The Flu (Health)

[Mick Harper]

The sensational stat tonight is that Italy's daily deaths are down by a hundred. Unless this is a Sunday blip, we have looked into the abyss and it's AOK.

[Boreades]

There was me looking in a folder called "Public Health England (PHE)", and finding nothing, while it was in "Office for National Statistics (ONS)" the whole time.

Tut.

Just the headlines then:

[Boreades]

More perspective on the hysteria:

[Mick Harper]

Are we in for after-shocks? When it all settles down and the sums are done it will be found that, let's say, five hundred fewer Britons died as a result of the counter-coronavirus measures than if nature had been left to take its course. Next year when roughly the same number are going to die 'of the flu' some bright spark is going to say, "Unless we take counter-measures'. And some brighter spark is going to say, "You must be joking. We're not going through that little lot again."

But now, every time your favourite granny dies of the flu, you're going to say, "Why oh why didn't we take the countermeasures?" and you will set out to kill Boris Johnson but you will be intercepted at the gates to Downing Street and asked to move along because you're getting in the way of Japanese tourists taking photographs.

[Mick Harper]

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Boreades]

These cruise ships are wonderful floating test labs aren't they? It's amazing how many kinds of diseases you can catch onboard. But seriously, I have no reason to disagree, based on what we know of what's being officially reported.

However, when I looked back on the mortality rates for Swine flu, Avian flu and SARS, I was reminded that (up to now) they were higher in Eastern Asia than in Western Europe. For various reasons, partly lifestyle and partly genetic, not much mentioned on Al Beeb.

Of course, one has to be careful how one uses words like "it kills Chinese people more than Caucasians" or one might get accused of being an uncaring racist. But the actual mortality rate did decrease as it spread west, and (as others have already wisely noted) 100s if not 1000s of people are dying every week from "ordinary" seasonal flu and related illnesses. Also not much mentioned on Al Beeb.

As all our local supermarkets are clean out of hand cleaner (sic), I am resorting to my medical training and visiting the booze section of the supermarkets. To buy bottles of vodka and gin. Purely for medicinal reasons you understand, even if I do use it as a mouthwash (and swallow). One cannot be too careful. Actually, I better go now and stockpile the tonic water and lemons.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Wiley has been accused of stockpiling, he bought 4 small tins of cat food, as the big single 8 packs have sold out. The assistant didn't buy his excuse that he did not realise the stockpiling rules applied to cats. Two tins confiscated. Difficult conversation with cats anticipated when their favorite runs out. I am not sure they are up for pulling together in these exceptional times. One is actually a bit feral.

[Boreades]

Put the feral one in a secure cardboard box (with airholes). Post it down to Château Boreades. We have compost piles with rats nesting in them. Your cat will be doing a good job, and feeding itself.

[Chad]

I’m just sitting here wondering if I’ll be able to find a supply of frozen rats to feed Turbo, our corn snake... you may have solved my problem.

If you are able to wrestle any from Wile’s moggy, please pack them carefully and send (via next day delivery) up to Ramsbottom, marked for my attention.

[Mick Harper]

Trump's position aligns, for all practical purposes, with our own and when asked (accusingly) whether 'his doctors' agreed with him said, "If they had their way, the entire world would be shut down for two years." And this is the AE point. It is not wrong for doctors to 'follow the science', that's what we pay them for. Their brief is to keep the deaths down. Hippocratic oath and all that.

What is wrong is for politicians to 'follow the science' -- as they are vociferously always claiming to be doing. What they should be doing is 'listening to the science' and weighing it up against what is required to run the country, which is what we are paying them to do. Running a country may require telling that country, "Granny dies for the greater good." Or, if they calculate that the country is not mature enough for such a message, to do it by stealth. This is where maybe Donald is not so hot.

[Mick Harper]

It may be just Ladbroke Grove but the world is different after Boris's nationwide pep talk. This was technically very good, by the way. I was trying to imagine Theresa May or Tony Blair delivering the message and it would have been very off-putting. As it was, the combination of Prime Minister and Twat made it seem OK somehow.

But anyway, Ladbroke Grove. Not just semi-deserted but also filled with just the right number of people wheeling around keeping six feet away from everyone else. It was quite intoxicating. Like dodgem cars but when you're with your dad who's a bit of a wet blanket. There were some (mainly younger) types determined not to do their bit but not aggressively so and they could be avoided by us doing our bit. Yes, us, it's given me a new interest in life. After years of being a recluse, am I now to be a New Boulevardier?

Maybe not, I was bored with reality by the time I got home clutching my new supplies of Barbecue Indian Party Snacks. Not because it was all Tesco had, everything's back to normal, they're just very more-ish. Ever since the Italian figures came in I can't take any of it terribly seriously.

[Mick Harper]

You will also be surprised how little the economic dislocation will turn out to be. At least in terms of GNP. These things are always made up in a matter of months rather than years. Even the breathtaking borrowing figures will be massaged away -- after all, it is just one bunch of Brits exchanging money with another lot of Brits.

However you will be surprised by the changes. So will I, by definition, but I can predict there will be some, quite significant ones. When everyone is forced to lose the habit simultaneously, they can simultaneously decide not to take it up again. Good! I love change, me. As long as it doesn't apply to me.

[Mick Harper]

Everyone's making comparisons to wartime so so shall I. As I pointed out in The Unreliable History military types are peculiarly hopeless at running a war because they are always trained in one of the armed forces and therefore look at everything through that particular prism. "Let's bomb the shit out of them," if you're an Air Marshall and so on. But, unlike medical types when faced with a pandemic, military types have some experience with wars, so they do two things:
1. Set up a higher general staff college to run courses in how to do it and
2. Have a Joint Chiefs committee.

But countries have some experience with wars too and they do a third thing: make sure that military men are kept firmly in their hutch. Oh, yes, and a fourth thing: find an Allanbrooke to co-ordinate the world's response.

[Mick Harper]

One epochal change that probably won't but just might happen is in American attitudes to 'public health'. Now the world has long recognised that a national health service, free at the point of delivery, is far and away the best model, irrespective of how it is paid for, how it is managed and how much private provision is available alongside it. Except the Americans who deride such a notion as 'socialised medicine'.

However they are just coming up to the fullcourt coronavirus press -- New York City has just reached it -- and they will find that their pay as you go, hope you're insured, atomised health system is going to break down. As ours has done of course, but what you do about it, the all hands to the pump response, might show them that socialised medicine has got something going for it after all. Probably not though, they are a very dumb race.