Viral spiral
You can reduce your chances of being infected by the new coronavirus, but you’ll need more than good luck to escape its economic impact.
You can reduce your chances of being infected by the new coronavirus, but you’ll need more than good luck to escape its economic impact.
When Tony Scott of Orewa heard New Zealand’s first case of the Covid-19 coronavirus disease had been confirmed, he says his mind raced through the possible scenarios of quarantines and shops with bare shelves and he decided that he and his wife needed to stock up on essentials.
He says she sprang into action and started looking through the pantry. “No,” I said, “not food! We must buy a new big-screen smart TV and computer, upgrade the broadband and sign up to Sky Sport.”
In the face of the latest health scare, Scott has retained his sense of humour – and his marriage – but all over the country, many others are taking it much more seriously.
At Thorndon Pharmacy in central Wellington, a stone’s throw from the Ministry of Health, pharmacist Arthur Chan could do a vigorous trade in face masks and hand sanitiser – if only he could get the stock.
“We’re supplied sporadically,” he says, “and as soon as they come in, they sell.”
He has heard of profiteering occurring, but his pharmacy is selling the items at regular prices.
He is aware, as his customers surely would be too, that evidence for the efficacy of face masks is at best weak. However, some of his customers want supplies because they intend to travel overseas, and Chan thinks they could be beneficial in preventing the spread of droplets from a person who may already be infected with Sars-CoV-2, the new strain of coronavirus that has sparked a frenzy of concern around the world.
Current advice is that washing your hands thoroughly with soap and warm water is as good as hand sanitiser. Nevertheless, at Thorndon Pharmacy as at many pharmacies, both masks and hand sanitiser are highly sought after. The swoop on Auckland supermarkets after New Zealand’s first case of Covid-19 was confirmed in the city also saw toilet paper, tissues, bottled water and non-perishable foods bought in bulk, suggesting some shoppers are anticipating long periods of isolation – voluntary or otherwise.
“If they were home, they could just order online,” notes Chan.
“Essentially, we’ve been priming ourselves to get the screaming willies over something like Covid-19.”
THE NEED TO “DO SOMETHING”
But the need to actively “do something” in the face of fear is no surprise to Victoria University head of psychology and Listener columnist Professor Marc Wilson.
Some people, Wilson says, will react to a threat like Covid-19 by downplaying the risk. “Another way is to reduce that fear by doing something in order to gain a feeling of control. That might be buying up all the toilet paper in Hawai‘i or rocking up to church for the first time in ages. When wars break out, more people go to church, because praying makes some of us feel like we’re interceding.”
In any year, 10-20% of New Zealand’s population contract influenza and, on average, 500 people die from it, yet it attracts little media attention. By contrast, one person has Covid-19 in New Zealand and there have been no fatalities here, yet the coverage of the illness’ global progression has been inescapable.
Partly, that is because of frequent warnings that one day a virus will start the kind of pandemic that could cut a swathe through the world’s population. Nobel prize-winner Joshua Lederberg once warned that “the survival of humanity is not preordained”. The single biggest threat to our continued dominance of the planet, said Lederberg,
“Drought and coronavirus are going to deal the New Zealand economy a sharp blow over the first half of 2020.”
an authority on emerging diseases, “is the virus”.
With increasing numbers of elderly in the world’s population, medical experts warn that pandemics may become more lethal. Although overseas experience shows that Covid-19 has a higher mortality rate than the flu, the reaction – including panic-buying in supermarkets, a sell-off in financial markets, banning travellers coming from some areas and people “self-isolating” when there is no official advice for them to do so – is disproportionate to the current risk.
But the nature of the virus could change, and anyway, risk is not something that people are good at assessing, Wilson says. “Anything that is a novel threat, like Covid19 … is more potent.”
Once a case of the coronavirus disease was confirmed in New Zealand, the risk of community transmission became possible. “This means anyone could have it, and that in itself is psychologically disturbing,” Wilson says.
“We’re pretty hopeless at working out the risks of bad things happening to us. It has been pointed out that the mortality rate of the ‘common’ flu is about one in 100, and it is possible that Covid-19 isn’t much higher, but how much higher is ‘not much higher’?
“The risk is that people get laid off, those companies can’t pay their bills and the whole thing feeds on itself.”