coronavirus special
What myths are you seeing out there about this coronavirus?
That it’s an airborne virus; we have no evidence for that. It’s a
droplet-spread virus, as far as we can tell, and that accounts for all
the spread that we’ve seen.
Also, that this virus is a bioweapon – that’s a pile of crap and
should be dismissed as such. There are lots of myths, but a lot of
them are technical and rubbish.
Is the government currently, in your opinion, doing as much as
it could possibly do?
Everything in terms of planning and response that’s going on is
fantastic. Australia’s really well placed, and we’ve been doing it
all year, ever since we first found out this thing had a pandemic
potential, which scientists suspected early on. The only thing
I would say is we need a bit more communication to the
community about the specifics, the details of what they can do to
feel like they’re in control.
Also, we need to explain the use of words like ‘pandemic’ and
what they really mean, and not speak too technically to the wider
community. When people are in front of microphones, they
should try to keep it as simple and clear as possible.
Allowing people to be anxious, but not in any way encouraging
panic, is a really important message, and it’s very subtle and
hard to get across, but it’s one that would probably save us
some time.
Should we have used our natural defence as an island continent
and potentially shut borders much earlier by watching the
spread in other countries?
Hindsight is always 20/20, so really that question is something
you’re probably not going to know for a little while. If we all
wanted to live in our own houses and not make contact with
anyone, that would be perfect, but we kind of can’t do that
either. It’s got to be a balance, and everybody’s responding to the
evidence at hand.
We’ve seen a big and fairly dreaded modelling study come out
recently giving us all an indication of how bad things could be if
we don’t enact drastic measures, but perhaps we could do some
other things like improve testing and case and contact finding
through that. That also has the benefit of reducing any peaks or
preventing us from having a big peak.
At the moment, with the cases going up at the speed they are,
we aren’t going to see a peak. Obviously, we’re going to see the
cases rise to large numbers. It’s just whether that will continue on
or stop. And that depends on how we react.
China recently recorded a day without a new case, and
Wuhan has gone five days. If we look at the rates in China and
how it’s peaked and fallen off, can that give us an estimate of
how long it might last here?
It can give us an estimate. We can be looking at the numbers
there to give us a rough idea, but we are really doing things
differently from China. I think everybody’s doing things differently
from China.
We know what we want to see, but we can’t predict whether it’ll
work. We need to wait and see.
China has done well, but of course it has a lot of [imported
cases now due to travel], so it’s seeing what the rest of the world
has already seen. And it has to keep on top of that as well.
And as more and more things come back online in China, those
cases could become sources for new outbreaks.
As we know, a lot of asymptomatic and mild cases happen that
get buried in the noise and the common causes of the cold, the
flu season, and that sort of thing. It will still be easy to miss cases
coming into a country, so it could well flare up again. And China
knows that, and it’s prepared for that.
I believe I saw you tweet about stocking up on supplies, and I
believe you were probably the first one to say that we should
all be doing it, and there’s been some criticism about your
comments. Why do you think people are critical of that idea?
Oh look, I’m going to wear the criticism. I don’t care. I would
rather be prepared by having two weeks’ worth of stuff as is
recommended by various authorities; for example, NSW Health’s
planning webpage, where it talks about planning for pandemics
and various things like that. We based it off facts.
We think it’s important to have something in the pantry in case,
not because there’s a zombie apocalypse coming, but because
truck drivers, people who deliver our food around the country, are
also going to get sick. They’re also going to have kids that get sick,
and they may have to stay home and look after them. This could
lead to interruptions in supply.
I don’t think it’ll be continuous. I don’t think it’ll affect water
or power, but I think it could happen, and we need to have
something in the cupboard so that if we have to stay home for
a while because the government says, “Let’s try to mitigate the
spread. Everybody stay at home, don’t go to work, don’t go to
school,” then we’re prepared.
I’m thinking back to a conversation I had around January with
someone who told me that SARS completely disappeared and
no one knows why. Is this true?
SARS is an extinct virus. We do know why. There’s some
guesswork that it’s because of summer, but more likely and more
realistically it’s because of all the massive amount of hard work
from public health that went into finding every case, tracing all the
contacts, and quarantining and isolating the sick or soon to be sick
people. That process is what worked.
China did it brilliantly and has done it pretty well this time too,
because it has experience. It’s managed this one quite well, but it’ll
probably get overwhelmed at some point.
But that’s why SARS was stopped, not through some magic
weather change. Also, the virus didn’t spread as well as this one
does. This one already spreads almost like a common cold and
flu-like virus, so it has an ability to spread.
Would you stick with all the recommendations we’ve had so
far: social distancing, washing hands, testing if needed?
Yes. We should do everything we can to control things as
individuals, such as hand washing, not touching our face, staying
away from sick people, not going to work if we’re sick, and
listening to the authorities.
However, on a grander scale, social distancing is going to be
the best way to keep us apart. That’s what we have to do. This is
a very old-fashioned way of doing things, but humans haven’t
changed their biology through their evolution to prevent viruses
from infecting them.
We have to use these old fashioned measures to stop what
is just a biological process, essentially. It’s the only thing
we’ve got. Apart from that, there’s not a lot of other things
that we can do until we get a vaccine to prevent more spread
and transmission. ■
agedcareinsite.com.au 19