Deniers of COVID reality must do one thing: get a grip

What a pity COVID-19 cannot read all those websites and blogs saying it’s really just like a bad flu season and the world has ­massively overreacted.

In fact, the virus is rampaging around the world, successfully ­reproducing itself at ever-increasing rates. A million new cases in four days. Heading towards 17 million cases globally, well over 650,000 deaths.

It’s surging in some places — Brazil (2.5 million cases, 90,000 dead) and India (1.5 million cases, 33,000 dead).

In other places it is staging a stunning comeback — Spain, California, Texas, Florida.

Elsewhere it’s well established and takes a huge toll — Mexico (44,000 dead), Peru (19,000 dead). Some places it’s new. Papua New Guinea now has 62 cases, 27 of them reported on Monday.

A few weeks ago Victoria was getting 27 cases a day.

In Southeast Asia, the biggest numbers come from Indonesia, with 100,000 cases and 5000 dead, and The Philippines, with 2000 dead. Indonesia is massively under-reporting cases and deaths, not dishonestly but because it has such limited testing capacity. Victoria (population six million) has tested twice as many people as Indonesia (population 270 million).

The virus is cunning, resourceful, opportunist and energetic. It is aided immensely by those good-hearted folks who insist it is nothing much and the world has overreacted. They are the virus’s fellow travellers.

Nick Coatsworth, Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, ­rejects absolutely the over-reaction charge. “This is a very unusual virus,” he says.

While Australia has managed to keep its case fatalities at about 1 per cent, many nations have had much worse outcomes.

“In any case, one in 100 fatalities from any disease is very high,” he says.” And then there are the effects on even young people who get the disease.” A clear post-viral syndrome is emerging even among young survivors which can last many weeks. We don’t know yet if it lasts months or years because it is all too recent.

There is much dispute about the actual COVID fatality rate. In Australia it’s about 1 per cent. Australia is an almost perfect laboratory test case.

We have an excellent health system. If you get the disease, your chances of survival in Australia, up until now, are better than anywhere else.

We have done nearly four million tests, which is, in per capita terms, at the very highest end of any nation. It is almost impossible that there could be, as Coatsworth puts it, a “vast underwater iceberg” of unrecorded infections here.

 

That makes 1 per cent pretty much the floor death rate for the virus. Of course the death rate goes down as we develop new treatments.

Coatsworth is also absolutely clear that so-called herd immunity is impossible at a 20 per cent infection rate, as much chatter suggests.

Nor is he remotely seduced by the idea that everyone has some automatic immunity because of their exposure to other corona­viruses such as the common cold.

“If that’s true then how has it become such a bushfire so quickly in Victoria?” he asks.

“When it gets into a household we see the whole family gets sick, including young adults and children, people who have certainly had exposure to other corona­viruses before.”

Part of the madness of this ­debate is that there is always a suggestive study somewhere or other which can be used to bolster any favoured conclusion.

The idea of pre-existing background immunity, he says, “is just not supported by the way COVID behaves. It’s tempting to use these ideas as crutches”.

Similarly, he believes it’s meaningless to talk about saving the economy as opposed to saving lives. If you don’t stop the virus spreading, your health system collapses and people scream for major interventions.

And if the infection rate is high people will be too scared to go to work or send their kids to school.

This virus is deadly, all over the world. It’s certainly not imaginary. Thinking it so helps the virus ­immensely. That’s not so good for humanity.