Russian roulette, but with more casualties

DEJA vu. In preimmunisation times, some parents held ‘‘pox parties’’ to give children diseases regarded as more dangerous in adults than children, such as chickenpox and mumps, and rubella, which, if contracted by pregnant women, could cause congenital abnormalities or death in their babies.

With immunisation against many childhood diseases, such events should be a mere footnote to history, though they’re apparently still organised by some of the AntiVax fringe. But now there are reports of students in the US organising ‘‘Covid parties’’ to infect each other intentionally with Covid19, each putting money in a pot, which goes to the first participant to contract the disease. A sort of Russian roulette, but with more casualties.

This at a time when 3.11 million confirmed cases of Covid19 have been reported in the US, with 134,000 deaths, and when new cases are rising rapidly in at least 15 states. Perhaps it’s a modern equivalent of the bizarre ‘‘Dance of Death’’ associated, at times, with plague outbreaks in medieval Europe.

Or do the participants believe the casual, dismissive lies about Covid19 of their ‘‘denierinchief’’?

That would be unwise.

There’s the obvious risk of stoking community transmission of the virus, given the likelihood that up to 40% of infected individuals could be asymptomatic. But there’s more.

Initially Covid19 was regarded as an acute disease, dangerous to the elderly and those with chronic diseases, killing a few fit and otherwise diseasefree individuals, especially those, like health workers, exposed to heavy doses of the virus, but generally causing only mild or no symptoms in the young and healthy.

But it’s not necessarily so.

A severe Kawasakilike syndrome has been reported in the very young, and now there are reports from several countries of GuillainBarre Syndrome associated with Covid19: not surprising, considering the intense immune response it can trigger.

Many of those who’ve had Covid19 report ongoing problems with fatigue and shortness of breath long after the acute illness, and in those requiring ventilation there may be lifelong damage — not just to lungs, but to many other organs, including kidneys, heart and brain — and an immune response that makes the blood more viscous and likely to clot, leading to heart attack and stroke.

It’s too early to assess conclusively the longterm effects of Covid19, but the outcome of infection with similar viruses, such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003, is probably relevant. In one study, half the survivors of Sars had much poorer exercise capacity and health status after two years, and only 78% were able to return to fulltime work a year after infection.

Another study showed 40% of those recovering from Sars still had chronic fatigue symptoms three and ahalf years after being diagnosed.

So it’s clear the New Zealand Government was right, for longterm economic, as well as health, reasons, to prioritise health over immediate economic considerations, and adopt its ‘‘go hard, go early’’ approach to Covid19.

Not just because of New Zealand’s inadequate medical resources (at least partly due to underfunding of health by Nationalled Governments for nine years) to deal with the scale of illness seen in some other countries, nor even the number of deaths caused by the virus.

The prospect of 20%40% of those developing symptomatic disease still being disabled years after contracting it, unable to work, and overloading the health and social welfare systems, should give pause to those advocating early opening of New Zealand’s borders.

Helen Clark, Peter Gluckman, and Rob Fyfe recently attracted media attention about reopening borders.

But the more helpful (though largely ignored by the media) May 30 report by the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Adviser Juliet Gerrard and Rachel ChiaroniClarke, based on science and common sense, set out clearly (unlike the rambling ‘‘stream of consciousness’’, assumptions, and unanswered questions of the trio’s document) the prerequisites for doing so, and the careful process needed to avoid disaster.

It shows the PM is right to emphasise ‘‘safety first’’.