Andrew Bolt: Why Europe proves we can live with this virus
People in Europe are no longer dying from coronavirus like they were but the ABC continues to push “grim news” about the second wave of infections now hitting European countries. It’s time to realise facts are cheaper than fear, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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A strange thing is happening in Europe with this virus. People just aren’t dying like they used to.
And new research suggests one reason: many of us may already have some immunity.
But good news is unwelcome in this panic. So the ABC on Wednesday again peddled virus porn about the second wave of infections now hitting Europe.
“Grim news,” declared its AM program, reporting on Britain: “The number of coronavirus cases has quadrupled over the past month.”
But yet again, the ABC failed to mention a startling and critical fact: while Britain’s second wave of infections is nearly as big as its first, there’s been no rise in deaths.
Yes, some people still die from (or with) the virus, most very old or frail. Britain’s latest daily update recorded 37 deaths — giving it a death rate per capita about half that of Victoria, which recorded five deaths on Wednesday.
This pattern is repeated, more or less, in most European countries.
France now has a second wave twice as big as its first, when 1000 people a day were dying. Yet this time there are few deaths — 78 on Tuesday, giving France a death rate similar to Victoria’s.
No one quite knows why. Various explanations are suggested: Europe is now protecting its old; the sick are treated more effectively; this time it’s the young who are much more likely to get infected, as they go back to work, and the young very rarely die of coronavirus.
But there’s now one further reason to think we can live with this virus. Researchers in Britain, Sweden, Holland and the US have independently confirmed that many people already have some immunity to it.
In Sweden, researchers from the Karolinska University Hospital found even people who hadn’t tested positive to this coronavirus had T-cells — a white blood cell that fights viruses — that gave them immunity.
These were usually family members of coronavirus patients who hadn’t got sick themselves.
One of the researchers, Dr Soo Aleman, told me they’d then checked blood donated before the virus hit: “When we look at the blood donors before 2019 ... we found that 20 to 30 per cent had already reached that immunity against the virus.
“And the hypothesis of the group that found this is that other common cold viruses can cause cross reactivity.
“So in the population you have some natural pre-existing immunities against this new virus.”
Even better, the British Medical Association last week said six other studies of past blood donations suggest as much as half of us may already have had some immunity. They found between 20 to 50 per cent of people with no known exposure to the virus had T-cell reactivity to it.
Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford University, now says: “One of the reasons I am not worried about this virus is a running theme in research work is how previous exposure to viruses protects you from incoming threats.”
The bad news for the old, though, is that immunity weakens with age. Most of Australia’s virus dead were older than 83.
But if so many younger people are already immune, how close are we to having enough immune people so the virus just burns out, unable to find new hosts?
Aleman says it was once thought at least 50 per cent of people had to get sick and recover to get this “herd immunity”.
“But new calculations also taking into account that we have this pre-existing unity means we could go down to 10 to 30 per cent.”
Do the worst-hit virus hotspots have herd immunity already? In New York, an estimated 23 per cent of people caught the virus. In London, it’s 18 per cent.
That still leaves a lot of countries with a long way to go, but it also leaves us with hope.
Take Sweden, savaged by the media for refusing to lock down in the first wave.
Nearly 1 per cent of its population have since tested positive, nearly twice the rate of Italy and three times that of Germany. And, true, nearly 6000 Swedes died when the virus got into aged-care homes.
But today Sweden, unlike almost every other European country, has not had a second wave.
I know some sickness in our culture makes us prefer scares to truths like these.
But if we’re hit with a third or even fourth wave, we’ll be too exhausted and battered to lock down yet again.
Maybe then we’ll realise facts are cheaper than fear.