MARCH 14 2020 LISTENER 19
“Additionally, research on risk perception
shows that people who are ill or have expe-
rienced long-term health issues are more
likely to worry and perceive risks as higher.
And they’re not necessarily wrong.”
He also thinks that for some time, some
people have been preparing themselves for
the types of post-apocalyptic scenarios that
have become common themes in popular
fiction and films.
“We’re living at a time where it’s not just
the news media that’s giving us what we
want to know about, but that is happening
in the broader context of an awful lot of
hyper-realistic end-times, post-apocalypticfiction, such as The Handmaid’s Tale, The
Left overs, The Walking Dead and spin-offs
that are among the most watched things on
TV over the past 10 years. Those are along-
side films or series based on real events, such
as Chernobyl and, most pertinently, 2019’s
The Hot Zone. Essentially, we’ve been prim-
ing ourselves to get the screaming willies
over something like Covid-19 – and here
it is.”PLUMMETING MARKETS
Separating fact from fiction and balancing
risk and fear may be too late to save the local
and global economy from a downturn that
we have scared ourselves into creating.
Around the world, markets, companiesand economic fore-
casts are reeling. The
OECD has halved global growth forecasts
to a meagre 1.5% and warned that some
countries, including Japan and some in the
Eurozone, could tip into recession. Emer-
gency rate cuts by central banks, including
the Federal Reserve in the US and the
Reserve Bank of Australia, have not calmed
fears about the potential severity of the pre-
dicted downturn.
Economists in New Zealand expect the
Reserve Bank here to also cut rates, though
with the official cash rate already at only
1%, the bank will have little room to make
further adjustments if any downturn is
prolonged.
All markets are down, with companies
particularly exposed to the virus, including
airlines, being hard hit. Wall Street last week
saw its biggest fall since the 2008 financial
crisis – though, like the New Zealand stock
market, it had been trading at record highs
immediately before the slump.
The G7 Group has called for global co-
operation, and there are appeals for China
and the US to end their trade war. While
urging caution with its figures, Statistics
New Zealand says the cumulative total value
of our exports to China alone in the past
four weeks are worth about $93 million less
than for the same period in 2019.
As the downturn is reflected in share
prices, New Zealanders are watching their
KiwiSaver and other retirement and invest-
ment accounts fall – which may be the
first time that this has happened for some
younger savers. It is particularly worrying
for those hoping to use their KiwiSaver bal-
ances for a house deposit and those close to
retirement who were intending to cash out
of their schemes.GE
TT
Y
IM
AG
ESthat wearing a mask will not necessarily
stop the virus from spreading. Use hand
sanitiser regularly if you’re touching
shared features such as handles, poles,
rails and buttons. Avoid crowded areas,
especially during rush hour, and try
not to use lifts. Where possible, have
food, groceries and other items deliv-
ered. Keep regular eating and sleeping
routines, and call family and friends
or helplines if your mental health is
affected by isolation.
Finally, it’s more important to get a
flu shot this year, even though it won’t
protect against the coronavirus. But if
you do get the flu during a coronavirus
outbreak, it’s likely to make you worry
more and it’s likely to put more stress
on an overloaded health system. As US
news website Axios says, “If you’re freak-
ing out about coronavirus but you didn’t
get a flu shot, you’ve got it backwards.”
New Zealanders are
watching their KiwiSaver
and other retirement and
investment accounts fall.A man wearing a
face mask walks
past a temperature
-screening check
at Singapore’s
Changi International
Airport.Virologist Idan Ben-Barak, author of
Why Aren’t We Dead Yet?, describes
the human immune system as “a
ninja cleaning service”, operating
quietly within our bodies. “Even
if you can’t tell the difference
between antigen and antibody or
say what cytokines are for, bits of
you are extremely good at telling
which is which, good at remember-
ing what happened before and
good at knowing what to do when.
“If you weren’t, at some level, very
good indeed at immunology, you’d
be dead.” The immune system likes
to be fuelled well, he once told the
Listener, and lots of research has
shown how exercise, good sleep,
and a diet high in fibre and low
in fat have “a dramatic protective
effect on virtually all immune condi-
tions, particularly autoimmune and
inflammatory disorders”.
The immune system has had
“about 700 million years to get its
game up”, so it’s used to dealing
with infected cells. But we’re still
baffled sometimes, Ben-Barak says,
by the way it does it – including the
placebo effect, whereby people
feel better when they believe
they’re receiving treatment, even
sometimes when they know it’s a
placebo.Your inner ninja