It's UnHerd Of...

Well... it seems Nobel prize-winning biologist Professor Michael Levitt agrees that strict lock-downs are not the way to go - they do not allow herd immunity to be developed. Countries that have adopted strict lock-downs, such as Australia and Austria, have had a lot of social disruption without much benefit in terms of immunity. The main issue is - how are the future waves of infection (and, yes, there will be future waves) going to be handled?

And now the new waves of infection are starting again. In Germany, infections are rising again after restrictions have been eased. China has had a new outbreak. As we alluded to in this blog, there will have to be a re-imposition of social distancing measures and lock-downs. There will be a feeling of déja-vu. But it will be harder the second time around. People will say 'but we endured a lock-down the first time with the promise that the virus would be stopped in its tracks... we've been good... why hasn't the virus been stopped? why are we being punished again?'.

These are very good questions. What answers will the politicians and (mainstream) epidemiologists give? Whatever their response, it will not be satisfactory. They have known that in the absence of herd immunity and/or an effective vaccine, each new major outbreak will be (almost) like the first time all over again. And this is just the second wave. What about the third, fourth and fifth waves?

Herd immunity will of course be developed, due to new waves of infection, but at a slower rate than if social distancing measures had not been too strict. But it will take several rounds of lock-downs. The big questions are - how will economies weather these challenges? And how long will it take them to recover?

It remains to be seen.

The Spock Principle

In the Star Trek movie The Wrath of Khan, Mr Spock sacrifices himself to save the ship. When asked by Captain Kirk why he did it, Spock answers "The needs of the many outweigh (the needs of the few), or the one". (The middle part is actually spoken by Kirk.) This selfless act allowed the majority to survive at the expense of the few (or the one, in this case).

Which brings us to the current COVID-19 pandemic...

Different countries have chosen different methods of dealing with the virus. Some countries - Sweden being the foremost example - have opted to go for herd immunity. This is where enough of the population is infected and most recover, presumably developing a natural resistance to the virus. Yes there will be a significant number of deaths, particularly among the elderly and people with weak immune systems. Sweden's modelling assumes that for every confirmed case of COVID-19, there are at least 75 undetected cases. When new infection hotspots arise, the virus doesn't have the opportunity to travel too far, because most people have developed the resistance - essentially stopping the virus spreading. Yes, some people will still get the virus, but its spread will be contained.

Other countries such as Australia, which caught the virus early, have opted for early stringent social distancing and lock-downs. This has had the effect of containing the spread of the virus. By keeping the transmission rate at less than 1, the virus will eventually die off. The transmission rate is - on average - how many people a person with the virus infects. If an infected person infects - on average - less than one other person, then the infection hotspot will die out because the propagation of the virus will quickly diminish.

Countries which have been hard-hit with the virus, I suspect, are somewhere in between. They are countries such as Italy, Spain, the UK, Russia, the USA, etc. They have enacted social distancing measures, but have a large number of infections. I also suspect that their undetected infection rate is similar to Sweden's. So they've probably developed a degree of herd immunity, and future outbreaks will be less severe.

Countries like Australia, I believe, have been too effective with their social distancing measures. Why too effective? Because there has been essentially no herd immunity developed. By shutting down the country for a few months, the virus has been contained. But what happens when life goes back to "normal" and borders are re-opened? There will be more infections. And because there is little herd immunity (let's call it community immunity), the consequences of these outbreaks could be just as severe as the first one. To contains the virus (again), authorities will have to shut down the country (again). There will not be the required community immunity to buffer the spread of the infection. Australian authorities are already talking about a second and third wave of the virus. If the same lock-down measures are enforced for each wave, I put it to you the economy will be destroyed! And what if there are fourth, fifth, and sixth waves of infection??

You see, while allowing a country to develop community immunity, there will necessarily be a higher death rate initially. But enough people will develop resistance to the virus to make future outbreaks far less severe. The transmission rate will be kept less than 1 naturally, because most people will not get sick even if exposed to the virus. But countries that have adopted Australia's model are in a far more precarious situation because the only way they can keep the transmission rate below 1 is to socially isolate the population every time there is an outbreak. This is not a sustainable solution.

We have to invoke the Spock Principle here... the good of the many outweighs the good of the few... short term pain for long term gain. Yes there will be a higher death rate initially, but the population as a whole will benefit, until a vaccine is developed. In the meantime, we can protect the old and vulnerable, for example by having additional restrictions on retirement homes. This will obviously not be popular, but it is one way we can sort of have our cake and eat it too.

The Government Wants to Track Us Via Our Mobile Phones...

So the government wants to know with whom I came into contact by tracking my mobile phone...!!

What an invasion of privacy!! What business is it of theirs?

The government is saying that to help tackle the spread of COVID-19, it needs to know if I came into contact with people infected with the virus. And it wants to do it with an app on my mobile phone.

We are assured our location won't be tracked, the resulting data will only be stored on the phone itself, and only health officials will have access to the data if they need to know with whom an infected person came into contact.

Sounds reasonable enough, doesn't it?

Well, let's see...

First, the location - can they achieve their purpose without tracking my location? Where I am does appear to be irrelevant. If I come into contact with an infected person, the app will tell health officials my name and phone number, and presumably the names and numbers of all the other people who came into contact with the infected person for 15 minutes or more. Whether I was at the supermarket or the beach or on a tram or just walking on the street does seem irrelevant; the important thing is the contact.

Second, the data. Can they achieve their purpose without uploading all the interaction information to a central server somewhere? If a person has tested positive for COVID-19, health officials can simply retrieve the data relevant to his interactions from his phone - so there is no need for bulk upload of data.

Are there other issues? Well, yes. Security for one. Bluetooth is known to have some vulnerabilities (as does every other piece of software). Most of these seem avoidable if the device is kept up to date with system updates, by changing default passwords and PINs, and by not accepting Bluetooth connections from devices we don't recognise.

What about storage space for all that information? The app is only going to store a name and phone number (encrypted of course) from devices with which it has been close to for 15 minutes or more. It doesn't take a lot of space to store a name and a phone number. Even if you catch a train to and from work every day, the app will store about one or two dozen names and phone numbers on each journey - still not a lot of space required. And we are assured the data will be used only for identifying people who may have been exposed to the virus.

So is it OK for the government to track our contact with other people during this COVID-19 crisis?

It seems reasonable.

UPDATE 27 April 2020 - more than 2 million Australians have downloaded the COVIDSafe app in the first couple of days of its release. That's quite an impressive number, but for the required 40% of the population, it means about another 8 million people need to download it. Maybe less if you discount children who would only accompany their parents on outings, elderly people who don't leave their nursing homes (they have other monitoring measures in place), and any others who are exempted.

Some issues have been raised by users. A common one is the rejection of valid mobile numbers. The number is entered in the international format (+61) so omit the leading 0 and don't put any spaces (e.g. 412345678 rather than 0412 345 678).

It doesn't work on older phones. That could be a problem - and is a problem for lots of people trying to run other recent apps, particularly media and entertainment apps. Is the expectation that no-one will have a phone older that 3-4 years? Does that seem reasonable? Many of the people who would be most vulnerable to the virus would be financially disadvantaged and not be able to afford the latest phones. This is an issue for this virus-tracking app in particular, and a social equity issue in general.

Climate Change... We're Screwed !!

So... COVID-19 lock-downs have reduced travel so much that CO2 emissions have fallen a huge amount ! Air travel is virtually non-existent (where have they parked all the planes??) and road travel has taken a huge hit too.

This has resulted in the largest-ever recorded fall in CO2 emissions - that's about 1.6 Billion tonnes of CO2, or 4% of global emissions. Very impressive !!

Except that - according to carbonbrief.org - to achieve the required cap on temperature rises to avert a climate catastrophe (i.e. 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels), we need an annual reduction in CO2 emissions of 6% for the foreseeable future (until 2050?).

How are we going to achieve these reductions? It seems we need to put the world economy on hold for about 4-5 months every year !!!

So to avoid blasting ourselves back to the stone age via catastrophic climate change, we have to blast ourselves back to the stone age via economic ruin.

We're screwed.