When Freedom Returns
South Africa is halfway through day one of a national Lockdown. The lockdown is scheduled to last 21 days in an effort to flatten the Covid-19 transmission curve.
The curve, we have all recently become familiar with, expresses the level at which hospitals and healthcare professionals become unable to successfully cope and treat the new Covid-19 infections. Basically, the steeper and more pronounced the curve, the less we are coping.
Lock It Down
The lockdown to curb our movements over the next 21 days is designed to do nothing more than slow the transmission of this virus and hopefully flatten the curve to a manageable level. We are not talking about eradication, we are not talking about a cure for Covid-19; we are talking containment at this stage.
Essentially just buying our species time to find a way to survive.
The transmission rates of this virus are far higher than what has been reported and the pandemic worse than we can comprehend, in my opinion.
Statistical Correlation
The data geek in me is quite fascinated by two pieces of data which we have no way of knowing yet.
The first has to do with the traditional ailments that affect humans over this time of the year, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere as we move towards Winter. The common cold, cases of flu, bronchitis, pneumonia, etc.
Are we going to see a flattening of those curves during this same period? Logic dictates that we should as these diseases are spread in much the same way as Covid-19 is. So the hyper-focus on disinfecting everything, and social distancing should see a marked decrease in these “traditional diseases”.
The second data set I am super interested in has to do with what happens after lockdown?
When Freedom Returns
The WHO has a fantastic freely accessible database, powered by Microsoft BI to give some pretty punchy visualisation to their data.
This dataset interests me quite a bit:
I have sampled all of the flu cases in South Africa from 01 January 2018 to 31 December 2019, in other words: 2 calendar years' worth of data and then the first 3 months of 2020.
Please note the months directly preceding the spikes in “active flu cases”. Those are the months of April and May. Also, have a look at the January — March periods of each of the 3 years in view. We are already looking at a marked increase in “traditional” flu in 2020 compared to both 2019 and 2018.
Building Immunity
So, typically we build up a natural immunity to the more common germs by being exposed to them in relatively low doses, (On a really rudimentary level) our body recognises them, figures out how to fight them and then we develop an immunity to that germ.
So here is my question…
If we are social distancing as we should be; if we are being justifiably paranoid about disinfecting everything in sight; are we setting ourselves up for what promises to be a bumper flu season?
I’m not for a second saying that we should not disinfect and social-distance; I am saying that we should not drop these protocols and continue as normal the second that the lockdown is lifted.
Should we do that; then we will have an additional curve to try and flatten and the cycle will repeat itself again and again.
Originally published at https://medium.com on March 27, 2020.
