Charlotte Bronte in favour of action

“It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility; they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.”

Charlotte Brontë, born today in 1816.

Many Happy Returns of the Day, Your Majesty!

God save H.M. the Queen, who is 94 today. This, I imagine, is the strangest of her 94 birthdays.

No guns were fired to mark the day on the instructions of Her Majesty, because of the epidemic ravaging her country.
When she was born 94 years ago the telegram informing him was given to her father in a silver box on a tray, while he was playing golf. He shared the news with his companion who congratulated him and they finished their game.

Then she was only Heir Presumptive, not Heir Apparent, because her Uncle David, the future King Edward VIII, was expected to marry and have children. Now she is the oldest British monarch. 

Queen Victoria, the second oldest, died at 81 having lived five days longer than King George III.

The Prince of the Wales, if he ascends the throne will be the oldest monarch to do so. He is the second oldest heir to the throne after the Electress Sophia of Hanover, who died, aged 83, after running to escape a shower of rain, a few weeks before her distant cousin Queen Anne.

Here is some film of the Queen as a little girl, playing with her younger sister Princess Margaret Rose, released today to celebrate the monarch turning 94. As a little girl, although only Heir Presumptive, received a huge amount of attention from the press because the Heir Apparent, her (somewhat wicked) uncle, Edward, Prince of Wales was unmarried.

The Daily Mail says

The clips - sure to help boost the country's mood during the coronavirus pandemic - show Elizabeth playing with a pram as a toddler, on a seesaw and playing in a garden and dancing on a yacht with Margaret.

Herd immunity?

397,670 British people have been tested for the virus. More than one third, 129,044, were positive. This is very encouraging if it means herd immunity is in sight. In any case it strengthens the case for lifting the lockdown in the UK, but for politicians that would be fraught with peril (and possibly for everyone else). On the other hand were those people tested at random or because they had reason to think they were infected? 

The research at Oxford suggested last month that half the UK might be infected. Other scientists last month thought it was one in fifteen.

Of the deaths registered in the UK in the week ending 10 April, one third mentioned “novel coronavirus (COVID-19)”, compared to 21% the week before. Most of these deaths are with not of the virus. This also suggests the British are rapidly approaching herd immunity, if herd immunity is attainable, which depends on whether having the virus once gives you immunity and whether the virus mutates sooner rather than later. The Daily Mail has a story headlined 

“Chinese study finds up to 30% of coronavirus patients hardly develop ANY antibodies against the infection - raising concerns many who recover from COVID-19 are not immune.”

When does old age begin?

President Macron of France is very unpopular and unlikely to be re-elected, which is a solitary shaft of sunlight in an otherwise very dark landscape. Researching him, I found this small gem in The Times (what Americans call the London Times) the day before yesterday.

'With the pandemic beginning to ebb after 17,000 deaths and a month of lockdown, Mr Macron set May 11 as the start of “le déconfinement”. Schools, shops, businesses and hairdressers would reopen while cafes, restaurants and cinemas remain shut, he said in an address watched by 36 million. However “the elderly” would stay isolated.

'Caught by surprise, ministers watered down Mr Macron’s promises after celebrities in their seventies alleged discrimination. No one has defined “les personnes âgées” who are to stay indefinitely in isolation but a consensus appears to have settled on 70, three years older than Brigitte Macron, the 42-year-old president’s wife.'

They manage these things better in Taiwan

Taiwan seems to be the place that is safest from the virus. Despite being so close to (Red) China, it has had only 422 reported cases and six deaths. I know of one rich man who decided this over dinner in Thailand six weeks ago and promptly left for Taipei. 

The Taiwanese Vice-President Chen Chien-jen is also the country's chief epidemiologist. The Telegraph interviewed Mr Chen in his office last week  and asked him if Taiwan’s pandemic strategy can be copied in bigger countries. He replied:

"Yes, sure. It will never be too late to control any kind of outbreak in any country. There are still a lot of chances for different countries to adopt good strategies developed here to help contain the outbreak. Social distancing and good health behaviour are definitely important – frequent handwashing, measuring body temperature, using a face mask if necessary. At home, close contacts [of the infected] shouldn’t dine together. The [patient] can live in a single room. It’s not necessary to stop all activities. As long as more than 50% of the population reduces 50% of their social contacts then the outbreak can be controlled. They can go to school, to work but must reduce non-essential recreation and social contact.

"Home quarantine is important. Close contacts must stay at home for 14 days and check their health status.It’s not necessary to stop all activities. As long as more than 50 per cent of the population reduces 50 per cent of their social contacts then the outbreak can be controlled. They can go to school, to work, but must reduce non-essential recreation and social contact.”

Coronavirus may have an infection fatality rate of 0.2% or less

The Coronavirus epidemic dramatises the dangers of globalisation, just in time supply chains and mass movement but also, paradoxically, the need for international cooperation and the inadequacy of international organisations. 

The WHO in particular, led by an Ethiopian who is accused of covering up epidemics when he was Minister of Health in his own country and who spent valuable time when the virus was spreading warning against xenophobia and anti-Chinese prejudice. He owes his position to China and Third World countries and has used it to make the WHO the Chinese PR firm. 

The EU has been notably useless. There is no European solidarity, as Italy has learnt. When it's a matter of life and death nations and nation states are what count, not abstract principles or internationalism or social class. But it is better so - had the European Union tried to interfere it would have made things worse.

Talking of utterly corrupt international institutions I'd be happy if Coronavirus meant the end forever of the Olympic Games. Apparently Japan does not expect them to happen next year but need they happen at all? They long ago lost their original purpose.

They are now about business and drug taking rather than amateurism, the joy of taking part and a celebration of physical strength. 

Please bear in mind that there is no reason to suppose a vaccine will ever be developed for this virus and in any case the virus will mutate outwitting a putative vaccine. 

The US death toll now exceeds 40,000, mostly in New York State and New Jersey, though the numbers of dead in New York State fell yesterday to below 550. In Italy the daily death toll has fallen below 500. 

A third of two hundred participants in a Massachusetts study tested positive for antibodies linked to COVID-19 after giving their blood samples in the street at random. That suggests herd immunity is in sight, at least in New England.

90,000 cases have been recorded in Africa, but I imagine the real number in Africa is far higher and unknowable. This will be where the virus will probably kill most, unless it does not like hot weather.

I remember President Trump being jeered at by the press when he said his hunch was that the fatality rate for the Coronavirus was 1% or less. That was when the WHO was absurdly saying the rate was 3%. 

My hunch all along has been that the death rate was around 0.1% to 0.2% and this is what a new study by Stanford University suggests. It found Covid-19 antibodies in 50 to 85 times more people than previously thought in Santa Clara County, California, resulting in an infection fatality rate (IFR) comparable with a bad flu, though of course the Coronavirus is much more infectious than a normal flu. Professor John Ioannidis explains the study in a new video.

It is important to be aware of the difference between the case fatality rate (CFR) and the infection fatality rate (IFR). CFR is the number of deaths divided by the number of confirmed cases of disease, which depends on how many people are tested. IFR is the number of deaths divided by the number of actual infections, which also depends on how many people are tested. All these figures are questionable.

In a new analysis, the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford argues that the IFR is between 0.1% and 0.36%. Even with people over 70 with no serious preconditions, it is less than 1%. 

They are ‘actually quite glad they are not the prime minister’

An anonymous cabinet minister told the Sunday Times, “People are realising they are actually quite glad they are not prime minister — and most of them never thought they would say that.”

London looks like a scene from a thriller

London looks like a scene from an Edwardian thriller, by Edgar Wallace or John Buchan. There was an Avengers episode where Steed and Mrs Peel wake up (in separate establishments, of course) to find London is deserted.

Sir Edwin Landseer carved the lions in Trafalgar Square. I read, in one of the countless Edwardian memoirs I devoured pointlessly between Cambridge and the start of real life, if you can call it real, that he bought an old, toothless circus lion to model his lions. One day he invited some society ladies to tea, forgetting that his lion was in the drawing room. The ladies ran away in horror (it was before feminism) crying out, 'Oh, Mr. Landseer, a lion!'

Virus quotations

Stone Walls do not a Prison make,

Nor Iron bars a Cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an Hermitage.

If I have freedom in my Love,

And in my soul am free,

Angels alone that soar above,

Enjoy such Liberty.

Colonel Lovelace, one of 'the wits of either Charles's days, The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease' (Pope) and a favourite poet of mine when I was a romantic boy of 14.

Will this pandemic prove the decisive factor in America's retreat from global hegemony?

With the U.S. budget deficit for 2020 originally set at $1 trillion, now triple that, there is going to be a hard reckoning for the allocation of our diminished resources after the nation reopens.

And policing the planet is likely to be seen as yesterday's priority, and a primary candidate for discard.

Pat Buchanan

Deaths from respiratory illnesses in UK 2 years ago and this year

Professor Anthony Costello of University College London's Institute for Global Health told the House of Commons Health and Social Care Select Committee the UK "could see 40,000 deaths in this wave" of coronavirus cases.


Presumably that includes deaths before and after the lockdown is lifted, because we can't wait till the last man dies before lifting it.


Two years ago 58,000 deaths from respiratory illnesses were recorded in the UK, 40,000 more than normal, and the increase was scarcely mentioned in the press.

The mystery of the empty hospital beds

The rapidly built Nightingale hospital in London has 4,000 beds, almost all empty, yet London hospital cases with Covid-19 are declining. If coronavirus had hit the NHS anything like as bad as predicted, it would have been filled several times over

To prepare for the expected surge in Covid-19 cases, British hospitals discharged patients and emptied beds. Fortunately, the Covid-19 models were wrong: the ICU surge never happened. Not only are British hospitals not overwhelmed, they have some 37,500 empty beds, four times more than is normal for this time of year. The lockdown was imposed to prevent the British National Health Service being overwhelmed. This will not happen, thank God, but the lockdown continues indefinitely, at least until Boris is well enough to make a decision.

The temporary corona hospitals built near New York were largely empty a week ago. The federal medical facilities at the Javits Center and the USNS Comfort were filled with empty hospital beds and operating at about one-tenth capacity on Tuesday. 

Private hospitals in Pennsylvania lost money by saving beds for Corona virus patients who did not come, I am pleased to say. The hospitalisation rate in New York was overestimated by a factor of seven. A Covid-19 field hospital set up near Seattle in the USA was closed after three days without admitting any patients. The hospitals famously built at very short notice near Wuhan were mostly under-utilised or even empty and then dismantled after a short time. 

Many intensive care beds in Germany and Switzerland are empty.

A big field hospital that was set up near Stockholm remains closed due to lack of demand. The number of patients in intensive care units remains low so far in Sweden which does not have a lockdown. There have been 1400 deaths with Covid-19 in Sweden, 139 per million, but the numbers are rising. There were 67 deaths yesterday, the highest single-day death toll in Sweden so far.

Enjoying the lockdown

I must say I am being completely irresponsible and heartless and loving this lockdown. But the economic consequences of the lockdown do not bear thinking about and so I do not think about them.

"We have learnt no end of a lesson.
It will do us no end of good."

Will this be true of the lockdown? It may do us no end of harm.

An article in the Daily Telegraph today headlined

Am I the only one who is secretly dreading the end of lockdown?

lists a lot of good things about the lockdown, including no journey to work, delicious food, time to read, conference calls in pyjamas, a valid excuse for avoiding people.

Why does Eastern Europe have the virus under control?

Mass migration and globalisation made the virus crisis happen. 

East European emigrants returned home for lack of work abroad and brought back the virus to their motherlands. Contrast the speed with which the Coronavirus spread with the Bubonic Plague (an immeasurably worse disease, of course) that took seven months to cross Europe. Yet, despite the infected returning natives, Eastern Europe is doing much better than Western Europe.

Deaths from the virus per million. Romania 21. Moldova 16 (but are Moldovan statistics reliable?) Hungary 16. Bulgaria 6. Czechia 16. Slovakia 1. Poland 8. Bosnia 14. Albania 9.

Romania compares badly with her neighbours, but look westwards. Belgium 445. Spain 413. Italy 367. France 275. UK 202. USA 105. 

Chinese figures are of course worthless.

Eastern European countries to some extent have infections under control, even though many or most of these countries have inadequate hospitals and their medical staff complained about insufficient equipment. Why?

Many introduced lockdowns before richer countries, partly because they knew how inadequate their health systems were. Also in post-Communist societies people accept orders and have what Douglas Murray, quoting Unamuno, calls the tragic sense of life. 

The Czech Republic closed her schools and borders on March 12, Slovakia introduced a state of emergency on the same day. Poland closed her borders, restaurants and shopping centres on March 13. 

The Romanian President was notably slower but closed hotels and bars on the 17th and by March 24 imposed a full lockdown, the day after Boris Johnson did the same in the UK.

Not long ago the explanation seemed to be simply that Eastern Europe is two weeks behind Western Europe. I hope this is not the case and no longer think it is. I think the obvious explanation is that there is much less traffic and commerce between Eastern European countries and the rest of the world than between Western Europe and other continents. 

Lack of globalisation may have saved the Eastern Europe from the virus, as it so far has from other evils too.

Another explanation is that in Romania (and elsewhere in Eastern Europe) they don't test as much as in the West. Many of the dead had the virus and other things and were recorded as having died of those other illnesses. But the way to control for this factor is to look at the one reliable statistic: the crude weekly number of deaths from all causes.

Quotations

"The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right." 

Edmund Burke

"To the man-in-the-street who, I'm sorry to say,

Is a keen observer of life,

The word intellectual suggests right away

A man who's untrue to his wife."
W.H. Auden

"Not heav'n itself upon the past has pow'r."

 Dryden translating Horace applies to Brexit.





"Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife,
He would have written sonnets all his life?"
Lord Byron, Don Juan




"Christians have killed each other quite persuaded

That all the apostles would have done as they did."
Ibid.


"A sleepy Venus seemed Dudu, 

Yet very fit to "murder sleep" in those, 

Who gazed upon her cheek's transcendent hue, 

Her Attic forehead, and her Phidian nose : 

Few angles were there in her form, 'tis true, 

Thinner she might have been, and yet scarce lose :

Thinner she might have been, and yet scarce lose 

Yet, after all, 't would puzzle to say where 

lt would not_spoil some separate charm to pare."

Ibid.

I remember a Spectator cartoon in which an ineffably languorous young man says to a languid beauty: 

I jumped from the working class to the upper class without landing in between.

To which languid beauty replies languidly: Then why are you wearing a diver's watch?

The battle at the heart of British science over coronavirus

Many British experts think the lockdown as it has been imposed in the United Kingdom was a mistake, as this free article in the Financial Times explains.

Please tell me what you think of this

"Every child knows a nation which ceased to work, I will not say for a year, but even for a few weeks, would perish."

 (Marx to Kugelmann in Hanover Marx-Engels Correspondence London, July 11, 1868)

British death rates normal until beginning of April

I have seen the future and it works

A very informative video by a British vlogger about how China dealt with the Coronavirus and how remarkably closely the Communist government follows what its subjects are doing. 


After a three week stay in Russia in 1919 Lincoln Steffens, an American investigative reporter, said: "I have seen the future, and it works".

Quotations for Wednesday

"Facebook and Twitter are like a horrible digital plague.

Steven Berkoff

“Those abused girls in Rotherham and elsewhere just need to shut their mouths. For the good of diversity".

A tweet from a parody account retweeted and later deleted by Naz Shah, a Muslim woman who has just been named Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion by the new British Labour Leader, Sir Keir Starmer.

"I make a wonderful cure-all called Four Thieves, just like my mum did. It's cider vinegar, 36 cloves of garlic and four herbs, representing four looters of plague victims' homes in 1665 who had their sentences reduced from burning at the stake to hanging for explaining the recipe that kept them from catching the plague."

Paul O'Grady, formerly the drag artist known as Lily Savage, who says he “definitely” had coronavirus but “just got on with it”, without getting tested.

"The chapter on the Fall of the Rupee you may omit. It is somewhat too sensational. Even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side."

Miss Prism in "The Importance of Being Earnest" is very topical these days.

"Well yes, I have been saved... but in my case it was such a close-run thing that I thought I had better keep quiet about it." 

Sir Alec Douglas-Home - how sweet that man was. Definitely the nicest British Prime Minister since at least Baldwin and before that probably Melbourne.

'Risk of death from COVID-19 for people under 65 is equivalent to risk of dying in a car crash'

Professor John Ioannidis, the professor of medicine, epidemiology, and population health at Stanford University and one of the leading men in the field. He says he is "perfectly happy" to be under virtual lockdown in California and recognises that a large number of elderly people may die from COVID-19 but thinks the death rates will be much much lower than people fear. He concludes in a new study that the risk of death from COVID-19 for people under 65 years, even in the places with the highest death-rates, is equivalent to the risk of a fatal car accident for people driving each day between 9 and 400 miles.

Why did a lot of people die in Italy, which led to the first lockdown in Europe?

In a video Professor Ioannidis explains that one reason is that Italy has the oldest population in Europe. The average age of death from COVID-19 in Italy is 81.

"Also, most of these people have lots of other underlying diseases. Italy is a country with a very strong history of smoking.
"It has very high rates, therefore, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It has very high rates of coronary heart disease. And these are very strong risk factors for having a bad outcome in this infection."
"It still remains to be decided how many of these infections are deaths with SARS-CoV-2 versus deaths by SARS-CoV-2."

Everyone wanted to do their best to contain the outbreak

"So, they said 'we need to admit these people to the hospital even if they had modest or not so severe symptoms'. This resulted in a very bad decision-making. And I think that this is something that every other setting that is hit by an epidemic wave needs to avoid.
"By admitting these mild or moderate cases very quickly, they became saturated. And when they started getting the severe cases, they just had no room for them."

Professor Ioannidis said about 60 million people die per year on Earth but COVID-19 may be the only disease that has a website metre counting every single fatality.