COVID-19: Where Does it End?
It’s a question you learn early in screenwriting, do you know your ending? You don’t have to, but knowing it can inform what happens before, or what has to happen to make your ending resonate. Or at the very least, make sense.
In Canada we went in the space of a few days from, “You are at low-risk (even if you attended an international conference with 26,000 people, where one person tested positive for COVID-19),” to one step away from martial law.
That’s a bit of a jump.
As of writing there are 1,085 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in a country of 36 million people. The mortality rate is 1.1%. It has proved deadly for the elderly with underlying health issues. For everyone else it is zero. At 1.1% we have a greater chance of a heart attack. In my case 6-10 times. If I lose my job, higher.
Anxiety will cause multiple health problems as most of us live in expensive cites one pay cheque away from a life on the streets. Granted, we will likely survive the heart attack. but there will be a host of unintended consequences, think of strokes, pulmonary embolisms, and those suffering from PTSD, let alone those existing with other mental health issues. And then there’s social anarchy waiting for us down the road.
And you were expecting a happy ending?
Basically, in a singular drive (of fear and panic) to eliminate this virus we are failing to see the whole picture. We shut out anything contradictory and look at the evidence that only supports elimination. I read an award winning scientist’s opinion in Forbes with this viewpoint and nestled in there was the threat it only takes one person for the virus to spread.
Yuh, no kidding.
The tone is clear, there can be no alternative to this shut down. Shame. Report. Zig Heil. Thanks for the fear.
Otherwise it’s an informative piece.
But let’s try to find a happy ending.
I understand the rationale for the shutdown. We needed to change our behaviour, but didn’t. So the government is trying to modify it. The US has a slightly different story where the ball was dropped, but to be fair they didn’t know there was a ball in the first place. President Bungle was so obsessed eviscerating any whiff of Obama policy, the US now has an infection rate more than twice of Canada.
The mutual shuttering of our borders is the first action all Canadians can agree with 45. If the virus gets out of control, our health care system won’t be able to cope and in Canada we have a minority government, which can ill afford to look incompetent.
Politics is part of the equation.
And I’m keeping away from the social experiment (intended or not) underway as much as I can. Maybe we need it as a precursor to catastrophic climate change, or for us on the west coast, an earthquake, or just robots taking our jobs. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, there’ll be hulluva lot of data to look at.
It’s hard not to go down this rabbit hole. If you take British Columbia’s COVID-19 self-test (call it Step A), you’ll experience cognitive dissonance. Boris Johnson’s Britain was able to dabble in different ideas because he just won an unassailable majority. Now, like Trump, he’s playing catch up.
I digress, as usual, deliberately.
While the US infection rate is more than double the Canadian rate, and likely because of the uptick in testing, the mortality has dropped from 2.6% last weekend to 1.2% this weekend. I admit I’m obsessed with mortality rates (for weeks before I was introduced to the Johns Hopkins map). No matter where in the 2-3% range it landed, I always came up with same answer, I’m more likely to have a heart attack, and that’s if I contracted the virus. And so are you.
Mortality rates are interesting. Here are some from countries, which have more cases than Canada:
Austria: 0.28%
Germany: 0.34%
Malaysia: 0.34%
Norway: 0.35%
South Korea: 1.1%
Australia (similar to Canada): 0.7%
You’ve no doubt heard of South Korea’s excellence but probably not the others, because it’s hard to compute with the human disaster unfolding in Italy.
In the 2017-18 US flu season there were estimated 21 million cases (clinic visits) and estimated 61,000 deaths, a mortality rate of 0.29%.
Mortality rates are interesting because it forces you to look at who is actually dying. And we know and we’ve known for weeks (longer). We could have focused on how to protect the most vulnerable as well as make sure we dedicated necessary resources to healthcare including the rapid building of modular units to act as clinics/treatment centres, or house beds. There were choices. Again, it’s hard not to see this as a social experiment, or a move at the very least, to make sure all but the most rabid of ant-vaxxers vaccinate their kids.
And did you know the pharmaceutical industry is facing a patent cliff? That would really be digressing.
(Informative read on Covid-19 vaccine. Clinically proven safe for fascist pro-vaccinators and whacky anti-vaxxers, although you might need parental guidance)
Still, where does this end? The government can’t keep printing money because at some point we might twig it’s worthless.
A vaccine is 18-24 months away. After testing, it still has to be produced and administered and its efficacy verified. See you in 2022.
Yuh, not so happy.
Or
The virus will die off, or at least to a low-enough level in the summer (note, not zero) that will make it hard to spread. In Vancouver, that could be the middle of July. We’ll be held at home for four months. It’s one thing if we’re following the lead of a bastion of freedom and democracy, but China is not it. And there is one major caveat in this scenario, just when you thought there was an ending, you get another sequel because the virus returns — because hey, it only takes one.
I’m calling it. This self-imposed one-step away from martial law scenario is not a solution.
So what is?
A change in narrative to reassure us.
You’re going to have to wait for it, because at the moment, psychologically, we are not ready for a message that contradicts the current one. We are still processing the fear and massive societal change underway. We’ve jumped to the second most extreme measure and been told it’s the solution.
In story terms we haven’t had enough beats, so governments will lose credibility on a level not seen before, if they back peddle. It will seem like the people in charge are clueless and we won’t believe them the next time this happens. It’s important to recognize as a community and individually we are in a state of fear around the virus and allow us the time to work though it.
We’ll need the following key beats:
Lower mortality rate
Lower mortality rate
Lower mortality rate
Drop off in confirmed cases
Treatment for COVID-19 (the associated acute lung injury)
Focus and resources to protect the most vulnerable and accepting this change of approach
Return to promoting Step A as our key approach to minimize infection
A media to tell us this story
In the end, we’ll hear the mortality rate has dropped (inevitable with more testing). When it’s 2-3 times (or less) that of flu, rather than 10-20 times, we’ll comprehend we can live with it and not feel so threatened. If it’s compounded with a treatment for the worst cases, bingo.
With the rate of infection dropping, the number of cases on the way down, a treatment and a liveable mortality rate, it will be a victory and we’ll forget we went ballistic at 350 confirmed cases while we live in a country where thousands are still infected.