In the future, when a movie producer in a post COVID-19 Great-Depression World is planning a film about how we managed to destroy the world economy in an orgy of panic over a virus, there will be three main players:<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Media<\/strong> \u2013 driven by the failure of the printed news industry, they realized that creating a climate of fear over a viral outbreak will drive clicks on their sites and so boost advertising revenues, they deliberately created panic with sensational headlines and exhaustive coverage of every new case<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The WHO<\/strong> \u2013 with a well-intended but laser focus on preventing the overloading of hospital facilities, they communicate the risks with no context and fueled the fear<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Politicians<\/strong> \u2013 worried about the impact on their popularity ratings, they react to the climate of fear with an escalating series of largely ineffective measures that systematically wrecked the economy<\/p>\n Business leaders will only appear as extras in the crowd scenes, as they have no dialogue and no influence over the outcome.<\/p>\n The only heroes will be the medical staff working selflessly in the hospitals, while the rest of us went quietly into the night and vanished without a fight.<\/p>\n We will eventually defeat the new coronavirus, but did we really need to bankrupt so many businesses in the process?\u00a0It\u2019s like managing to save the Titanic and sailing triumphantly into New York, after ditching all the passengers and crew.\u00a0There will be serious health implications to the record levels of unemployment, and these could exceed the numbers of deaths from COVID-19.<\/p>\n A study of unemployment in Sweden published in BMJ concluded that \u201cunemployment at older ages is associated with greater mortality risk than at younger ages, with the greatest relative increase in risk among men \u2026.. suggesting the greater vulnerability of all older workers to unemployment-associated exposures\u201d.\u00a0Also, the Population Research Unit at the University of Helsinki found that \u201cmen unemployed for the first time in 1990 had 111% higher standardized mortality than did men who remained employed\u201d.<\/p>\n I know that under the current climate of fear, anyone uttering the F-word by trying to compare COVID-19 fatality rates with the much higher fatality rates from flu, will be lynched by a screaming mob in the local market (whilst maintaining a 1 meter separation distance during the lynching), but how about Malaria with 430,000 deaths per year, with the vast majority being under 5 years old, or the 1.3 Million deaths from TB each year \u2013 a disease with an effective vaccine since 1921, or how about the 2,195 children who die per day from diarrhea \u2013 do they not warrant any column inches in the daily death reports? (WHO Stats)<\/p>\n The hard fact is that most the people dying from COVID-19 are elderly people who have pre-existing conditions \u2013 and I\u2019m not being heartless here – \u00a0I am theoretically in the vulnerable group too, being over 60 with a history of pneumonia, but people die every day, it\u2019s just that we don\u2019t normally report each case in the daily news.\u00a0And the symptoms of COVID-19 in young people are thankfully very mild.\u00a0One of the most disingenuous headlines I saw recently was about a young footballer dying of COVID-19, but when you read the details it turned out the poor chap had leukemia.<\/p>\n So a new virus that has limited impact on people of working age and mainly causes serious illness amongst people over 80, should have minimal impact on the economy, but that\u2019s before we add in the fear factor.<\/p>\n So how will the outbreak finally end?<\/p>\n In a few week\u2019s time there will be two types of people in the world:<\/p>\n Type 1<\/strong> \u2013 People who diligently practice good hygiene \u2013 hand washing, not touching your face with unwashed hands, avoiding crowds<\/p>\n Type 2<\/strong> \u2013 People who\u2019ve caught it and are now immune<\/p>\n The split between Type 1\u2019s and 2\u2019s will vary by country, and we don\u2019t yet know how long the immunity will last, but when there\u2019s enough of Type 1\u2019s + Type 2\u2019s in the community, the virus will stop spreading as it has nowhere to go.<\/p>\n We need to remember that the ability of a virus to spread (R0) and the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) are not fixed.\u00a0The R0 will go down if we all take effective precautions (or catch it and recover), and CFR is highly dependent on the standard of the local medical facilities, which is related to how well we all manage to protect ourselves from the virus and stay out of hospitals.<\/p>\n So what are we to do?\u00a0Do we all sleepwalk into the next Great Depression like that scene in the Walking Dead where all the zombies are being herded to their destruction, or do we start to take some responsibility for our own futures?<\/p>\n Just my view, as someone who started his career as a Public Health Officer working on community infection control before moving to the commercial sector, we can start to take some responsibility.<\/p>\n Business Leaders<\/strong> \u2013 engage with your local government, use those lobbyist who\u2019ve been working against Sugar Tax, Brexit and even more labelling requirements to influence government to consider the impacts on employment before taking action<\/p>\n The Media<\/strong> \u2013 start to give some context and balance to your reports, we\u2019re all getting bored of the constant hype anyway<\/p>\n Governments<\/strong> \u2013 consider alternative ways to control the outbreak that do not involved slashing and burning of your local industry. \u00a0I was speaking to a friend in China to try and understand how their Government got it under control, and in my view it was not the travel restrictions, as it was clearly too late for that after Chinese New Year, it was the universal use of masks to prevent spread by coughs and sneezes.\u00a0If everyone wears a mask, the R0 will reduce, and they even had drones flying over cities to spot people not wearing masks.\u00a0So if Governments run health education campaigns and make sure everyone wears a mask, then we can all still go to work \u2026. and pay our taxes.<\/p>\n Ourselves<\/strong> \u2013 don\u2019t rely on politicians to protect you, after all, whoever said; \u00a0\u2018trust me, I\u2019m a politician\u2019. – Be the old guy in the crowd who stood up against Loki in The Avengers – say to your local politicians that you\u2019d kinda like to still have a job, some restaurants and an airline or two after it\u2019s over.<\/p>\n And stop Googling.\u00a0Let\u2019s be honest, if we need to use Google to investigate emerging viruses, we won\u2019t understand most of the information we read, and the last time any of us used logarithmic growth curves was when we were 11.<\/p>\n Finally, in addition to the usual hygiene precautions, I believe we should all wear masks when travelling and when at work.\u00a0Not N95\/FFP3 respirators \u2013 leave those to the nurses and doctors who really need them, I mean a simple cotton sneeze-guard to protect other people from our coughs and sneezes.\u00a0If we all do this, then we\u2019ll limit the spread and still be able to function as a society.<\/p>\n My 5 Take-way messages (assuming take-away service is still allowed):<\/strong><\/p>\n