Heroes Not Zombies

There have been many epidemics in human history, and there will be many more. Some of those epidemics spread so much they become pandemics.

We discovered how to cope with these raging fires of infection many, many years ago…..

You have to isolate the infected from the rest of the population until they aren’t infectious any more. In the past that involved closing off whole walled towns, or sending the sick to isolated places.

That is still the basis of control – reduce the spread by reducing the opportunities for the virus to spread from one person to another.

In this current pandemic most countries have gone for “lockdowns” – which are more and more harmful the longer they go on. They are a desperate, short term measure. The other main policy has been to promote social distancing…..make people stay away from each other and touch each other less. This is also a pretty desperate, ultimately harmful, measure.

The most successful countries have gone for “Test, trace and isolate”.

No-one has been successful pursuing a “let it rip”, or “herd immunity” strategy. No wonder. It’s a bonkers, inhumane idea. Which infectious diseases have human beings ever successfully overcome by going to herd immunity? Not TB, not HIV, not malaria, not cholera, nope, not even smallpox, polio or measles (effective vaccines have played a significant role in these latter diseases)

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Identify the infected and keep them at a distance from the non-infected is how to control an epidemic. It always has been, and it is now. The problem with Covid-19 is that over 80% of those infected, and able to spread it to others, are asymptomatic. That means the only way to identify those who are infected is by testing.

I know most western countries have really struggled to get their testing capacity up to speed quickly enough and some, like the UK, even abandoned testing for a while (apart from testing the sick in hospital). But that doesn’t mean it’s the wrong way to go. It’s intolerable to isolate whole populations and bring work and social life to a halt for long periods, or even repeatedly.

There’s only one way – “Test, trace and isolate” – do it intelligently, effectively and on a sufficient scale and fully support those who need to isolate for the period of their isolation.