There is a virus going round the world, and many in my head have been asking me why I have not commented upon it thus far.  The symptoms of that virus are complete and total fear, panic, anxiety, making unreasonable demands upon society, and a refusal to look at the facts.  This virus can affect anyone, but most vulnerable are politicians, the media, the easily led, the intellectually bereft, and just about anyone, really.

The reason I have not yet commented on it is because, well, it’s totally stupid, isn’t it?

Now, I’m not for one moment suggesting that this coronavirus, which causes Covid-19, an infection that can give your lungs a really bad day, is fake.  Far from it.  It is a real disease, the World Health Organisation says so, caused by a virus that jumped species because some idiot in China forgot to wash their hands after handling a bat.  Or a snake, or a cat, whatever it was.

Viruses can do that – jump species, that is.  They don’t often do it, but they can, and, when they feel like it, they do.  Just to flex their DNA muscles, you know.  Let you know who’s Boss*.

So, some cretin handles a diseased bat in an hygienically-bereft market in the back-arse end of Wuhan, China, in the weeks before Christmas.  He or she forgets to wash their hands, then shakes hands with a customer, and within two months, it’s a national emergency in 57 countries.

What makes this disease particularly shitty is its incubation period.  It is thought to be around fourteen days, or up to that limit, before you even show any symptoms, which means you can be infecting people quite happily for a fortnight before you come down with it yourself.  Thus, one week you might have one infection, a week later you could have several hundred.

WARNING: STATISTICS AHEAD.

The nerdally sensitive among you may want to look away now.  Keep scrolling down; I’ll post a line telling you where you can pick up reading from.

The fear that this global series of epidemics is causing is totally out of touch with reality.  Seasonal flu, you know, the influenza that circulates around the world every single year, is caused by a number of different viruses, and a number of different subtypes of those viruses.  There are twelve subtypes of the Influenza A virus which are the most common flu-causing viruses.  The worst of these, H1N1, is actually considered one of the least fatal, but it caused the pandemic of 1918/19, killing anywhere up to 100 million people worldwide; and it caused the 2009/10 pandemic, commonly known as ‘Swine Flu,’ which killed far less people, but still a significant number – around 500,000 people.

If you want to know more about Influenza, and who doesn’t, then I would advise you to check out its Wikipedia page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza

I understand that this current epidemic is caused by a coronavirus and not an influenza virus, but the virological principles are precisely the same.  Because I’m not here to write about Covid-19 as a disease, but I am here to write about the effect that it has had on us as a global population.

Wuhan, located in the Hubei province of China, is home to about eleven million people.  So, it’s quite a sizeable metropolis in a country that has the world’s largest population, roughly 20% of the entire total of souls living on this Earth at the present time.  The coronavirus probably couldn’t have picked a worse city to perform its little species-jump; probably only Beijing or Shanghai might be the only ones in that country that could have had a more severe outcome.

The coronavirus, which I shall hereafter refer to as ‘the virus,’ was already a significant problem in the city of Wuhan before the world even got to hear about it.  As I understand it, the first cases came to the attention of the Chinese authorities on 1 December 2019.  Case numbers grew further more or less exponentially, but the government did not notify the World Health Organisation until 31 December 2019.

What were the Chinese authorities doing during the intervening 4+ weeks?

Attempting to cover it up, that’s what.

It was felt necessary to protect the reputation of President Xi Jinping than to help those poor individuals who were scared stiff, frankly, and suffering from an illness even the World Health Organisation didn’t know anything about.

If, when this is all over, the world starts looking for someone to blame, as I am sure they will, then this man, the President of the People’s Republic of China, must shoulder the ultimate responsibility for the spread of this virus around the world.

By the time the virus was public knowledge, and it was clear that containment was the only ‘cure’ at the time, he should also have at the very least postponed the celebrations of the Chinese New Year, because it was estimated that half the country’s population would be travelling to meet with family and friends.  As difficult as I am sure it would have been, that would have been the best answer in the long term.  Citizens could at least still be alive to look back and say, ‘Well, at least I’m still alive.’

But no, profits of the companies that sold public transport, a huge cut of which goes to the Central Government, were more important than people’s lives.  And the reputation of the President.

Of course, we don’t know what would have happened, had the Chinese government acted quicker at the start of the outbreak, and informed the World Health Organisation sooner.  But still, since the vast majority of cases at the time of writing (March 2020) are still located within the city of Wuhan and in the province of Hubei, then it’s a safe bet that the numbers would have been much lower.

In the vast majority of infected countries, including the United Kingdom, case numbers are relatively low.  In Britain, for example, we have 53 infections which, being less than one millionth of the population, can hardly be called an epidemic.  But our government knows that that number has the potential to skyrocket any day now.  On the other hand, the numbers may stay low.

But there are certain other countries who are not so fortunate at this time.  South Korea, where a religious cult leader refused to give the names of infected members because he feared persecution (he thinks he’s Jesus), is struggling with over six thousand cases in just two short weeks because of his paranoia.  Why the virus is so virulent in some countries and not others is a mystery.  Their neighbours North Korea do no have any cases at all; it just goes to show that complete isolation from the world does have its advantages every now and then.

Then there is Italy.  The president there has made all sorts of claims in recent weeks, including that the virus circulating there is not the same coronavirus that is attacking the rest of the world, suggesting that it has mutated there.  More than 80 people have died there, and the number looks set to rise very quickly in the coming days.

So, there is some serious shit going down, there’s no denying it, but the kind of panic-buying that has been seen in Australia in the last few days does nobody any good at all.  It seems to me that the media want to keep the panic going because it sells papers/advertising space, and anything that brings them in money.

***YOU CAN READ AGAIN FROM HERE, NERDOPHOBES***

The media should report the facts and not instill panic all across the world.  They’re all doing it, no matter what part of the world you are in, as though they have been struck down by some sort of panic-virus.  Especially in the United Kingdom where, thank God, the virus situation is not too serious at the moment.  The government is right to prepare, and to ask the population to remain hygienic, but they also need to reassure people that relatively few people die from the disease, especially if they have no underlying health conditions.

You know, deep down, everyone has a fear about infectious disease, but most people don’t want to show it for fear of looking stupid.  But now the media has created a sort of institutionalised fear; people now feel free to air their panic in public, because everyone else is.  Everyone is wearing masks – which, by the way, does no good at all in most instances – and they’re wearing them to protect themselves, not to prevent the spread of it to others.  If you’re wearing a mask to protect yourself, take it off; it won’t work.

Yesterday, 3 March, our beloved Prime Minister Boris “BloJo” Johnson, held a press conference in London to launch the Government’s four-stage initiative to combat the virus.  He said – and I bet he never envisaged this during his dreams of ultimate power – we must all wash our hands regularly using hot soapy water, long enough to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice.  Great.  Does the Prime Minister know that that particular song is still in copyright, which means that if we sing it in public, we should pay the Performing Rights Society?  I thought not.  See?  Panic means you don’t think through your plans properly.

This is an epidemic of an infectious disease; we’ve had them before, we’ll no doubt have them again.  Just remain calm, look after yourselves, and we’ll get through it. x