally becomes apparent - and real panic sets in.  Society starts to break down with looting, gang violence, and an over-whelmed police.

Could COVID-19 running riot be any worse than this - even for the elderly?  There are scales of this scenario that are less severe but nevertheless economic devastating so how can a balance be found?

What Next?

These arguments, and points I'm not aware of or haven't considered are being analyzed exhaustively within governments in order to work out when a process to handle the virus has been built to a level whereby the economy can progressively be restarted.  Then we can expect sickness, death and progressive recovery over a year or two.  There will be an economic slump, but normality will return.

Lasting Changes

WFH will no longer be a suspect euphemism.  Online classes will surge to a new renaissance firstly in universities, but increasingly in schools.  Technology companies in these areas will do well.  The internet's importance in society will be underlined and investment in it will be budgeted.

Health systems and research will get increased funding.  Government budgets including large health initiatives will be approved more easily.

Some airlines will fail.  The price of international travel will increase since less of it will happen.  Internet based communication will replace much of business travel.  Tourism will decrease.

It's not clear how this may effect relations between nations and ethnicities - will the greater communication lead to a greater sense of global oneness or will it fracture into insular groups.

Time will tell.

Hitting the Wall

The Coronavirus has hit us like a "brick wall across an expressway" as Douglas Adams put it.  I say that because it happened because, while we were licensed drivers in control of our car we weren't looking at the clear and present danger that our experts sitting frightened in the passenger seat were telling us was around the corner.

Probably, we were looking at our phones.

As it has happened, I had just previously taken the opportunity of a career change to construct a SaaS financial service targeting cryptocurrency traders - so I'd been expecting to work from home for several months.  My children were either left home and independent or already capable of studying entirely independently.  My wife's work is in an essential service - she is protected and remains fully employed.  We are lucky.

So: what is happening?  What is going to happen?

The analogy of the Brick Wall was intentional. What we're experiencing is the feeling of the exponential.

It is human nature to try to get used to your situation: there's a shocking event - hitting you like a wall.  You reconcile what has happened, postulate causes and then, subconsciously or explicitly extrapolate to what is likely to happen next.  You can then re-establish a sense of comfort, make plans based on the new expectations - and move on.
But this doesn't work with an exponential, because once you hit the wall, the scale changes, and there's just another wall waiting for you.

To this point the events and consequent adjustments have been: an epidemic in Wuhan - concerning; a few cases in Italy and Iran - poor them, hope they can contain it; a few cases all over the place - maybe we should stockpile essentials; Italy falling apart; everywhere falling apart; impending years of global economic decline.  Each stage was concerning, each significantly worse than the last.  So: what next?

It's hard to distinguish pessimism from realism.  Well, let's try to be objective, based on numbers.
I know so far of just one person who has the disease - a friend's sister: she had it mildly and seems to have recovered.  She was an educator of students who had been in contact with patients.  In Europe, where I am, the number of cases is currently doubling every 3 or 4 days.  So next week I should know of about 5 people with the disease and the week after about 20.  If it keeps going, by the end of April I should know... about 1300 with the disease.  That couldn't be right, could it?

My feeling is that when people you know actually start going to hospital - or dying - suddenly no-one disputes social distancing and the transmission rate should plummet.  But there will be a 2 week lag before that effects statistics, due to the virus incubation period.  The number of deaths could go very high in that time.  Amongst other things, it would be a very bad time to get any other serious illness.