Once again we must call on Blitz spirit in our hour of need
YESTERDAY, 24 hours after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared coronavirus Covid-19 officially to be a pandemic, the world seemed to move from crisis into all-out panic.
Stock markets plunged again, with the FTSE 100 down 10 per cent, after President Trump imposed a travel ban on anyone from most of the EU.
The Italian government ordered the closure of every bar, restaurant and shop, save for supermarkets and pharmacies. Denmark became the second European country to go into “lockdown” and Ireland announced the closure of all schools and colleges until the end of the month.
Our own government’s reactions, decided in a meeting of the Government’s Cobra committee, were more measured.
Schools for the moment will remain open, sporting events will not be banned and planes will carry on flying.
But people showing symptoms – a high temperature or new and persistent cough – will be asked to stay at home for seven days. Over-70s are discouraged from going on cruises.
Nevertheless, it is unprecedented in peacetime for so many restrictions to be placed on democratic societies.
A few weeks ago, we looked on aghast as China quarantined cities, suspended virtually all commercial and leisure activities and ordered people indoors. Now, one by one, Western governments are doing the same.
IT IS not that we haven’t had pandemics of infectious disease before. The Hong Kong flu of 1968/69 killed a million people around the world. The swine flu pandemic of 2009 is estimated to have killed up to half a million.
But on neither occasion was civil society even remotely constrained in the way it has been this year. On the face of it, it is hard to work out what the panic is about. So far, Covid 19 has killed fewer than 5,000 people. By contrast, seasonal flu – according to the US Centers for Disease Control – annually kills between 292,000 and 646,000.
British and US studies have revealed the disease to have a mortality rate of around 0.9 per cent – higher than seasonal flu but hardly in the same category as bubonic plague, which is estimated to have killed around half of those it infected.
However, Covid 19 itself novel and fast-evolving.
None of us have any immunity and for the 20 per cent or so of sufferers who develop severe symptoms it is a deeply unpleasant disease.
In Britain, it wouldn’t take many cases to overwhelm the NHS. Nearly every winter we seem to have a flu crisis.
Hospital beds have been pared down over the years as medical procedures have is become more efficient and patients require less time to recover from operations. But it has left the NHS vulnerable to anything out of the ordinary, which Covid 19 certainly is.
Moreover, there is a good reason why Western governments should want to emulate the Chinese approach towards Covid-19 – it seems to have worked. China was the seat of this pandemic, and at its height there in the second week of February 3,000 new cases a day were being recorded.
Yet since then it appears to have been brought under control, with the rate of new infections down by 99 per cent.
If we can achieve the same here, the panic should be over in a few weeks. But in the meantime, we can’t just rely on the Government and the NHS to handle the crisis. It is up to all of us to do what we can, firstly to do our best to keep ourselves healthy and secondly to keep a look out for neighbours, relations and friends – especially the elderly.
The term “Blitz spirit” is tired and overused, yet it does sum up the attitude required in times such as these – when people, even more than usual, need to go about their business with an eye to the common good.
Self-isolating ourselves if we have symptoms is a public duty.
AND it is sad that it takes a crisis like this to remind us to wash our hands – but it is imperative on anyone who does have tardy habits to learn or relearn how.
It isn’t going to be an easy ride. The peak of this epidemic, according to the Government’s chief scientific adviser, could be 10 to 14 weeks away. Life is going to be a lot less fun.
But it will pass. By summer we should see life start to return to normal. Perhaps never again, though, will we take our health and freedom for granted.
It is salutary to remember that for most of human history the morbid risk of infectious disease was a constant backdrop to human life. Vaccines and antibiotics have made us complacent – but no longer.
‘Unprecedented in peacetime for so many restrictions on society’