Parker also believes – and given my own “skills” in mathematics I completely agree – that “All humans are stupid when it comes to learning formal mathematics. This is the process of taking what evolution has given us and extending our skills beyond what is reasonable.”
Recently, a writer, Vinod Bharwaj, used the phrase “crisis of math” while discussing the inability of humans to understand exponentials in the context of the Coronavirus. He explains that since the human mind can’t grasp exponentials, “We cannot intuitively perceive how a small number can grow so large in such a small amount of time.”
His conclusion: “The real pandemic starts the day lockdown ends.” That’s because the fundamental problem, as identified by Bhardwaj himself, is the following choice: “do we want to throw money at the problem, or throw bodies at the problem?”
Tomas Pueyo, a Behavioural Psychologist, has tried to work through that either/or problem with his post, “Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance.” The hammer is acting early, quickly and aggressively. The dance is the “measures between getting our lives back on track and spreading the disease, one of economy vs. healthcare.” During the hammer, the effort is to bring the R0 to zero. During the dance “you don’t need to do that anymore. You just need your R to stay below 1.”
Meaning: There will be outbreaks again in some regions; other places won’t see them for long periods and depending on “how cases evolve, we will need to tighten up social distancing measures or we will be able to release them. That is the dance of R.”
In other words, we are looking at keeping the healthcare systems from being overwhelmed (as they already are in many countries), keep infections and morbidity and mortality rates low, and be able to (a) begin economic activity to mitigate the effects of the initial hammer and (b) buy time for a vaccine or a cure. The paradox is that effective application of the hammer initially and quickly is the only way to get to the dance stage later.
What this also means is that we are in for a long haul, not just weeks or months but a year, maybe two years.
Nothing surprising about that. That’s what happened 100 years ago with the Spanish Flu of 1918 (a terrible misnomer by the way, because the flu never began in Spain). But other than for historians and archaeologists, a century is a long time. So, let’s recap that outbreak.
Overall, that pandemic impacted some 500 million people worldwide, an estimated one-third of the global population then. It killed some 20 to 50 million people, though some estimates put the number at 100 million. No one really knows. Deaths weren’t recorded and registered in many places and it was difficult to work out the cause of death. But we can agree that a very high number were killed.
Were there lockdowns and a disruption of economic activity? Hell, yes. In fact, by some estimates, what happened then was far more disruptive than what we have seen so far during this pandemic. The first wave was milder, but the second wave, which came in the summer of 1918, was the deadliest. The fact that a war was going on (WWI) didn’t help matters. The movement of troops, inbound and outbound, helped the disease spread faster than it probably would have.
According to an estimate put out by History Channel, “[M]ore U.S. soldiers died from the 1918 flu than were killed in battle during the war. Forty percent of the U.S. Navy was hit with the flu, while 36 percent of the Army became ill, and troops moving around the world in crowded ships and trains helped to spread the killer virus.”
Matters were made worse by doctors suggesting heavy doses of aspirin for prevention (Hydroxychloroquine, today?). That led to aspirin poisoning and deaths because of that. There were lockdowns (hammer), relaxed lockdowns and movement (dance). Yes, we have been there, but as I said, memories are short.
Strategies are important, as is the maths informing them. Countries and populations have to cope. We are looking at how best to figure out the mitigating and suppressive sides of the problem. This is useful work because it has its own learning curve, even as scientists are racing against time to come up with a cure. These policy approaches help us to learn the best possible early responses and the protocols further down the line. That memory lasts and is immensely important in dealing with any subsequent waves. In other words, those who are working hard to come up with the best possible approaches to a wicked problem are doing a commendable job and must be appreciated.
That said, we are fighting a pathogen bent on making short work of humans.
Let’s return to the 1918 pathogen.
The pandemic finally subsided by the end of the summer of 1919. Why? Did the hammer work; or the dance was effective? Unfortunately, it’s difficult to say if either did. Apparently, it ended when it killed X numbers and Y numbers developed immunity against its virulence.
Did we find out what made it such a killer? Yes, we did: in 2008, 90 years after it had begun and ended its deadly march. Research indicated that “A group of three genes enabled the virus to weaken a victim’s bronchial tubes and lungs and clear the way for bacterial pneumonia.”
Finally, another interesting fact that I was completely unaware of until this pathogen confined me to my La-Z-Boy recliner: there have been several flu vaccines since the last pandemic and yet “A flu pandemic from 1957 to 1958 killed around 2 million people worldwide, including some 70,000 people in the United States, and a pandemic from 1968 to 1969 killed approximately 1 million people, including some 34,000 Americans.” That should give us some perspective on the numbers problem.
Welcome to the world of pathogens.
The writer is a former News Editor of The Friday Times. The fact is that he doesn’t have a La-Z-Boy recliner, but what the hell. He reluctantly tweets @ejazhaider