Here is a strange thought about Coronavirus (Covid-19). If the disease had broken out 200 years ago – 1820 rather than 2020 – no one would have noticed it. It would have had no effect on the world economy. Our enormously improved medical science and public health since then have caused it to dominate headlines around the world now and cripple markets everywhere.
Coronavirus seems to cause a bad variation of the flu. The symptoms are a dry cough, headaches and a fever. Most people recover completely. The death rate seems about 1% – probably lower if you consider the cases that have not yet been identified. Most of the casualties have been elderly, aged 70 or more.
In 1820, when life expectancy was less than 30, when far deadlier diseases were decimating the population and when viruses had not been discovered, the tiny losses from Coronavirus would have been swamped by the massive losses from other diseases. Coronavirus would neither have been identified nor noticed.
Since few people lived to 70, their deaths from it would have been few. There would have been no quarantines, no restrictions on travel or meetings, and no effect on the 19th Century economy, which featured the greatest economic advance of the last five thousand years, the Industrial Revolution.
Staggering advance
In 1900, world life expectancy was about 30. In 2000, it was 60. It is now 73. The primary reason for this staggering advance was clean water, good sanitation, warm, dry houses and healthy food. The secondary reason was medical science, especially against infectious diseases, using antibiotics and vaccines.
Antibiotics do not work against viruses but are effective against bacteria, notably the one that causes TB (tuberculosis) – “consumption” in the old days. Until deep into the 20th Century, diagnosis of TB was a death sentence. George Orwell died of TB in 1950, aged 46.
Now we have a range of antibiotics effective against the killer germs of the past – although resistant strains of TB are a problem. Medical tests can identify accurately various pathogens, included Covid-19, the virus that causes the Corona illness. And we have the organisation and the means to act against its spread by quarantines, travel bans, prohibition of gatherings, and in the case of Italy an effective national state of emergency. How do we justify these?
Suppose we treated Covid-19 in the same way as we treat the common cold or the flu. Let the sufferers spend a week or so in bed, and treat them for fevers. Nothing else. No quarantines, no bans on travel or meetings or trade or businesses or schools. In that case I suppose some tens of thousands of people, mainly old, would die worldwide every year until it fizzled out.
Deaths from other diseases
This compares with 17 million annual deaths from heart disease; 6.5 million from other respiratory disease; 1.4 million from diabetes; and 1.2 million from road accidents. Surely money could save more lives if it were spent on reducing these far worse causes of death than on Covid-19?
The measures we are using against it are crippling the world economy, crashing stock markets and causing shares to plunge in value. (Although it is argued that markets were headed for a fall anyway because of too much cheap debt and company over-valuation.)
When markets fall, poverty increases – and poverty kills.
By the argument of utilitarian ethics (the most good for the highest number), it seems that the best measure against Coronavirus would be to do nothing. But there are obvious objections to utilitarian ethics. The usual one is the case of three young men about to die unless they get organ transplants. The first needs a heart, the second a liver, and the third a kidney. Into their ward walks a healthy young man of the right blood group. Utilitarian ethics says you should kill him and use his organs to save the lives of the others. One man dies so that three may live. But we feel this is not right. Here utilitarian action seems wrong.
A strange affair
For Coronavirus, utilitarian inaction seems wrong. We feel we must do something about it, even if this causes net damage. So we act and our actions seem sensible. In general, there has been minimum hysteria. The media have made headlines out of the disease but have not declared that we are all doomed – as they do over climate change, and as they did over Y2K. There have been no mad conspiracies as there were over HIV/AIDS. There is a mood of calm and good sense, and we are told to worry but not panic, which seems good advice.
It is altogether a strange affair. I think the best measure would be to do nothing, but that is politically impossible. So we have acted, and these actions have damaged the world economy, but have been taken in a rational manner. I must admit I find it all a moral and technical puzzle.
Sources: Figures for deaths worldwide from various diseases are drawn from Global Burden of Disease Collaborative Network, Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 (GBD 2017) Results, Seattle, United States: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), 2018; and life expectancy in 2019 from the United Nations Population Division.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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