Alison Mau: No cause to panic in New Zealand

It’s important not to panic about coronavirus. Panic never, ever, ends well. But if you’re one of those who believes the world is heading for disaster before even climate change can finish us off, this has been your week.

Preppers, they’re called. People who believe something is coming to wipe us all out (or at least severely curtail the lifestyles and societies we’re accustomed to) and who make sure they’ll be the ones to come through it, by going bush, building arsenals and stockpiling food.

I’m not a prepper. I am considering popping out to buy a stock of surgical masks, if I can find them, although without a single confirmed case of coronavirus in New Zealand at the time of writing even that feels like a bit of an overreaction. And we don’t do overreaction here in New Zealand.

And yet, and yet... consider the timeline. The first ‘‘flu-like’’ cases in Wuhan, China, were reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on New Year’s Eve, just a month ago. Eight days later the first suspected case was reported in another country, Thailand. By January 17 there had been two deaths. Now, two weeks later, at least 250 have died.

Outside the infection zone, governments have had to scramble to keep up. Initially there were no plans to evacuate New Zealanders from Wuhan city. It took until just Thursday to overturn that decision and get a charter flight prepped and ready to carry more than 50 Kiwis to quarantine, potentially on Christmas Island. Scenes of volunteer Air New Zealand staff in visors and HazMat suits were slightly surreal.

The way we attempt to contextualise threats that are brand new, is to compare them with the closest thing we do know something about. In this context, that is Sars, the virus that caused 800 deaths worldwide in 2003. Late this week coronavirus cases surpassed Sars in number, and is moving much, much faster; one month to get to the 8000 cases mark versus three for Sars.

We now know that, like Sars, coronavirus can spread person to person, but there’s still so much we don’t know – whether the two are comparably infectious, or how often coronavirus will cause just mild symptoms in a patient rather than developing into serious respiratory illness.

Again, important not to panic, and that was the central message of the major announcement on Friday from the WHO. Coronavirus is now a global health emergency, but rich nations with good health care systems ought to be taking that as their cue to help those less medically advanced.

In this region, those countries are not willing to hang about and wait and are already moving to help themselves. Samoa – just a month out from a devastating measles epidemic which killed 83 – has halted direct flights from China, and anyone at all who travels there must get a medical clearance at least three days ahead of their arrival. Papua New Guinea has banned flights from all Asian ports.

Yes, it’s too early to tell whether this virus will be contained, like Sars, and fizzle out after a time. Which leaves us plenty of time to speculate on what this new health threat could mean beyond the purely medical and human toll.

The potential economic impact is explored elsewhere today. Others have been thinking more broadly. Stanford Statistics and Computer Science lecturer Balaji Srinivasan posted a fascinating thread which predicted the virus could give a boost to a raft of trends that already exist, like nationalism and heavier policing, or closure of international borders. This is already happening, with Russia closing its 4300 kilometre border with China on Thursday.

Longer term trends, Srinivasan posted, could see face masks become an everyday reality for billions of us, and make working from home the norm rather than the exception.

It could affect the new business models the developed world has adopted with such enthusiasm – in fact ‘‘anything related to travel and meeting strangers’’ Srinivasan offered. How would Tinder or Uber survive if regular contact with new people was an immediate health danger?

It sounds trivial to be wondering about potential changes to the dating culture when people are getting sick and dying, and perhaps it is. However, these are changes that could take place alongside more worrying trends, like a rise in xenophobia and racism towards inhabitants of countries where the virus has taken root.

Hopefully, we will never reach that point. Already we are ahead of the game when compared to the Sars emergency two decades back. This time, China has not hid the emerging epidemic from the rest of the world, losing valuable response time.

Although we do not know where this is going, we’re more prepared this time. The worst may never happen. As long as we don’t panic.

I am considering popping out to buy a stock of surgical masks... but even that feels like a bit of an overreaction.