CORONAVIRUS: MY RESPONSIBILITY IN THIS…

I have been talking to friends, colleagues and complete strangers during the past couple of weeks…

“I am scared for my children… for my parents… for myself”

“With the economy slowing down, this Covid-thing is another stumble. These governmental restrictions are suicidal… they will kill my business!”

“I am stronger than this Covid-19! I will not let this thing change the way I live!”

March 8th, 2020. The Italian Government has just released a new lockdown decree that, in the mind of many Italians, is the closest thing to the image that we have depicted ourselves when our parents or our grandparents told us stories of their experiences during WWII…

From the cold / rational point of view, not even touching the seriousness of the disease, the most obvious reason for this lockdown is that the Covid-19 spread has put the Italian national health system under extreme stress. Just doing some math, the exponential progression of the disease makes the number of new cases double every 2,5 days. At this rhythm, the number of intensive care units, needed for the most serious cases, are simply insufficient. In other words, if the national health system is overloaded and I would need intensive care for any “normal” reason (say a “very normal” heart attack…!), I am likely to not find a bed in hospital, nor an intensive care unit to support my life…

Surprisingly (or not…) this rational explanation, which would easily suggest that each one of us change their habits just for a while, is not the first thing that pops up in our mind when watching the news… what we feel is FEAR. Fear that my life will change for the worst, putting in danger all those things that I have achieved. So, I take a very human approach to fear… I refuse the facts and I go on as if nothing was happening…

Putting aside the risk of “deadly consequences” (physical or economic consequences), which by itself raises a BIG RED ALERT in our minds… WHAT SHOULD I DO…?!?

Let’s start with some facts:

In the past 30 years, our life has become MUCH BETTER! On top of it, while the general quality of our lives has improved significantly, we have also learned to be more reactive to things like pandemic!

We have seen an increase of 13% of the average life expectancy between 1990 (64.2 years) and 2019 (72.6 years). In the same period, the overall death rate has reduced by 21%, from 9,3 people every 1000 people in 1990 down to 7,6 per 1000 people in 2019. So, although with an uneven pace across the world, WE LIVE LONGER TODAY.

In the same period between 1990 and 2019, the incidence of deaths caused by injuries, including accidents, homicides, natural disasters, has decreased from 9% to 8%, while chronic conditions, first of all cardiovascular diseases and cancer, have increased dramatically from 58% up to 73%. On the other side, the world has made HUGE PROGRESS AGAINST INFECTIOUS DISEASES, which together with other minor causes, have dropped from 1/3 of the causes of death 30 years ago (33%), down to the current 19%.

A BIG POINT TO CONSIDER is that we hugely reduced the deadly impact of infectious diseases in the same period during which well-known SARS (2002), swine flu (2009), and other more or less violent flu viruses have spread across the world (many of which are, by the way, still around today…). And… using similar preventive measures applied than the ones that we see today (lockdowns, school closures etc…). In other words, WE ARE FAR BETTER NOW IN DETECTING AND TREATING INFECTIOUS DISEASES than we were in the past.

Now… this is true except in lower income countries, where infectious diseases are still highly ranked among the causes of deaths. So, it’s no surprise that new infections start in those places in the world where the fight for a better quality of life is still to be won!

AND, it is also no surprise that, when the first statistics about any new disease are published, they report far worse evidence than the average global mortality rate (e.g. 3.4% mortality rate of the Covid-19 as at March 3 vs. a range between 0.1% and 0.2% mortality rate of a seasonal flu in a Western economy)… To put it simply, there are not comparable geographical data and there is no certainty that the case counts are accurately documented, especially at the beginning of a new possible pandemic flu, when the only information available is the number of people officially infected and the number of deaths, while there is no way to measure retrospectively how many people were infected but have recovered from the illness.

One thing that has surprised the world is the transmissibility, or reproduction number, of the Covid-19 virus. The 2009 swine flu had a reproduction number of max 1.6 (i.e. if I am infected, I am likely to pass the virus to 1.6 people). So far, the Covid-19 is estimated to have a reproduction number up to 2.5 people, which makes that it is significantly faster than the swine flu. To put in perspective, and although the severity of the illness is today not comparable, measles has a reproduction number of up to 18 people…

SO, MY UNDERSTANDING OF ALL THIS: we are good in treating contagious diseases, but only if we are quick in detecting and acting to cut the chain of contagion.

SO WHY ARE WE AFRAID? Not only because a virus is the enemy that we do not see, but also because a virus that is presented as more lethal (is it…? we do not know yet) than other seasonal flu viruses and that has a higher transmissibility (true), is the PERFECT STORM in our mind…

OK so, have there been mistakes in handling the circumstances? Has there been misinformation? Is there no reason for taking extraordinary measures? Is the Coronavirus less dangerous than other seasonal flu viruses around?

Frankly, I HAVE NO CLUE !!

But I KNOW SOMETHING… there is not much time to avoid that the situation of our respective national health systems goes out of control. So, instead of banging my head on the wall, I believe that the time has come FOR ME TO TAKE SOME RESPONSIBILITY in all this…

Breaking the chain of contagion is something that I can do

Breaking the chain of contagion is something that I can do, at least in my small personal environment. And if I can do it, it is my duty to do it… for myself, for my children, for my family, for my friends, for my colleagues, for my company, for my clients and for the many friends and colleagues in 5 continents, that I have known for the past 20 years.

So, here is MY PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY:

• I will STOP REFUSING THE FACTS… thinking as if this Covid-thing is not happening won’t change the reality. I didn’t want it, but it’s here… Rather, I will concentrate on the FACT that THIS WILL BE OVER in a few months, if I accept it and contribute to the fight.
• I will STOP BEHAVING LIKE BUSINESS-AS-USUAL. It is not, and it is my duty to accept that everyone around me, especially people working with me, may be as scared as I (secretly) am. Instead, I will focus on the FACT that there are different ways to achieve our business targets, even if we need to change the way we do business. When all this will be over, we will have discovered NEW WEAPONS IN OUR ARSENAL.
• I will CONTINUE TAKING DECISIONS FOR MY BUSINESS, even now, in a less-than-perfect information environment. My worst decision would be to stop and wait until things get better… On the other side, knowing that mistakes are an integral part of our life, I will protect my business by making SMALLER DECISIONS, BUT MORE OFTEN, so to be able to correct my small mistakes.
• I will NOT LOOK THE OTHER WAY. In the current circumstances, no individual benefit can justify my inactivity in front of opportunistic behaviours, which would cancel my efforts and the ones of those people trying hard. WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.

And the last one…

• I WILL TRUST OUR POLITICIANS in that, for once, they will start working together and pause the 24/7 political-campaign-mode, which characterises all Western countries in the past 10 years. There is a chance that I will finally find someone to vote for at next elections!!

Is this going to be easy? Well, no… but THIS IS A NEW LESSON TO LEARN. It is certainly going to stay in our minds for long time and it will certainly re-shape some of our behaviours, so that our kids will be much better prepared to welcome and treat the Covid-30, when (not if…) it will come.

One last fun fact… I firmly believe that there is hope! In perfect Italian humour, I have read somewhere that, after last week’s PM decree that has closed all Italians schools (probably) until after Easter 2020, the vaccine for the Covid-19 is likely to come from the Whatsapp groups of school-moms…!

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR RESPONSIBILITY IS IN THIS COVID-THING??

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Sources:

• WHO World Health Statistics 2019 (https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/311696/WHO-DAD-2019.1-eng.pdf)
• UN World Mortality Booklet 2019 (https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/mortality/WMR2019/WorldMortality2019DataBooklet.pdf)
• University of Oxford – Hannah Ritchie & Max Roser “Causes of Death” last updated Dec 2019 (https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death)
• China CDC Weekly (https://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9a9b-fea8db1a8f51)
• Live Science https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-myths.html
• Macrotrends (https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/death-rate)