There’s nothing unprecedented about Covid-19 itself. The equally novel, equally infectious Asian flu of 1957 had commensurate fatalities in Britain: scaled up for today’s population, the equivalent of 42,000, while the UK’s (statistically flawed) Covid death total now stands at 46,000. Globally, the Asian flu was vastly more lethal, causing between two and four million deaths. The Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 also slew up to four million people worldwide, including 80,000 Britons. Yet in both instances, life went on.
What is unprecedented: never has a virus been so oversold. Why, I’d like to sign on with Covid’s agent. What a publicity budget.
In a recent Kekst CNC poll, British respondents estimated that nearly 7 per cent of the UK population has died from the coronavirus. That would be 4.5 million people. Scots supposed that more than 10 per cent of the UK population has died. That would be seven million people. Astonishingly, Americans believed that Covid has killed 9 per cent of their compatriots, or almost 30 million people! The real US total has indeed crossed the milestone of 150,000, but for pity’s sake, ‘only’ 20 million people died in the first world war.
True, your average everyman and woman are not dab hands at statistics. Nevertheless, broadcast news has bludgeoned audiences daily with Covid death totals. And a citizenry ought to have some vague notion of their country’s population. So folks convinced that in five meagre months they’ve lost a tenth of their fellows — the literal meaning of the word ‘decimate’ — need only drop a digit to realise how absurdly their bloated estimate compares with familiar figures on the news. But then, the public is never good with zeroes — a failing which treasuries in deficit count on.
Our very own Matthew Parris (many of whose columns I admire) is not immune to Covid Hyperbole Syndrome. His last column alludes to this virus ‘killing millions worldwide’, a phrase that sailed unmolested past pernickety editors and fact-checkers at this magazine. But the true worldwide death toll at the time was about 650,000.
I’d argue for improved British education in maths, except it seems Britain doesn’t do education any more. So let’s instead take those exaggerated impressions of lethality as proof of a stupendously successful propaganda campaign. The government has destroyed the country, and needs to keep ramping up the hysteria the better to keep destroying it. Boris Johnson gets a lot of stick, so it’s time to give the boy credit for once. At destroying the country he’s doing a damned fine job.
During events that in the present loom distortingly large, I’m always dubious of assertions that ‘nothing will ever be the same again’. Yet I worry that Covid-19 may have issued in a new intolerance for the nature of biology that could prove long-lasting.