There is a case to be made for draconian measures to reduce the overall number of infections and thus deaths, but putting the entire economy into abeyance and immuring the population rather than focusing on the vulnerable may cause more harm than good
By Conrad Black, NATIONAL POST
The Canadian government’s management of the coronavirus crisis, if judged by what it does and its leaders say, is completely inadequate. Their relief bill is probably not sufficient in quantum or in efficiency for those unemployed or under-employed as a result of the public health crisis, and the relief for small businesses is also probably insufficiently liquid and too bureaucratic. The closing of the U.S. border is nonsensical. And if the U.S. Army is moved to deploy significant numbers of its personnel to the border, as was briefly suggested earlier this week, it will be a demoralizing, as well as an absurd, event. The last time we had armed uniformed people on that border was when George-Etienne Cartier, as Canada’s first minister of defence and militia, placed the formidable force of 50,000 along the Quebec and New Brunswick borders with the U.S., and near the Thousand Islands and at Niagara Falls and around Windsor, in 1870, to deter the Fenians. These were Irish-American malcontents who wished to repay the British Crown for the Irish famine of the 1850s by seizing Canada. At least there was a legitimate reason for having armed force at the border; there has been none since for 150 years.
Even more regrettable was the brief effort of the federal government to have a stump Parliament, reduced almost 80 per cent in numbers, approve the allocation of unlimited powers for the government to tax, borrow and spend in any way and amount the cabinet might choose with no recourse to parliament until the end of 2021. This was apparently more an act of panic than of usurpation, but was no less an outrage for that. When Winston Churchill was invested with practically absolute powers by King George VI on May 10, 1940, as prime minister of a government of national unity comprising all substantial parties and supported by almost everyone in the country, he was facing world war, which was now almost at the English Chanel and overhead and in the sea lanes. Britain was in a declared state of unlimited emergency, and all legislative authority was delegated to the war cabinet by both houses of parliament except the power to tax. For the regime in Ottawa to ask for even greater and more arbitrary authority to deal with a nasty virus shows both mediocrity of knowledge and judgment in the senior civil service and a painful and disquieting lack of any constitutional perspective or sense of proportion by the prime minister and the minister of finance (who on his record deserves less and not more liberty with the fiscus).
The fact that the proposed measure was hastily withdrawn after opposition objections, especially by Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, doesn’t offer much consolation. The hero of parliament was Conservative MP Scott Reid, who crashed the session and tweeted purposefully. (His confusion of Henry VIII with Charles I was more than compensated for by his stirring invocation of William F. Buckley “standing athwart history and shouting ‘Stop.’ ”) When a friend telephoned to tell me of this astounding initiative I took the unusual step of watching the CBC to see how the public broadcaster played it. My stupefaction was considerable when this illegal and autocratic proposal was not referred to at all. Whatever its shortcomings, the CBC can usually be relied upon to take any Canadian government to task for completely preposterous acts. The apparent silence could not possibly have been censorship (although if totalitarian fiscal powers had been let through, censorship of the media would be the logical sequel); nor could it have been exaggerated deference to authority. It had to be simple indifference, the opinion of the national broadcaster’s senior news editors that this scandalous development was unworthy of comment.
I wrote above that the government’s management of the coronavirus appears incompetent, and it does, except for the fact that the crisis shows no signs of remotely approaching a scale that justifies the emergency measures that have been taken. At time of writing, in a country of 38 million, we have 37 deaths from about 3,800 identified cases. The public health system is sufficiently sophisticated that if there were significantly more fatalities from this cause, they would have been identified, even if our testing capacity is inadequate to be confident that there is not a larger number of infected people. Of advanced countries with reliable statistics, only Germany has a lower percentage of fatalities among reported cases, about half of one per cent, and the United Sates, which in medical terms is demographically similar to Canada and leads the world in testing, about half a million people by late Thursday, comes third, with 1.4 per cent of cases resulting in fatalities.
If Germany, Canada and the United States are the leaders in limiting mortal coronavirus cases, the Netherlands and the United States are the hero-nations of public policy. The Dutch have refused to be spooked and have not seriously tried to reduce travel or rights of assembly, or attendance at schools and workplaces, though they are trying to protect the elderly and unwell. Yet their fatality percentages are almost exactly the same as France’s, which is on shut-down imposed by the armed forces. The Dutch are reporting only one per cent more fatalities over confirmed cases than the U.K., and two per cent less than Spain and 4.5 per cent below Italy. The Imperial College of Medicine (London) projections that were so widely circulated a few weeks ago, of 500,000 deaths in Great Britain and 2.2 million in the U.S., have been revised downwards by over 95 per cent, in line with the changing public health responses in those countries. Even that reduced level of expected fatalities is surely an exaggeration. There is a case to be made for draconian measures to reduce the overall number of infections and thus deaths, but putting the entire economy into abeyance and immuring the population rather than focusing on the vulnerable may cause more harm than good. America’s status as a hero pandemical nation rests on the administration’s brilliant relief package, which will actually make this crisis a profitable experience for most of those economically affected by it (in an election year), and for pushing for an end to the current social distancing measures, at least in parts of the country, by Easter, April 12. By then the U.S. will have tested over two million people, and all advanced countries should soon have sample indications of the percentage of people who have had the coronavirus without reporting, or possibly even knowing it.
If this pandemic was anything like as dire a threat as it has been claimed to be, the Canadian government’s handling of it would have been an unimaginable fiasco. Rather more than 25,000 people have died from it in the world and that is a great tragedy, but China, the country of origin, despite grossly bungling the first two months of the illness, and not believable in its officials accounts of events, appears to be largely through it. The world succumbed to a pandemic of hysteria, more than a virus, and it is time to follow the American, if not the Dutch, lead, starting with bringing back the elementary schools. Information from every study thus far shows that children seem largely immune to the virus, so the danger to them is minimal. And although children can be carriers, strict social distancing measures in the classroom, such as those in place in Taiwan, can allow classes to resume relatively unhindered.
Since New York City, as it is in many things, is now the coronavirus epicentre, a metaphor from the 1960s television sitcom “Car 54, Where Are You” comes to mind. Two rather awkward policemen were the principals and in one episode, they accidentally misreported something, and by the time they corrected this with their staff sergeant, the report had shot upwards in the city government, and the two unwitting originators listened with astonishment on the regular radio of Car 54 as the chief of police, and then the mayor, the governor of New York and the president of the U.S. came on the air to reassure the nation. There were skilful simulations of the well-known voices of the last three office-holders (John Lindsay, Nelson Rockefeller, and Lyndon Johnson). One policeman said to the other resignedly: “What are we doing? Is everyone crazy?” The coronavirus isn’t a laughing matter, but when the Canadian government tries to abolish the rights of parliament and U.S. armed forces are nearly dispatched to the Canada-U.S. border, and most of the work forces of the world’s principal countries are hiding in their homes, those questions are reasonable; and someone in Ottawa should try to answer them.
National Post
@ Reader:
Actually Como was caught overestimating his Ventilator needs. Trump challenged him and Como had to admit Trump was correct.
@ Bear Klein:
Italy, Iran, Wuhan and the US had different types of this coronavirus.
@ LIZ WATSON:
If his observations are correct, this is not a joke.
@ Michael S:
“This virus seems to focus on areas with large Jewish populations”
If this is true, now I am worried.
I don’t believe in coincidences.
@ Bear Klein:
“Need a total of 40,000 ICU beds. Currently have 3,000”
Certainly, if they take everyone who is standing in line for hours to emergency rooms and having them hospitalized as “emergency cases”.
@ adamdalgliesh:
“evidence fiasco”
I would use a different F-word – like “FRAUD”.
@ Bear Klein:I think that Michael is trying to be humorous.
@ Michael S:
Like Wuhan and its large Jewish population or Italy, or Iran and their large Jewish populations?
I don’t have to worry much about getting infected: This virus seems to focus on areas with large Jewish populations:
New York 52,318 728
New Jersey 8,825 108
Massachusetts 4,257 44
California 3,801 78
Washington 3,723 175
Michigan 3,657 92
Florida 3,600 53
Illinois 3,491 47
I also note that nearly all major outbreaks in the US are in Democrat counties that voted against President Trump.
I’m not a Democrat, so I don’t suppose I should be worried.
Statistics say the darndest things!
The amount dying per day in USA from COVID-19 is still increasing every day so we have not yet hit the Apex of the pandemic in the USA.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Perhaps Conrad Black’s most incisive article to date. Spot on.
“A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05% is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.
Could the Covid-19 case fatality rate be that low? No, some say, pointing to the high rate in elderly people. However, even some so-called mild or common-cold-type coronaviruses that have been known for decades can have case fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect elderly people in nursing homes. In fact, such “mild” coronaviruses infect tens of millions of people every year, and account for 3% to 11% of those hospitalized in the U.S. with lower respiratory infections each winter.
These “mild” coronaviruses may be implicated in several thousands of deaths every year worldwide, though the vast majority of them are not documented with precise testing. Instead, they are lost as noise among 60 million deaths from various causes every year.
Although successful surveillance systems have long existed for influenza, the disease is confirmed by a laboratory in a tiny minority of cases. In the U.S., for example, so far this season 1,073,976 specimens have been tested and 222,552 (20.7%) have tested positive for influenza. In the same period, the estimated number of influenza-like illnesses is between 36,000,000 and 51,000,000, with an estimated 22,000 to 55,000 flu deaths.
Note the uncertainty about influenza-like illness deaths: a 2.5-fold range, corresponding to tens of thousands of deaths. Every year, some of these deaths are due to influenza and some to other viruses, like common-cold coronaviruses.
In an autopsy series that tested for respiratory viruses in specimens from 57 elderly persons who died during the 2016 to 2017 influenza season, influenza viruses were detected in 18% of the specimens, while any kind of respiratory virus was found in 47%. In some people who die from viral respiratory pathogens, more than one virus is found upon autopsy and bacteria are often superimposed. A positive test for coronavirus does not mean necessarily that this virus is always primarily responsible for a patient’s demise.
If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths. This sounds like a huge number, but it is buried within the noise of the estimate of deaths from “influenza-like illness.” If we had not known about a new virus out there, and had not checked individuals with PCR tests, the number of total deaths due to “influenza-like illness” would not seem unusual this year. At most, we might have casually noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average. The media coverage would have been less than for an NBA game between the two most indifferent teams.” Another selection from Dr. Ionnides’ article.
My summary of what Dr. Ionnides is saying: we have no rational basis for assuming that the “novel coronavirus” has caused a significant rise in the number of deaths since December. Since no epidemiolical study has been conducted to see if there has been any increase in deaths or not. We don’t know that the people who “tested positive” for coronavirus got sick from it or from some other cause. We don’t know how many people have this virus in their systems without knowing it, because they didn’t get sick. We don’t know whether it causes more deaths than other viruses that can cause influenza, pneumonia or the common cold.
On the other hand, the impact on people’s health of the measures adopted to “cure” the epidemic are obvious. The resulting worldwide depression may cause millions of deaths.
“A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
By JOHN P.A. IOANNIDIS MARCH 17, 2020
The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.
At a time when everyone needs better information, from disease modelers and governments to people quarantined or just social distancing, we lack reliable evidence on how many people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 or who continue to become infected. Better information is needed to guide decisions and actions of monumental significance and to monitor their impact.
Draconian countermeasures have been adopted in many countries. If the pandemic dissipates — either on its own or because of these measures — short-term extreme social distancing and lockdowns may be bearable. How long, though, should measures like these be continued if the pandemic churns across the globe unabated? How can policymakers tell if they are doing more good than harm?
Vaccines or affordable treatments take many months (or even years) to develop and test properly. Given such timelines, the consequences of long-term lockdowns are entirely unknown.
The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date, some deaths and probably the vast majority of infections due to SARS-CoV-2 are being missed. We don’t know if we are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300. Three months after the outbreak emerged, most countries, including the U.S., lack the ability to test a large number of people and no countries have reliable data on the prevalence of the virus in a representative random sample of the general population.
This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19. Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4% rate from the World Health Organization, cause horror — and are meaningless. Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes. As most health systems have limited testing capacity, selection bias may even worsen in the near future”.” From the stats.com website.
“John P.A. Ioannidis is professor of medicine and professor of epidemiology and population health, as well as professor by courtesy of biomedical data science at Stanford University School of Medicine, professor by courtesy of statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, and co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS) at Stanford University.”