People drink and eat at an outdoor restaurant in Stockholm. Sweden, which has refused to close down schools and restaurants to contain the coronavirus, is being closely watched. Photo / AP
People drink and eat at an outdoor restaurant in Stockholm. Sweden, which has refused to close down schools and restaurants to contain the coronavirus, is being closely watched. Photo / AP
Opinion
COMMENT:
Spain, which locked down: 4 per cent. Italy, which reacted slowly and was devastated by Covid: 5 per cent. Stockholm, a city that did not lock down at all: 7 per cent.
These are the rates of Covid "immunity". The percentage of people who have survived the disease andformed a measurable immune response; antibodies theoretically ready to protect them from future rounds of Covid over the next few seasons.
Far from the mythical "herd immunity" conservative pundits drone about, these numbers are piffling. They also don't satisfy the more liberal Kiwi narrative of eliminating Covid and returning to business-as-usual.
These numbers suggest a smoulder, and a Covid dilemma that may burn on for quite a while.
Covid isn't following political lines. Sweden was the poster child for right-wing "survival of the fittest". Its economy remained open. Swedes preserved their freedom to attend the cinema or church service, no matter what the risk to others, during a month-long time delay in May while Covid burned its long fuse. Then cases rained down upon them. They now have around 4000 deaths and counting.
(I prefer to talk about deaths, not cases, as they're more definitive. Nasal swabs can be wrong up to 25 per cent of the time. Case definitions can vary. Deaths are less equivocal.)
That is roughly three times more Covid dead in Sweden than Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland combined. The only solace supporters of Sweden's approach can point to, other than businesses staying open, is that deaths were largely confirmed to aged care facilities. Cold comfort.
But before we get too smug about our own lockdown success, which was truly brilliant, we need to consider what the next two years will look like. The world is awash in Covid. One hundred years ago a similar pandemic, the Spanish flu, came into the world. In an era before airlines, when a nonstop 18-hour Auckland-to-Dubai flight was as unrealistic as a trip to the Moon, influenza made its way around the world — one cough and unwashed hand at a time.
No port, city, or island was safe. On foot, by boat, and by train within two years it made its way into the most remote Polynesian isles, carried from person to person in an unbroken chain stretching from China (or France or Kansas, the jury's still out) to encircle the rest of the world. The best estimates are that it infected one-third of all people then alive on Earth.
Covid has the modern liabilities of airlines and Facebook conspiracy theorists to help it spread. There is little reason to think it won't firmly touch us sooner or later. Our hope was to blunt the first wave, preventing our hospital system from collapsing, as happened in Italy, Iran, London and New York.
We achieved that. So well that plenty of people in the medical field are talking about a return to "business-as-usual". They point to day after day of zero cases. While the world stews in Covid.
There will be no business-as-usual for us when even the most devastated regions internationally still have so much kindling left to burn. Italy lost 10,000 lives, but only around 10 per cent of its population has yet been exposed to the disease. New York had 16,000 deaths, with only around 15 per cent of the population exposed. The disease has a long way to go. No place can stay locked down forever, and the future here will likely require a fantastically swift response to local outbreaks — test, quarantine, relax, repeat.
In New Zealand, we've had 21 deaths. On a per capita basis, the United Kingdom has lost 100 times more people to Covid. There's little reason to think they are anywhere near a peak, let alone close to achieving the decrepit concept of Covid herd immunity. Combine the world situation with the coming Southern Hemisphere winter, when respiratory viruses traditionally surge, and we may see the Australasian miracle become a bit more like the rest of the world.
At this point there are three things we should leave to the delusional to talk about: how Sweden won the battle without a lockdown, how herd immunity will protect us, and how we are "almost out the other side of this thing".
• Dr Gary Payinda is an emergency doctor in Northland, which has gone 35 days without a coronavirus case.
