Coronavirus: it’s fatalities that count, not the numbers infected

The coronavirus death toll, while sure to surge, is a long way from the millions killed by virulent flu outbursts of the past.

When the Japanese bombed Darwin­ in World War II, killing more than 240 people, the Curtin government kept the news quiet for as long as it could. How would panic in Sydney and Melbourne help the war effort?

Truth, they say, is the first casual­ty of war.

In the social-media age every new case of coronavirus, no matter how mild, is pored over with lurid fascination.

As the health and economic ­crisis precipitated by COVID-19 deepens, authorities need to tread a fine line between urging calm, remainin­g publicly optimistic and ensuring people comply with measures to contain the virus.

It might seem like it, but this isn’t the world’s first flu pandemic. In 2009 H1N1 — known as “swine flu” — infected 61 million people and killed about 590,000 globally, 80 per cent of whom were younger than 65.

In 1968, the H3N2 flu killed one million people, including 100,000 in the US, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

About a decade before that, the H2N2 flu pandemic killed 1.1 million people.

None of the previous pandemics caused a recession, let alone a near 30 per cent drop in global stock prices.

This is, however, the first flu ­epidemic where everyone has a digital megaphone.

There’s no reason why this corona­virus should be far more deadly than those previous flu pandemics, provided the death rate ends up lower than feared.

On Friday, there were more than 47,000 people who had contracted COVID-19 outside China, including 128 in Australia.

If the number of infections grows at 15 per cent a day, more than 3.4 million people, including more than 9300 in Australia, will have the virus by Easter. If it grows at 20 per cent, about the average so far, it’ll be 12.6 million and 34,800, respectively. That’s still far fewer than caught swine flu in 2009.

It’s the apparent death rate, espec­ially in Italy, which has struck fear in the community.

The World Health Organisation’s official death rate of just less than 4 per cent for COVID-19 has naturally drawn comparisons with the devastating Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19, which killed between­ 50 million and 100 million people globally.

But 3.6 per cent must be an overestimate. Logic dictates many thousands more people have been infected with COVID-19 than the 125,000 official cases. The disease is highly contagious. International travel has only very recently been curtailed.

Most of all, the incentive for someone to volunteer him or herself for testing is very weak. Even in victims, such as Melbourne doctor­ Chris Higgins, in his 70s, who controversially kept working, symptoms can be very mild.

While it might not be in the interest­s of public health for an individu­al with cold or flu-like symptoms, discreet recuperation in ignorance seems a better option than seeking a test.

Quite aside from the hassle and costs of getting a test, a positive finding would cause significant disruption, including potentially forced quarantine or even loss of job.

Telling friends you have a cold, rather than coronavirus, goes down much better at social events.

The number of deaths from COVID-19, more than 4700 glob­ally as of Friday, is therefore a far more reliable and relevant statistic than the number of infections. And this death toll, while sure to surge, is a long way from the millions killed by virulent flu outbursts in the 1950s and 60s, when the economy was booming.

Finally, populations today are far healthier and more resilient than in the aftermath of World War I, before antibiotics existed to cauterise the secondary infections that flu can induce.

“Extrapolating from the mortality­ rates reported for the Spanish flu to 2004, 96 per cent of the projected 50 million to 80 million fatalities worldwide might occur in developing countries,” writes Walter Scheidel in his 2017 economic history of war and disease­, The Great Leveller.

Researchers are much more likely to find a vaccine quickly in 2020 than 1920 too. But what if develop­ed countries can’t control the virus, as China, where infection rates have tapered off, appears to have done?

Health experts have criticised the US and Australia for doing too little too late, failing to cancel large gatherings, close schools, and compel workers to stay at home. “The US response has just been appalling,” says economist Saul Eslake.

“If we can believe the Chinese data, at some point people will draw sharp contrasts between China’s response and how the US has dealt with it, in ways that won’t be helpful to those who believe in the superiority of US-style ­democracy.”

Democracies can’t so easily compel their citizens to quarantine; governments with an eye to re-election want to upset as few voters as possible.

Indeed, large private companies, perhaps fearful of potential lawsuits, have been far stricter in their quarantine and precautionary policies than state and federal governments.

German Chancellor Angel Merkel reckons up to 70 per cent of her country will contract the virus.

Even if the mooted death rate proves an overestimate, widespread contraction of the COVID-19 will cause major economic and social disruption.

How much is impossible to predict­. Economic forecasts, includin­g the effectiveness of the so-called stimulus, are based on what’s happened in the past.

We don’t know household and business spending and investment patterns in the grip of a deadly viral pandemic.

As toilet-paper hoarding illustrates, herd mentality can erupt in unexpected ways.

It remains to be seen whether house prices, which have a much bigger effect on household confid­ence than shares, slump in sympathy with shares.

Central banks, with official rates already practically zero everywhere, are rapidly running out of ammunition to keep proppin­g up asset prices.

The US government, heavily indebted and already borrowing about $US1 trillion ($1.56 trillion) a year, has little scope to introduce a major stimulus package.

If 70 per cent of the over-80s contracted the coronavirus, even with a 2 per cent death rate, almost 14,000 would perish in Australia alone — an extraordinary tragedy. Health workers, hospitals and aged-care homes would come under severe strain.

Severe pandemics, argues Scheidel, for all their horror, have tended to improve income inequalit­y by creating a shortage of workers, increasing wages, while reducing the value of assets, which mainly hurts the rich.

Whatever its ultimate spread, COVID-19, which attacks largely the elderly, appears poised to ­deliver all of the horror and loss of wealth, with no increase in wages.