Superspreaders

Evidence continues to emerge about the way in which the Wuhan virus spreads. There's good news and bad news. The good news is that instead of 60% of us having to be infected to achieve herd immunity, we could do it with 10% - 20% in combination with behaviour modification. The bad news is that the behaviour modification could knock the arse out of our lives. 

The key is that not all of us are infected equally, and those who are infectious are not all equally infectious. It's nothing to do with individual physiology and everything to do with location and positioning, as the Telegraph reports today -

By applying a mathematical model to reported outbreaks of the disease outside China, they estimated that 80 per cent of all secondary transmissions were caused by a small fraction of infected individuals - around 10 percent.

The risk is in strenuous or energetic activities with more rapid, deeper breathing in crowded closed or indoor situations. A mosh pit is very high risk, the Bodleian library much less so. Groundworkers, brickies and scaffolders (provided they don't crowd into the mess rooms) are safe on site, second fix joiners, sparkies and painters less so. And if you want to get around London, I'd suggest the upper deck of one of those open-top tourist buses.

But for most of us, it's our most common and uniting experience that may never be the same again - the pub. They've re-opened here, but table service only, not more than four to a table and bookings are needed. The whole point about going to the pub is (a) it's spontaneous and (b) the opportunity to meet new people, expose yourself to social interaction and to strengthen bonds of identity and community. We have to pin our hopes on a vaccine to get back to anything like normal. 

Post-Wuhan gasthaus

Snake oil and miracle drugs

Science is galloping along at a healthy pace, thanks to the Wuhan virus. All over the world, medical and pharma researchers and practitioners are working with unprecedented focus on drugs to alleviate the symptoms of the virus or for a vaccine. The internet has enabled them to put their findings out in public instantly, many without peer review, and wholly by-passing the filtering and partiality of the medical establishment and the gatekeepers of the learned journals. I expect like me you will delve into the Pubmed site maybe once a week to see how they're all getting on, even if, also like me, a lot of the science is over our heads. And doctors themselves have established unofficial, unsanctioned 'Whatsapp' groups - at no cost whatever to the NHS, and not a single NHS £100k manager to administer them - to share clinical information.

Overnight, this eager and industrious research has overturned the shibboleths of the medical establishment; ventilators, it appears, are a very bad thing. Even if you're unlucky enough to be ill enough to be taken to hospital, where you have a 90% chance of surviving, it falls to 50% if they put you on a ventilator. And if you smoke, keep smoking. As more and more research and data is shared freely online, so the world will learn how best to care for those who fall seriously ill from the Wuhan virus, the most effective prophylactics and the best drugs to alleviate symptoms.

We're also learning in incredible detail the character of the Sars-CoV-2 package. A propensity to antigenic drift and/or shift may mean a vaccine is seeking a moving target - and the Wuhan virus may become an annual visitor, and just as we take a quad-vaccine flu shot each season betting on the four strains most likely to emerge in any year, we will have annual Wuhan shots with two or three likely variations included. However, unless something miraculous happens, no vaccine will be here before next year. And that means we must take a hit before then. And in the worst case, there may be no acquired immunity and no vaccine at all.

That's the bottom line for every nation. Lift lockdowns now to allow the Wuhan bug to climb to an R0 of say R1.05, just enough to be able to pinch it off once maximum NHS capacity is reached, and allow the economy to live. And if there's no acquired immunity, then the Wuhan virus will become a deadly variation of the common cold, one that carries-off an additional 100,000 UK citizens a year, and it will change forever the way we live.

Right now the energy, ingenuity and application of the chaotic anarchy of scientific research and scholarly internet publication is coming each day closer to letting us know the score. They're quite capable of filtering-out the snake oil, and we should be cautious of any pharma company claiming to have a miracle drug. If I clap anyone today, it will be those internet research heroes, the doctors and scientists delivering data and research hot on our screens each day.

Deaths - all causes stats

The deaths - all causes stats are the ones to watch today. Looking at the shape of pandemic death curves, those that include all excess deaths at a time of pandemic, they seem to have a longer tail. Thus when the first 6k figure was released, I speculated a rough path would be a 6 - 15 - 8 - 4 shape, giving some 33k excess deaths for the first wave of the Wuhan virus. So far we've had 6 - 18. If my initial guess at the shape was right, we could be on a 6 - 18 - 10 - 5 trajectory.

The shape of the first wave is important as it can give us a clue as to the likely outcome of a second, enhanced wave. It seems we're going to have to take the hit, whatever happens. Neither the economy nor public order will survive an indefinite total lockdown, and people are voting with their feet.

The first wave of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic caused a fatality peak in mid-July, the second a fatality peak in mid-November, some four months later. The second peak was much bigger in 1918 - if 18k is the Wuhan first peak, the second would be 90k in the highest week if un-modified. That, of course, is what the government is desperate to avoid.

I think we'll need to keep those empty Nightingale hospitals open for the foreseeable future, in any event. 

Update
======
Last week's excess deaths for all UK wasn't 18k but 17k. This week's (week 16) gives 11,854 excess deaths in E&W above 5 year average, 844 in Scotland and 134 in NI. 12,832 in total. So the pattern so far is 6 - 17 - 13, as far as I can see. 

West moves to Phase II of Wuhan virus response

At slightly different speeds and in slightly different ways, the nations of the Western world are now moving together into Phase II of their response to the Wuhan virus. How hard lockdowns are being lifted will vary according to local conditions, but we now have confidence that the toll from the bug can be controlled if necessary. Now we know the brakes work, it's time to take our foot from the brake pedal.

It will change our behaviour for ever, just as AIDS did in the early '80s. Even if the Wuhan virus proves a great deal less lethal and much less transmissible - it's native R0 of ~2.3 is around half that of ~4.6 for AIDS - its character may mean that we must protect the old and vulnerable whilst the rest of us carry on as normal, polarising society. Grandparents would be separated from their grandchildren, the morbidly obese would need either to lose weight or adopt leper lifestyles and the immunocompromised remain behind closed doors.

Pressure will now be intense on the world's indigenous peoples to stop eating bats and monkeys - too many novel diseases have sprung from this practice, distasteful to Western tastes, since jet travel and increased prosperity enabled enhanced transmission. And China must stop sending her diplomats to lie and evade responsibility for the Wuhan virus; listen if you will to Friday's World at One interview with Chen Wen, China's deputy ambassador to the UK (from about 11:06 to 28:30). It's a stunning display of authoritarian delusion. No wonder the government have now removed the China line from the daily Covid-TV graphs - it's pure fiction. She also denied that China had any 'wet' markets at all that sold bats, beavers, badgers and other wild animals, dead and alive - not so she said. China had farmers' markets, which sold fresh meat and vegetables. Well, I've been to Blackheath farmers' market a few times and have never found live eating-snakes and Pangolin chops on the stalls there. Tom Tugendhat is actually right about China - I just wish he was a little more articulate and animated about it. And it's not just China. Africans must either close down their bushmeat markets or their visitors must face a month's quarantine before those wealthy corrupt ministers' wives, fat as butter, can spend their stolen cash in Bond Street.

Phase II will also introduce enhanced national security measures not unrelated to our having left the EU. Our waters and the fish that dwell in them have now become a national security asset in a way they weren't in December. There is zero chance that we'll now trade away even a scintilla of control. The new quarantine requirements for visitors will become a permanent feature - at least the requirement for visitors to register an address, for track-and-traceability. No great novelty there for anyone who knows Europe and has completed a fiche or meldezettel at a hotel or rented villa.

As for forecasts that Phase II will see the demise of cash - I'm not convinced. Oh for sure, our steel and nickel coins and plastic and paper notes are filthy, but that hasn't always been the case. Both silver and copper have strong antiviral properties, and I'm sure it is not beyond the wit of man to incorporate silver or copper ions in banknote 'paper'. Till-draw cavities could also be internally flooded in UV to allow constant viral destruction. Cash expresses our freedom from absolute State control, and we'd be foolish to allow it to be taken from us even at this time.

The debates, the research, the policy trials and errors will continue into Phase II. We don't yet have the answers, but we approach the next stage with greater confidence in ourselves and our abilities. Let's just ensure the world on the other side is a better one, albeit a different one, to that in 2019. 

Well fancy that ..

Following a previous post in which I outlined the early and sketchy evidence from China that suggested that smokers had some immunity to Covid-19, the phenomenon has gone European. Austria of course is the chain-smoker of Europe, and smoking in bars and cafes was only banned at the beginning of this year, greatly to the annoyance of the regulars at my local gasthaus.

Fags here are just over £4 a packet - unlike the UK, smuggled cigarettes from eastern Europe cannot easily be stopped, and though the health fascists would dearly love to tax at UK levels, they know that not only would it not reduce smoking but the government would lose tax.

As the Guardian reports, a study at Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris revealed that only 4% - 5% of Covid-19 patients were smokers, when 25% - 30% of the general population smoke. So compelling were the findings that nicotine patches are now to be issued to patients and frontline health workers.

There is no confirmation that nicotine is the prophylactic agent, and the science is still out, but it's just possible that the nicotine fascists whose campaign against smoking (justified) has been extended to a 'war on tobacco' (no justification other than joyless bansturbation) will have nicotine vape blown in their faces. If, and it's an outside chance, some other component of burning cured tobacco leaf is responsible, the race will be on to produce it commercially. BAT, Imperial, Philip Morris and Altria will be happy.

Quinine and caffeine are also alkaloids. There's some evidence that the former has a prophylactic effect, but no suggestion as yet as to the latter. 

Update
======
Christopher Snowdon in Spiked on this is well worth reading - and a savage condemnation of Public Health England and their fellow lying zealots whose lies will have cost lives. These fools must be indicted.  

Once again, Libertarianism wins out over authoritarian stupidity.

Some things are not easy to say

I've always hated waste. Not just cost, or carelessness, but the idea of waste. I never accepted that 10% of bricks or roof tiles would be broken by handling, or 15% of plasterboard deliveries would be wasted. I always challenged such assumptions - and when I became a CEEQUAL assessor, would try to gently nudge jobs I was assessing not to drop points by careless waste. It didn't even have to be related to value; I once watched a worker assisting in the application of a skin-irritating substance needlessly change pair after pair of latex gloves. It was just deliberately throwing away someone else's money - out of irritation at being employed, being instructed, being constrained. Even an office worker who throws a new biro slow to start writing in the bin before giving it a chance is in part just kicking his boss, his firm and his office. If he was at home, if they were his own gloves or his own biros he wouldn't do it.

So I can understand Matt Hancock's difficulty yesterday in urging health and care workers not to cream through the nation's stocks of PPE quite so vigorously. It's OK to wear the same mask to see two patients in a row; you don't need to change plastic aprons every 15 minutes - well, I guess that's what he wanted to say but couldn't really say it. Can you imagine the press fury at asking NHS workers who are losing their lives to cut back on 10p latex gloves?

We need to remember that just as not all soldiers are gallant, not all health workers are selfless. Many will be feeling pissed off at their well-paid indoors job with no heavy lifting suddenly turning lethal, with no hiding place at home because the bloody neighbours are all standing in their drives clapping every morning at going-to-work time. What makes the workforce as a whole exceptional is that 85% do turn up each day, and care diligently and conscientiously for our sick and dying.

So some PPE will be wasted out of genuine fear and ignorance - this is a training matter. Some will be wasted (a very small proportion, I'd guess) by those wanting to run out of PPE to make a political point - this is a disciplinary matter. But some I'd think will be wasted because wasting a mask, gloves, gown or apron is about the only gesture open to workers working under the most stressful of conditions, with the nation's gaze upon them. I think we must just accept this as a small price to pay.

Voices against the lockdown

It's quite proper in a free and open society that anyone should be able to question not only the actions of government but to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy. And at times of radical government action - war, plague - questioning the rationale and objectives of particular courses of action must be expected, and is neither unpatriotic nor counter-constructive. 

We must also expect a full spectrum of fanciful suggestions and conspiracy theories, misinformation, distortion, omission and misrepresentation of fact, and many, many innocent errors. And it's often the nature of things that false information spreads more easily than the reality. As Terry Pratchett used to say, a lie can go around the world before the truth has got its boots on.

Social media is censoring the most immediately harmful lunacies to protect the most gullible, the most credulous and the most intellectually vulnerable. But already in the US, following suggestions that Chloroquine may be effective in relieving symptoms, a man has died after drinking something from his garden shed that sounded fairly similar. And both here in Austria and in the UK the nonsense is doing the rounds that the virus can be safely washed into the stomach by drinking warm water.

At the other end of the spectrum, confusion over the numbers of excess fatalities due to the virus baffles even advanced minds. If the lockdown is successful, as it is suggested it is, the R0 of the SARS-Cov-2 virus will fall below 1. A figure of 0.6 was suggested yesterday as being possible. This means there will be few overall excess fatalities. If the government is right, there's not going to be a huge bulge in the mortality figures - evidence for the lethality of the virus will be scientific and clinical.

The other advanced argument against the lockdown was put most eloquently by Toby Young - the economic argument. In The Critic, he argued using QALY figures that spending £350bn to save a few hundred thousand elderly people was a gross distortion of policy. However, also interestingly in the same publication, his arguments were comprehensively rubbished by Sam Bowman;

Taking all this together, we can attempt a rough recalculation of whether the government shutdown is worth it, from a statistical perspective. If 230,000 lives are saved (the difference between mitigation and suppression in the Imperial model Young cites), with an average age of 79.5, that is around 2,070,000 life years saved. At the statistical life year value of £60,000, that is a total benefit in statistical terms of £124.2 billion, compared to less than £66 billion lost to the economy.

I do commend the latter piece. Sam Bowman is an economist who explains succinctly and simply why the government's policy is the right one.

Take care all.

Living under Lockdown

Well, it's here. Boris had no choice. And whilst my underlying beliefs remain unchanged, there are no libertarians in a plague or in a war of national existence. Just as our forefathers accepted conscription and rationing, we must accept lockdown. Breaching the terms is as treasonous as ignoring the black-out and shining a light up to enemy bombers.

We've had lockdown here for a week already. The local Spar is fine - after an initial run on toilet paper, the staff worked with a fury to get stuff onto the shelves faster than folk were taking it off, with the result that yesterday the shelves and aisles were groaning with Easter stuff. I have some migrants from Italy - they come every year. Black Redstarts. Usually two pairs. So rare in the UK that I once had to spend (planning condition) £300,000 installing a 'brown roof' on a new building for them; much to the chagrin of the client. The ecology people said they liked old bombsites, with plenty of demolition rubble, burnt wood and fireweed. Actually, they just like flies - or insects anyway - each pair eating some 1.5kg during the breeding season. And whilst the locals regard them as a bloody nuisance, I welcome them. They're ugly, they can't sing for shit and they're not entertaining like tits, but just for the untold millions that they cost UK developers, they're fab.

Stay safe all and let's take care of each other.
  

EU/EEA and the UK	Sum of Cases	Sum of Deaths
Italy	59138	5476
Spain	28572	1720
Germany	24774	94
France	16018	674
United_Kingdom	5683	281
Netherlands	4204	179
Austria	3631	16
Belgium	3401	75
Norway	2132	7
Sweden	1906	21
Portugal	1600	14
Denmark	1395	13
Czech_Republic	1165	1
Ireland	906	4
Luxembourg	798	8
Poland	634	7
Finland	626	1
Greece	624	15
Iceland	568	1
Romania	433	2
Slovenia	414	1
Estonia	326	0
Croatia	235	1
Bulgaria	185	3
Slovakia	185	0
Hungary	167	7
Lithuania	143	1
Latvia	139	0
Cyprus	95	0
Malta	90	0
Liechtenstein	46	0
Total	160233	8622

Looking on the bright side ...

I must admit, against all the odds, that there are glimmers of pleasure in this global crisis. Rather than the free-market approach of letting 520,000 of us die, the government have opted for a national lockdown, which will see the UK's deaths this year rise only from the usual 600,000 to 620,000. Call it the People's Covid Strategy if you like - and it certainly depends on co-operation from everyone. And as in WWII, when the population had to make most of the sacrifices, there will be a reckoning to be paid. First, an evening-out of social inequality; back then it took the effects of a universal ration, in which even the King had the Buckingham Palace baths marked with the max 5" water level and the princesses had ration books, to persuade the masses to comply. Second, a universal service obligation. And finally, deep and permanent changes to society to enshrine fairness, equity and limits to the pre-war inequalities.

Jeremy Warner in the 'graph has somewhat stolen my thunder with this observation

Once the pinup boy for sailing close to the wind entrepreneurialism, and as such a mentor to many, Richard Branson is now widely demonised; the gist of it is how dare a tax exile with estimated wealth of £4bn ask for a bailout by UK taxpayers. Nevermind that thousands of jobs are at risk, he can, as one well-known Dragon’s Den celebrity investor put it, “b***** off”.

Anyone on Twitter yesterday cannot have failed to notice the universal hostility toward Richard Branson - and particularly to the thought that a taxpayer funded bailout should help his airline whilst he retained his £4bn personal fortune. It was revelatory. Thatcher's poster boy is now a figure of mass hatred. It must have sent a shudder through the 0.1% of the mega-wealthy, and be causing a little anxiety amongst the 1% who have so benefited from Globalism. That's going to be part of the price of this war - demands for an end to obscene rewards. And yes, I'd go along with that.

Another pleasure has been the utter helplessness of Labour. They so want to protest and be angry about something, but they can't find it. The nadir must be yesterday's demand for Covid victims to be classified according to self-identified gender as well as ethnicity and sexuality. Sweeties, men die more because we express greater levels of ACE2, to which the SARS-CoV-2 virus binds in cell-invasion. It doesn't help being a trannie. As far as Covid-19 is concerned, you're still a bloke.

A downside, as I posted a few days ago, is that Whitehall reform is on hold - we actually need a central command and control structure during the crisis. But this is not a reason, or an excuse, for maintaining a Big Central State once we have beaten this thing. Much more on this as time goes on.

And finally, the world's nation states have just amply demonstrated that supranational government is a pointless chimera, and that the people are best served by less Europe, not more, and by less UN. In concert yesterday, the leaders of the US, UK, Germany, France and Japanese, the G7, all announced co-ordinated bailouts of hundreds of billions. If everyone prints money, it doesn't count. And not a peep from the irrelevant EU or UN. The nation state is back.

And even though there's yet no hint of a vaccine, minds in the UK are already turning to a post-Globalist world; AI, computer printing, strategic national capacity. And our effects on our environment are quickly becoming manifest; clear water and visible fish in Venice's canals, and here blue skies free of contrails, and the deafening loudness of spring birdsong. We may not want to give up this green-ness, not want to go back to the filth and degradation. Universal basic incomes are also being mentioned without hoots of derision.

If you look, there's a silver lining to most clouds.

The effect of Covid-19 on Boris's programme

Covid-19 has already had the effect of downgrading a few of the Prime Minister's early objectives. His list for stuff to do in his first 100 days since 12th December surely cannot have included "deal with deadly pandemic". So what's gone, what isn't and what's been watered down?

Brexit
No change. The crunch date is still June - when France needs to have withdrawn her silly demands in return for more money from the other 26. The only issue is keeping both teams disease free. And M Barnier, at 69, is at the age at which he should be staying in more.

BBC
There are signs of softening on both sides. I reckon the TV tax will be decriminalised, in effect a £200m fine for past naked bias, but longer term funding will be thrown into the long grass. Many just want the BBC to be  smaller, more efficient, cheaper and rid of its unacceptable bias. However, there are signs they still don't get it. Tony Hall is picking up on the 'diversity of thought' challenge, but the real challenge is that the BBC is a big, statist, centralist broadcaster that endogenously supports a big centralist State. Unless this changes, not much else will.

Whitehall
The Priti Patel row isn't about the Home Secretary at all. It's the attempted picking-off of a reformist big beast by the establishment that has captured the state. They will lose this battle, but the war is likely to be put on hold as the government will have genuine need of the command-and-control structures that Whitehall has in place permanently (instead of just temporarily for wars, plagues and pestilence). They're safe until Covid-19 reaches its conclusion.

Parliament
Frankly, the suggestion that Parliament should be suspended to preserve the lives of MPs and peers is ludicrous. Giving the government emergency powers that MPs return every 28 days to renew, dressed no doubt in full-body suits, masks and visors, is too risible to consider. If carrying on as usual with anticipated absence rates of 20%, as the population is expected to do, is good enough for health workers it's good enough for MPs. Sure, six or seven of them may die (and rather more peers, but they have the choice between their attendance allowance and a risk of infection) but MPs are expendable - they themselves are not valuable, just the party selection made by their constituents. They must face the same risks as the rest of us. So any closure will be an abject betrayal of the nation and should not be considered. The Commons sat through the Blitz - a bloody little Chinese bug is nothing.

05/03/20
EU/EEA and the UK	Cases	Deaths
Italy	3089	107
France	285	4
Germany	262	0
Spain	200	1
United Kingdom	85	0
Norway	56	0
Netherlands	38	0
Sweden	35	0
Austria	29	0
Iceland	26	0
Belgium	23	0
Greece	10	0
Denmark	10	0
Croatia	9	0
Czech Republic	8	0
Finland	7	0
Ireland	6	0
Portugal	5	0
Romania	4	0
Hungary	2	0
Estonia	2	0
Lithuania	1	0
Slovenia	1	0
Liechtenstein	1	0
Luxembourg	1	0
Poland	1	0
Latvia	1	0
Total	4197	112

Covid-19: Living with the threat

Up here in my high Alpine valley the sound of helicopters is not unusual. Air ambulances here ferry skiers with broken legs and fallen climbers rather than the UK's stabbing victims, and the power company Kelag use them constantly for checking the web of power cables. Helicopters at night, however are something else, but last night at about 9pm came the throb and bass beat. The origin and direction of the Bundesheer's Bell Hueys was in no doubt - from the Gebirgsjäger base over the Villacher Alpe to the Italian border crossings. Hey ho, I thought, they're closing the borders. Last Summer they ran an extensive exercise to airlift troops to the Alpine passes in the event of another migrant surge, so the sound and path of the helos was quite familiar. In reality this time, it's a Chinese virus rather than Iraqi economic migrants that they're tasked with stopping.

In the event the borders haven't yet been closed. There is intense pressure from the EU - backed up with a generous dispensing of millions in cash - to keep the EU economy going at all costs. In Brussels, the security of their federation may outweigh the fate of 1% of the EU's 460m subject peoples in the minds of the apparatchiks.

The Mayor of Villach is concerned about the legal brothel at Hohenthurn. Up to 120 prostitutes, mostly from eastern Europe, work there and at weekends floods of Italians - 400 to 500 every weekend - cross the border to buy their favours, reports ORF. He tells the press he is powerless to close the brothel, and the Italians are unlikely to restrain themselves.

I suspect the authorities, including our own government, now accept that Covid-19 cannot be contained, as I wrote a week ago, on Monday 17th. It's all moving very quickly now. The actions by the Italian authorities are likely to be a mix of panic-reduction measures and blame avoidance. Realistically, they have no chance of halting the pandemic.

Covid-19 modellers on the ball, despite Chinese lies

It is now beyond doubt that China has been lying to the world about the numbers of Covid-19 cases in Wuhan. The Lancet estimated that we should multiply all Chinese announcements by a factor of 10, but an even more detailed analysis is provided in online Biopharma mag Stat. Working backwards from cases outside China, Imperial College, advisors to the WHO, estimated some 1,000 to 9,700 cases when China was reporting 440. And so for the 1,700 reported deaths to date - read 17,000.

It now seems beyond doubt that Covid-19 is out and now cannot be contained. In the UK we will stop testing once we have 100 confirmed cases - at this point we will have a pandemic. It is likely it has taken hold in London already and we will see many more cases in the next 7 days. An estimated R₀ of 2 to 3 means it spreads very easily - it is highly infectious. How quickly it will spread is determined by the serial interval - the time it takes for people to get sick, and the period during which they can infect others. Toronto University has got a useful online modelling tool with sliders - try reducing the serial interval from 7 to 6 days to see the astonishing effects.

Bottom line is that some 60% of us are likely to be infected, and 1% are likely to die prematurely as a result. That's between 300,000 and 400,000 for the UK. Olders will take the brunt, as will those with impaired lung function or impaired auto-immunity. The only glimmer of good news is that economically we can take the hit; Ross Clark in the Speccie reports that a death toll of this scale will cause GDP to drop only by about 0.75% this year. He compares that to the 3.5% to 6% drop in GDP forecast by George Osborne in 2016 if we voted for Brexit.

The other glimmer of hope is the weather. Pandemic viruses spread best when it's cold and dry - the warmer and moister the air, the less chance the virus has of being transmitted in droplets. It's counter-intuitive, but high humidity is a good thing as far as reducing spread. On an personal basis, reducing contacts to the absolute minimum possible is the most effective protection. Not much comfort to those commuting on crowded public transport in London, but for those of us who have the choice, reducing the trip to the shops from twice to once a week and cutting out leisure travel will have a significant effect. Try as much as you can to stay in the 40% who avoid infection, and hope for an early hot Easter.

As for the government, they will have plans for hospitals to maximise survival for those worst hit, but otherwise will pursue a policy of carry on as normal, to minimise economic damage. We're past the point of heroic action, and into taking the hit. As for the Millennials, for whom this will be their first experience of a mortal threat, let's see how far that open borders stuff lasts when the death toll in Africa hits the tens of millions.

Update
=====
Smuggled video showing the dead put out for collection in China. Satellites have also picked up chemical and spectroscopic signatures of vast funeral pyres on the outskirts of big cities.


Ah, they removed that quickly. Must be Huawei servers ;(
For those that missed it, it was filmed on a phone from a moped driving past a stretch of footway outside apartment buildings with many (I counted over 20) bodies wrapped in sheets left out for collection.