Coronavirus: Why I’m no longer sceptical about very real dangers – John McLellan

The Covid-19 coronavirs outbreak could be much more deadly than seasonal flu, writes John McLellan.

Shelves have been cleared of products such as hand sanitiser by panicking customers. (Picture: Yui Mok/PA Wire)

How times change. At the Watsonian rugby dinner on Saturday night at Tynecastle, old pals and team-mates cheerily shook hands, but on Sunday lunchtime before the Scotland match at Murrayfield, corona-phobia had well and truly struck.

No handshakes, man-hugs, selfies and certainly no pecks on the cheek. It’s unnerving for someone to look at you as if you have just told them their dog has been run over simply for being absent-minded enough to stick out a paw in an instinctively friendly gesture of greeting.

And after last week’s column in which I admitted I had yet to be convinced the Covid-19 outbreak would prove to be worse than seasonal flu which kills scores every year, critics like ex-Labour MSP Malcolm Chisholm were quick to pounce in the mistaken belief I stated it was no worse that the flu. An MSP criticising people for having an opinion? Hey ho, why let facts get in the way of attacking a Tory?

But as the number of cases continues to rise, am I any more convinced we face a threat on a different scale to the usual effects of winter respiratory illnesses? Seasonal flu death rate is just under one per cent and with UK coronavirus fatalities currently running at 1.5 per cent, the comparison doesn’t seem unreasonable. But if the number of infections accelerates then differences of 0.6 or 0.7 percentage points will represent a lot of grieving families and the 3.4 per cent experienced worldwide doesn’t bear thinking about.

In the city council Conservative group we have the benefit of the talents of Councillor Phil Doggart, an actuary by trade, so paid to predict how long pension policy-holders will live. Actuaries for the big life companies are, to borrow an unfortunate phrase, feverishly trying to work out what impact the outbreak will have because, put quite simply, the worst-case scenario could mean bankruptcy.

The actuarial analysis shows infections spreading relatively slowly at this stage as two cases become four and for that to become 32, then 128 and so on. We’re at 400-500 now, but exponential growth could put that into thousands by next week and in a fortnight we could be experiencing the same lockdown as Italy. One analysis this week showed identical patterns of infection but with the UK about 13 days behind the Italians, so those trips, big matches or concerts you were planning at the start of April? Think again. Although signs of a slow-down in Wuhan were such that President Xi went there on a reassurance mission this week, it’s lot easier to take drastic action in a totalitarian state than in a mature democracy.

Could we build a 1,000-bed hospital in ten days? At least Edinburgh has a track record of by-passing planning permission for temporary infrastructure but will the whole country pull together in a 21st century version of the Spirit of the Blitz? Runs on toilet rolls and sanitiser profiteering suggest otherwise, but disaster plans are slowly swinging into action and the Royal Bank of Scotland showed leadership by offering mortgage holidays this week without much of a prompt and other banks quickly followed.

But the actuarial projections suggest we don’t know the half of it. Infection levels of 50 per cent by July are now being openly discussed, and on that basis bullish talk of the Festival and the Tattoo going ahead are just very wishful thinking.

Think what a 50 per cent infection rate across the UK means. That’s approximately 34 million people and even if the mortality rate is one per cent, that’s potentially 340,000 deaths, compared to a total of 616,000 deaths from all causes in 2018.

In Scotland, that would be approximately 26,000 deaths compared to 2018’s total figure of 58,500, and about 2,500 funerals in Edinburgh, compared to annual city average of around 4,400.

Nothing being talked about now will get close to dealing with something of that scale. Let’s pray the Italians get on top of the outbreak and the actuaries’ sums are wrong. And yes, I’m convinced.

John McLellan is Conservative councillor for Craigentinny/Duddingston