LETTER TO SCMP:
I refer to your editorial “We must all soldier on together if coronavirus battle is to be won”, 17 November.
Coming so soon after Remembrance Day, the headline conjures unfortunate images of soldiers hauling themselves out of the trenches only to be mown down by reaping machine guns.
The virus, thank goodness, is not that that deadly. We now know from a Stanford University peer-reviewed analysis of 61 studies worldwide, that the median Covid infection fatality rate is 0.27%. To be sure, that’s two to three times higher than the influenza IFR, but still means that on average 99.7% of people with Covid recover from it.
Your Editorial criticises the "…many who put business and dining above public health". This is a false dichotomy. Those of us who oppose strong lockdowns do not put money above grandma's health. Instead we recognise that the lockdowns themselves cause public health problems unrelated to Covid. There's ample evidence of this worldwide — increased mental health problems, suicides up, more heart attacks and cancer deaths… most tragically, countries unable to “furlough” those thrown out of work by lockdowns face famine. These are also “public health” issues, quite aside from the lives ruined by crushed businesses. Even the WHO recognises this.
For Hong Kong, unless we plan to keep our airport permanently closed, we have to learn to live with some level of the virus in our community and to handle it. Balance is the key. Not "zero virus" absolutism. (About as realistic as our “zero road deaths” policy).
A final note: the number of Covid deaths in Hong Kong this year (108) is 1.28% of the deaths from pneumonia (8,437) in 2018. That is, pneumonia is 78 times as deadly as Covid, and the number killed by it every year has been steadily rising (4.6% pa. or 387 deaths per year). Pneumonia is a similar disease to Covid, also most deadly to the elderly with comorbidities (like me). Yet we do not shutter our economy and close the airport for pneumonia. We do not, in short, feel the need to “soldier on together” in mute submission.
Pf, etc...
