Pandemics & pandemoniums (clarifying clarifications)

We are in early April 2020, about 15 days into official quarantine (technically in horizontal social distancing – everyone at home). This is because we are living through a global pandemic caused by a virus named SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus detected in China in late 2019). They say it will become historically as famous as the pandemic that occurred in 1918, that is, 102 years ago, which became known as the “Spanish flu”.

With the relatively recent advent of the internet, the monopoly of truth or lies left the traditional press and, suddenly, everyone becomes an expert in epidemiology and everyone gives their two cents, causing great confusion, a pandemonium! They begin to think they understand the subject (virus spread) based on superficial reports just because they are well written, or on a television news item spoken in a solemn-serious-convincing tone, or even so as not to suffer ideological bullying from someone at work or in the little group.

With the growing political-ideological polarization the world is going through, technical-scientific subjects turn into debates, falling somewhere between the tragic and the comic. Even serious, cultured people, without realizing it, when going to a doctor for a diagnosis, have begun to be interested in whom the professional voted for in order to assess whether the diagnosis is reliable or not. A brilliant “meme” that is circulating summed the thing up well:

WHOEVER IS NOT CONFUSED IS NOT WELL INFORMED! Perfect!

Faced with the absurd opinions circulating, with possible political-mercenary interests, no one listening to anyone, and being a professional in a related field (sanitary engineering), I set out to write this article, recording, clarifying and summarizing some subjects in vogue and considering that the issue revolves very much around biostatistics, real or imaginary. I believe I am being useful to those who frequently ask about the subject. And to the archaeologists of the future, by recording this moment in history.

In the postwar generation, during the 1950s to 1970s, there was a list of viral diseases that were considered benign and for which there was no vaccine. Thus, when one sibling “caught” one of these diseases, parents would immediately put the other children nearby so that everyone would go through the cycle and become immune all at once. This was because, besides solving the children’s problem quickly, they would become immune, since, for adults who had not been exposed, these diseases could be very serious. There are several examples: chickenpox (varicella), mumps, whooping cough, rubella, measles. Sadly, some children died from these diseases, as is the case with measles, which has recently reemerged.

Since then, vaccines have been developed for several of these diseases and, in the following generation, children were thus “artificially” immunized (vaccinated) against most of these pathogens.

Let us move on to COVID-19, which afflicts us today. Reports describe it as a mild viral illness with no major consequences in children and young adults, but one that is potentially lethal for the elderly and/or carriers of other diseases, common in people from the age of 60 onward. Very similar to chickenpox and mumps.

This age group, those born from 1960 onward (over 60 years old: elderly), even without having diabetes, asthma, cancer, tuberculosis or other pre-existing diseases, has been associated with severe conditions resulting from contamination with COVID-19, and they are all classified as at risk.

As an example, almost everyone from my generation had chickenpox in childhood, so the elderly generation in this year 2020 is, for the most part, immune to chickenpox. But NO ONE from this generation had COVID-19 because the virus is new! So, COVID-19 will do to the total population what chickenpox did in the past, only on top of an elderly population that did not acquire natural immunity as a child, which leads one to foresee a high death rate within the age group above 60 years.

After an initial devastation, COVID-19 will be just another viral illness, among the many that are out there and, hopefully, there will be a vaccine for it, as there is for smallpox, measles, yellow fever, etc.

The predominant social consequence of this should be a change in the age distribution profile of the population of several countries. In the Western world, in which we are included, the age pyramid has already been inverting for some decades, as a result of reduced birth rates and increased longevity, with a consequent increase, in absolute and proportional numbers, in the number of elderly people. More and more people reach 100 years of age!

It should be noted that a drastic reduction in the population above 60 years old significantly relieves expenses with pensions and costly medical care for chronic diseases (diabetes, hemodialysis, transplants, etc.). It is not credible that the State, whichever it may be, does not see or think about this: balancing the accounts by reducing expenses with the old! Nor the Governments and those who dispute control of the State.

No one talks about this! COVID-19 will do the “dirty work”, with part of society (some politicians? which ones?) pretending that something is being done in order to “look good in the picture”. Let us remember that Delfim Neto, around 1974, said to Pratini de Moraes: the State is an unethical entity. Or is this a rehearsal for something that is yet to come? Is the planet overcrowded?

In any case, this reduction in the number of elderly people (and others who fit the risk profile) should happen until the advent of a vaccine or a medicine, because whether the Gaussian curve is more or less symmetrical, steeper and shorter or flatter and longer, the integral under it will be the same. Did you understand or did you skip statistics and differential calculus classes?

Conclusion: with quarantine, people will die over a longer period and without quarantine they will die in a shorter time. In this second hypothesis, by dying over a shorter period, there will be congestion in hospitals and cemeteries and, if there are not enough hospitals for everyone, more people will die for that reason.

On the other hand, other people will die if there is social disorganization (hunger, confusion, looting, etc.). The question that imposes itself is the political price and each group tries to shove onto another the burden of what is going to happen and how much it is going to hurt. Each one wants to see the pandemonium in another group’s lap.

PS: clarifying the fashionable expressions, based on Petit Larousse 1961, translated and adapted or created by the author of this article:

Horizontal Social Distancing: when everyone must remain at home, restricting contact between people and contagion as much as possible

Vertical Social Distancing: when only some groups remain isolated. For example, those at greater risk of developing a more severe condition. In the case of COVID-19, these would be the elderly, diabetics, cardiac patients, etc.; young and healthy people could continue circulating normally

Endemic disease: fem. noun, from the Greek, endêmon nosêma: disease fixed and disseminated in a given area or region, which neither increases nor decreases over time and in the proportion in which it continuously infests its inhabitants and the region

Epidemic: fem. noun, from the Greek epi, above, dêmos: people, folk) appearance or rapid increase of a disease that attacks many people at the same time in a community or region. contagious disease that, in a given area, affects a large number of people at the same time, such as flu, fever, cholera, typhoid fever. The epidemic differs from the endemic disease because the epidemic is, in a certain way, a random event, while the endemic disease is a constant or periodically predictable one.

Ideology: fem. noun, from the Greek idéa (idea) and logos (science): science of ideas, set of ideas of a group and of an era translating a historical situation; pejorative: doctrine that proposes unrealizable ideals; Ideologue: person systematically linked to a philosophical or social doctrine; dreamer who pursues an unrealizable ideal

Pandemic: fem. noun; it is the dissemination of an epidemic (a contagious disease) through very large regions such as a continent or the globe

Pandemonium: masc. noun, from the Greek, pan: everything, all and daimon: demon; imaginary capital of hell, place where all forms of corruption and disorder reign; Google: association of people to promote evil and disorder

Outbreak: masc. noun, Google: significant and rapid increase of something, followed or not by a decline or decrease returning to the previous situation or close to the increase of the thing. An endemic disease may have outbreaks and become an epidemic or not. An outbreak may be more pronounced or less pronounced.

Miguel Fernández y Fernández, engineer, chronicler and columnist, member of the National Academy of Engineering and of the Institute of Engineering # written in Apr 2020 R2026 Jan, 8,130 characters.