What the papers say

The big story is the supposed death of North Koran dictator Kim Il Jong.

Meanwhile the EU censored itself to avoid angering China by criticising her handling of the virus.

Here in Romania we have 608 deaths of people with (not necessarily of) the Coronavirus, alas. Only 12 have died in Latvia, 46 in Estonia, 42 in Lithuania. In Belarus, with no lockdown, supposedly 67, but who knows?

It is very hard not to conclude that the virus was considerably less dangerous than we feared, thank God.

Latvia had a limited lockdown. The Telegraph publishes today an interview with the Latvian P.M., Krisjanis Karins.

By the time of the first Covid-19 related death in Latvia, the limit on public gatherings had dropped from crowds of 200 to groups of two, and strict social distancing rules were in place.

"In retrospect we actually shut everything down, went to two people, and two metres, before we even had our first confirmed death of Covid-19," Karins says. But the majority of businesses were allowed to remain open, with the exception of cinemas and theatres.

Large shopping centres were instructed to close at weekends. Cafes and restaurants could, in theory, remain open, but following the introduction of social distancing rules many lacked customers and shut down anyway. "By not shutting down our businesses and having the social distancing, we're trying to get that balance of keeping people healthy and at the same time doing the least amount of damage to the economy as possible in these times. Of course, our economy is taking a big hit as everyone's economy is."

Daniel Hannen writing about Sweden yesterday in the Daily Telegraph.

Modelling by country’s authorities suggests that the infection rate in Stockholm peaked on 8 April. If so, we need to consider the implication, namely that, once basic hygiene and distancing measures are in place, tightening the screw further perhaps makes little difference. Which would be good news for the rest of us. Adopting Sweden’s more laissez-faire response might not restore our economies to full health, but it would at least allow us to bring them out of their induced comas

..... “It’s bad news for us politically,” a Rightist MP admits. “The socialist government is up 21 points. But I am a patriot, and I want what is best for my country. I criticise ministers for not helping small businesses. But I don’t criticise them for sticking to the science when other countries gave in to populism.”

Unfortunately although the number of new cases peaked in Sweden on April 8 Swedish deaths are rising. Daily deaths per capita on Friday were the highest in the world. Still, I am very hopeful about Sweden.

This is from an article by Alistair Haimes, who has worked with data for 25 years, in The Critic.

Along month ago in 10 Downing Street, before public opinion (and Jeremy Hunt) turned against him, Sir Patrick Vallance was painstakingly clear that group immunity while sheltering the vulnerable is the only game in town, but that we should flatten the curve (“squash the sombrero”) so that the NHS would not be overwhelmed.

Yet faced with murky data, a clamouring press and terrifying reports from Italy, the current lockdown was hurriedly declared, in order to buy time for the NHS to build further capacity for the approaching storm. Given the paucity of data available when the decision was made, and how things could have gone, perhaps the government did the right thing. It has, indeed, used the time to create impressive capacity, and can now assert that the UK does have capacity (both hospital beds generally and ICU beds and ventilators in particular) for whatever comes our way.

But we’re still locked down. Like many things in life, it turns out that lockdown was much easier to get into than to get out of. It also turns out that the reasons for going in seem to be wildly different to the reasons for coming out; the key that locked the door doesn’t unlock it.

Charles Moore is always calm and cheering. He wrote on Friday under the headline, "With the right leadership restored, the British public will get through this crisis."

Here are some of the bad things which could have happened, but haven’t. Early on, the reasonable worst-case scenario for deaths was half a million. On current showing, we might not reach a tenth of that figure. Similar calculations suggested that intensive care beds could be eight times oversubscribed, meaning that thousands of patients would die in corridors or be turned away.

Nothing remotely like this has happened. Somehow, 40,000 NHS beds were freed up. Most have not had to be used. No one seeking treatment has been refused it. Imagine if we had been so badly organised that when the Prime Minister became ill he could get treatment only by grabbing an ICU bed needed by another patient. We never got near that.

Other major blessings include the fact that panic-buying was quickly dealt with and everyone can get the necessaries of life; that more than enough ventilators appeared; that broadband provision has produced digital solutions unattainable five years ago; that HMRC can agree furloughing applications within two days and start paying in less than a week.

Behind all this lies one other blessing: the public are behaving well. Precisely because we are behaving well, we do not realise how great a blessing it is. Of course, we social distance, wait in queues, volunteer to help. Of course we don’t riot or try to insist on having medical treatments that can wait. Of course we try to keep our children amused – even educated – at home, to shop for the self-isolated, and check on the elderly parents we are not allowed to approach.

We have been asked to stay at home, protect the NHS, and save lives. This is exactly what about 99 per cent of the population has tried to do. You cannot buy social discipline like that. You cannot even compel it. It is a cultural achievement, a mark of civilisation.

Holman Jenkins at the WSJ thinks nothing could have stopped a respiratory infection from going worldwide.

Novel pandemic diseases are not a black swan. Our lockdown response was a black swan.

We started off sensibly. “This is not something [American families] generally need to worry about,” said CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonnier in mid-January. “It’s a very, very low risk to the United States,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci a week later.

Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York, urged residents to go about their business normally as recently as March 11.

As coldblooded as it seems, these were the right statements at the time. Under “flatten the curve,” changes in public behavior aren’t needed until they are needed. Roll that around in your mind a bit. The better we do at equipping local hospitals, the less we need to bankrupt local businesses and their workers to slow the virus as it runs its course through society. That was the idea we started with.

Not even the U.K. Imperial College study that so alarmed the world’s policy makers recommended indiscriminate lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders. If we meant what we said, we’ve overshot in many places. Beds are empty. A ventilator shortage did not materialize. We failed to set aside enough capacity to treat other medical conditions like strokes and heart attacks. This is costing lives.

What happened? From Bill Gates to your local editorialist, a new priority waddled to the fore. We decided that, whatever contributes to killing Americans at a routine total rate of 8,000 or so a day, it shouldn’t be the coronavirus.

Accidents, yes—6% of deaths. Heart disease, yes—23%. Flu and pneumonia, yes—2%.

These deaths are allowed but not deaths from the coronavirus even at the cost of economic ruin for millions. Of course the media and public are free to decide that now they never wanted to flatten the curve; they wanted to be spared the virus altogether. But explain how this is to be done. And explain why. The Economist magazine says we can’t restart the economy without an “unprecedented” $180 billion testing regime. Unprecedented is an interesting word because China, a country of 1.4 billion people with eight cities larger than New York, either must have developed such a system with nobody noticing or hasn’t found it necessary.

Finally, an interesting article in The Hill in effect says Sweden got it right. I wonder why so many conservatives are anti-lockdown and all leftists I see - who should worry about poverty - are in favour of it being prolonged.

The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19. 

The recent Stanford University antibody study now estimates that the fatality rate if infected is likely 0.1 to 0.2 percent, a risk far lower than previous World Health Organization estimates that were 20 to 30 times higher and that motivated isolation policies.

In New York City, an epicenter of the pandemic with more than one-third of all U.S. deaths, the rate of death for people 18 to 45 years old is 0.01 percent, or 11 per 100,000 in the population. On the other hand, people aged 75 and over have a death rate 80 times that. For people under 18 years old, the rate of death is zero per 100,000.

Of all fatal cases in New York state, two-thirds were in patients over 70 years of age; more than 95 percent were over 50 years of age; and about 90 percent of all fatal cases had an underlying illness. Of 6,570 confirmed COVID-19 deaths fully investigated for underlying conditions to date, 6,520, or 99.2 percent, had an underlying illness. If you do not already have an underlying chronic condition, your chances of dying are small, regardless of age. And young adults and children in normal health have almost no risk of any serious illness from COVID-19.