REALITY CHECK REVIEWLATE40s:ISTHIS
THEMOSTMISERABLE
TIMEOFOURLIVES?
A recentstudyfoundthathappinessreachesa lowat
47.2yearsold.Doestheclaimstanduptoscrutiny?byROBBANINO
Robis a freelancescienceandtechnologywriter,basedinBristol.DISCOVERMORE
a
WHOadviceforprotectingyourselfandothers
bit.ly/WHO_health_tipsANALYSIS
What’s the unhappiest age? According to a recent study, it’s
our late 40s. Our happiness, it seems, tends to decrease
towards this midlife nadir, before steadily increasing
through our 50s and 60s. In the study, Dr David Blanchflower,
professor of economics at Dartmouth College in New
Hampshire, US, compared 109 data files of happiness
statistics from around the world, plotting the relationships
between wellbeing and age for hundreds of thousands of
people. He found the ‘happiness curve’ in data from 132
countries, controlling for factors that affect wellbeing, such
as education, marital status and employment status. For2 suggests a lot of uncertainty. But the mathematical
models that produced the estimate are deemed to be
reliable – they’re the same ones used to anticipate and
prepare for the annual outbreaks of influenza. “The
margins are so wide because it’s so difficult to predict
how much a virus will spread in a population,
especially a respiratory-based virus,” says Fielder. “If
the people in Wuhan adhere to the lack of gathering ...
they’re not going out and being in groups where
somebody could easily cough, sneeze or do something
else that spreads the virus inadvertently. Assuming
those parameters are adhered to, contact will be less. If
contact is less, then the chances of the virus spreading
are decreased.
“But there has to be a reasonable margin of error
because people may move around despite the fact
they’ve been told not to. That’s the problem with
dealing with humans, it’s difficult to guarantee that
they’ll do what they’re asked.”
That ‘human element’ is partly why the lockdown in
Wuhan and surrounding cities was deemed necessary.
By introducing quarantine conditions, the authorities
can limit the number of people 2019-nCoV is exposed
to, which limits its ability to mutate into something
more virulent and/or transmissible.WILL IT REACH THE UK?
Matt Hancock, the Secretary of State for Health and
Social Care, told Parliament in late January that it’s
increasingly likely 2019-nCoV will turn up in the UK.
The good news for anyone showing such symptoms,
according to Dr Adam Kucharski, an associate
professor in infectious disease at the London School of
Hygiene, is that a diagnostic test for 2019-nCoV has
already been developed. “One of the things that’s been
remarkable in this outbreak is the speed at which the
information required to develop a test has been made
available. Very quickly we were seeing genetic
information on this virus being shared and a lot of
tools can be developed off the back of that.”
It seems then that as things stand, unless you’ve had
contact with someone who has a respiratory disease
who’s come from Wuhan or China, your chances of
contracting the virus are low and if you do, then
doctors will be able to help.