24 the spectator | 29 february 2020 | http://www.spectator.co.ukFeverish imaginations
The most dangerous thing about coronavirus is the hysteria
ROSS CLARKI
f you have just cancelled your trip to
Venice and ordered your £19.99 surgi-
cal face mask from Amazon, how about
this for a terrifying vision: by the time
we get to April, 50,000 Britons will have
succumbed to a combination of infectious
disease and adverse weather. Frightened?
If you are, don’t worry: you survived. It
was two years ago. In 2017-18 the Office
for National Statistics recorded 50,100
‘excess winter deaths’. The explanation,
according to the ONS, was probably ‘the
predominant strain of flu, the effectiveness
of the influenza vaccine, and below average
winter temperatures’.
Coronavirus (Covid-19) is a pretty viru-
lent virus all right, but not in the way you
might imagine. It is less our respiratory
tracts it has infected than our inner sense
of angst. By last Monday there were 79,331
confirmed cases worldwide, all but 2,069
of which were in China. There have been
2,595 deaths in China and 23 elsewhere in
the world. And seasonal flu? According to
an estimate by the US-based Center for Dis-
ease Control and Prevention, it has caused
between 291,000 and 646,000 deaths global-
ly a year. To put it another way, if the number
of deaths from coronavirus rises a hundred-
fold in the next few weeks or months, it will
only have reached the lower bound of the
estimate for existing strains of flu.
How many of us wear face masks because
of winter flu? How many planes and trains
are cancelled? Does the stock market
slump? There is some justification for being
more wary of Covid-19 than the flu. The for-
mer is an unknown quantity and we don’t
yet have a vaccine. But we know more about
it by the day. Its death rate is now around
1 per cent or less and it is mostly killing peo-
ple with pre-existing health conditions; any-
one else would be unlucky to die from it.
Coronavirus hysteria occurs because
we confuse precaution with risk. We see
Chinese cities being cut off, people being
quarantined, factories closed, the streets
emptying (save for a few people in face
masks) and we interpret this as a sign of
grave and imminent danger. If China had
not taken such dramatic steps to stop the
disease, we wouldn’t be half as worried.
There seems to be a distinct strain of
Sino phobia in our attitude towards infec-
tious disease. Every novel disease that
comes out of China instantly seems togain the description ‘pandemic’ — even
when diseases such as Sars and H5N1 avian
flu hardly justify being called an ‘epidem-
ic’. Covid-19 seems to fit neatly with our
fears about Huawei spying on our phones
and Chinese manufacturers stealing our
jobs. Diseases from elsewhere don’t excite
the imagination nearly so much. There
was a brief flurry of concern in 2014 when
Ebola, vastly more lethal than Covid-19,
emerged in West Africa (it has since killed
11,310 people globally). But if we are
going to worry about any infectious dis-
ease, it ought to be tuberculosis. The World
Health Organization reports there were
ten million new cases worldwide in 2018,
1.45 million deaths, and 4,672 cases in Eng-
land. But no one ever bought a face mask
because of that. How many people even
know that the epicentre of tuberculosis is
India, with 27 per cent of cases globally?
There is something more to the
Covid-19 panic. It is the latest phenomenon
to fulfil a weird and growing appetite for
doom among the populations of developed
countries. We are living in the healthiest,
most peaceful time in history, yet we can-
not seem to accept it. We constantly have
to invent bogeymen, from climate alarm-
ism, nuclear war and financial collapse to
deadly diseases. Covid-19 has achieved such
traction because it has emerged at just the
right time. At the end of January, Brexit had
just been completed without incident. The
standoff between the US and Iran — which
preposterously led the ‘Doomsday Clock’ to
be advanced closer to midnight than during
the Cuban missile crisis — fizzled into noth-
ing. The Australian bush fires, which caused
an explosion in climate doom-mongering
(even though the global incidence of wild-
fires has fallen over the past two decades)
had largely gone out. What more was there
to worry about?
Then along came a novel strain of
disease and the cycle of panic began again.
But there are already strong signs that it
has peaked. In the seven days before 24
February, the WHO recorded 6,398 new
infections in China — down from 13,002
the previous week. On Monday it was 415.
Very soon we are going to have to find
another thing to agonise about. Asteroids?
The next ‘freak’ weather incident, now the
storms have died down? Who knows, but
we will certainly find something.What a holeA hole built into the wall of a NatWest
bank branch in Ilkeston, Derbyshire,
became an unlikely tourist destination with
five-star reviews on TripAdvisor. Some
other surprising attractions:
— The Bude tunnel is a 230-yard Perspex
tunnel linking a supermarket to its car park
in Bude, Cornwall. It started to gain five-
star reviews when it was decorated with
Christmas lights.
— Streets of bungalows in Kidlington,
Oxfordshire, became a destination for
Chinese tourists, with one telling reporters
that the village brought you ‘closer to the
simplicity of your original self’. A more
likely explanation is that tourists on coach
trips had been dumped there rather than
pay an extra £53 to visit Blenheim Palace.
— The A272 so impressed a Dutch visitor,
Pieter Boogaart, that he published an entire
book about it in 2000.Duty boundThere were calls for the Chancellor to
reform stamp duty in the Budget. How has
the number of property transactions across
the UK changed over the past 15 years, as
stamp duty has been increased?
2006/07 1.7 m
2008/09 793,000
2010/11 877,000
2012/13 928,000
2014/15 1.20m
2016/17 1.15 m
2018/19 1.19 m
Source: HMRCFacts of lifeThe Strategic Review of Health Inequalities
in England blamed ‘austerity’ for a fall in
the rate at which life expectancy is growing.
Some other countries which have seen a
fall in the rate of increase in life expectancy
between 2006-11 and 2011-16:
US 90%
UK 76%
Spain 37%
Germany 36%
Portugal 32%
Sweden 31%
Source: ONSRoyal treatmentThe Duke and Duchess of Sussex agreed
not to use the ‘Sussex Royal’ brand, in spite
of having trademarked it. Outside the UK,
restrictions on using ‘royal’ as a brand name
do not apply. Some products which use it:
— Schwarzkopf Igora Royal hair colour
— Royal Langnickel artist’s brushes
— Royal Canin dog food
— Royal Chai premium instant tea
— Royal Henna powder hair dyeBAROMETERRoss Clark Barometer_29 Feb 2020_The Spectator 24 26/02/2020 11:08