Q: Some questions about Covid-19 which I can't answer

Hi guys. I like to use the format of Q&A with some of my blog posts if I have the answers to the questions, but with such a huge, fast-moving topic, of course I can never know all the answers. So in today's post, I am going to talk about some of the issues that really puzzle and bother me about this Covid-19 outbreak which is going to be pretty much a rant from me and then I'll hand it over to you, to see what you have to say about these topics relating to the current Covid-19 outbreak.

Q1: Why are people so obsessed with face masks? 

Okay, so let's begin with the facts first: face masks do not protect you from the Coronavirus. Hell no. If you're sick, you wear a face mask because you don't want to pass your germs onto other healthy people out of courtesy. This is quite commonly done in countries like Japan, where people are generally very considerate and polite. However, if you are healthy, wearing a face mask is going to do very little to protect you from the Coronavirus. The authorities keep saying that, but people are still queuing for ages and buying loads of face masks (often at inflated prices) as if they are useful or necessary - that's just plain stupid. So the question I can't answer is this: why are so many people so bloody stupid when it comes to the face mask? Yes, in Hubei province, at the epic center of the outbreak, wearing a mask is mandatory by law because the virus is so widespread the authorities don't know who is infected and who might be a carrier, so they are making everyone wear masks not to protect the healthy people, but to stop anyone who may be a carrier from spreading the disease, despite not showing many symptoms. I don't abide by the principle of 'oh it can't hurt' or 'I am just being extra careful' - really? In this day and age, are people really that stupid, like are they choosing to trust their own instincts instead of listening to official advice from doctors and healthcare professionals? There are practical ways to minimize your risks of exposure to the virus such as washing your hands properly and regularly, but face masks simply don't work.

This actually reminds me of a discussion I had with a reader of mine some years back during a really bad haze season in Singapore in 2015. He said that many Singaporeans believed that drinking more water could combat the effect of the haze and I had to tell him that no, it was completely false. Then you breathe in very polluted hazy air, you have to worry about the tiny suspended particles in the air that measure less than 2.5 microns (aka PM 2.5) which will get stuck in your lungs, causing all kinds of respiratory illnesses and long term damage to your body. Drinking water does fuck all to help with the solution in your lungs - the water goes from your lungs into your stomach, through your digestive system then you pee it out. It doesn't go through your lungs, drinking vast amounts of water doesn't undo the damage that breathing in huge amounts of highly polluted air does to your lungs. When I explained it to him like that, he realized that of course, you don't need to be a doctor to realize that drinking more water couldn't solve such a complex problem. He didn't have the resources to move his whole family to somewhere like New Zealand or Norway where they have much cleaner air, he couldn't fix the complex problems that causes the haze originating in Indonesia affecting the region - the one thing he could do was reach for the tap and drink more water. So he wanted to believe that there was something that he could do that would be constructive or helpful rather than face the fact that he was helpless when it came to the air he had to breathe, as breathing wasn't optional. So he chose to believe an old wife's tale that was complete rubbish, but I forced him to face the facts. Thus, can I get people to face the facts about the face masks as well or are people just too stupid?

Q2: Why are people stockpiling food and other supplies?

Good grief. There are so many cities around the world where people are panic buying food and toiletries - from Hong Kong to Romania to Australia to America - people are running to the supermarket and panic buying! Why? It is ridiculous! Even in Wuhan, the city most badly affected by the virus, supermarkets and pharmacies remain open - the Chinese government are making sure that the supermarkets and pharmacies in Wuhan are well-stocked and prices remain normal. The worst case scenario is that there is a massive outbreak of the virus in your city or town and the government imposes an Wuhan-style lock down to prevent the spread of the virus - that doesn't mean that supplies will no longer reach local shops in an area under lock down.  Again, we have no protection against this mystery virus: people feel the need to do something when they are panicking in order to feel safe again. Okay, they can go wash their hands thoroughly and clean their homes but beyond that, there's really little they can do especially if they have to go into public spaces and use public transport. So they feel the need to do some kind of ritual to feel safer and if they see others panic buying at the local supermarket, there's a herd mentality - they blindly follow the others even though there's no real need to do so. Whilst this may appease their desperate desire to do something constructive about the situation, it also goes to show how stupid and irrational people can be. Do they genuinely believe that if they returned to the store next week, the price of their staples like rice, cooking oil and bread would suddenly triple because of the virus? Or would the virus cause a shortage of food supplies? None of that has happened so far, not even in China - so why are people still panic buying?

Q3: Why are people indulging in spreading fake news and conspiracy theories online? 

Oh I actually unfriended someone over this. He was sharing a lot of misinformation on Facebook about the origins of the virus - these were completely unproven conspiracy theories cooked up by some paranoid idiot, but once it gets posted on the internet, it gets shared a lot. I didn't have the time or energy to confront him or challenge him - I simply unfriended him as I don't need friends like that. Sure we're all interested in find out more about how this is going to affect our lives, but why turn to conspiracy theories at a time like this? Some of the stuff this ex-friend had posted were so fucking ludicrous, I am not even going to discuss them here as those theories are just so fucking stupid. If you are interested (hey, you're entitled to morbid curiousity), just do a google search for Coronavirus conspiracy theories. These people are just spreading fake news about everything from the origins of the virus to how it is spread and how it should be treated - that's just downright malicious and devious. I do wonder what these people get out of this? Okay, we want to get attention on social media, but most of us just post selfies on Instagram whilst these people cook up crazy conspiracy theories to mislead, confuse and obfuscate the public? What the hell do they get out of it? And surely most people out there know the difference between obtaining their news from a reliable source like the BBC, CNN, ABC or SCMP rather than some dodgy website with no credibility whatsoever sharing fake news and conspiracy theories? Are people really that stupid? Why can't people discern the source of their online news - why do they share this kind of fake news then?

Q4: Why are people actually scared of getting the virus then?

Most of us will only experience very mild symptoms, if any. The only people who may suffer quite severe symptoms are the elderly over the age of 80 and those with underlying medical conditions. So for the rest of us, if we get it, there's no treatment available for it and you'll probably just get well in a few days. It is not going to kill the vast majority of us since the mortality rate is under 2%. What we should be worried about is how it would disrupt our everyday lives - Japan has just shut down all schools for a month and if you're a Japanese parent with young children, then you are probably desperately trying to make arrangements for childcare if you have to work. Furthermore, I'm sure many of you would have seen how the stock markets have crashed in recent days and for those of you with investments like pensions invested in the stock markets, well you've just seen a significant amount of your life savings wiped out. That's a lot more painful than actually getting the virus! Likewise, if you have made any kind of plans to travel (for work or for holiday), then there's a possibility that you're going to have your plans severely disrupted because we're dealing with a moving goal post. So the way the outbreak in Northern Italy has spread so quickly is an example of how the situation can escalate suddenly - we tend to plan our trips weeks (even months) in advance, rather than booking it last minute so your destination may look relatively unaffected for now but with Covid-19 you really don't know what to expect day by day. A good example of this was a flight from Seoul to Tel Aviv on the 22 February: there was nothing to suggest that anything was amiss when the flight took off but the Israeli government suddenly changed their minds and decided only to allow the 12 Israeli citizens on the plane to disembark, before sending the plane back to Seoul. This decision was taken just two hours before the plane landed in Tel Aviv - bear in mind that is a 15.5 hour flight. That was just awful for the passengers.

Q5: Why can't the world learn how to pronounce Wuhan (and Daegu)?

I am so fucking sick and tired of hearing white people pronouncing Wuhan as "Woo-Han" with han to rhyme with ban instead of bun. This includes white people in China and even in Wuhan. Then again, let's take another city in the West: Paris. We just accept that when we speak English, it is pronounced like "pair-ris" when in French, it is "Pah-ree" - the final S is silent. Likewise, English speakers call the Italian capital Rome when it should be Roma. Once we start going down that road, good grief, English speakers have corrupted and changed the names of so many cities around the world: Moscow (Moskva), Warsaw (Warszawa, pronounced Varshava), Vienna (Wien, pronounce Vien), Athens (Athina), Florence (Firenze), Turin (Torino), Venice (Venezia), Geneva (Genève), Cologne (Köln), The Hague (Den Haag), Prague (Praha) and Brussels (Bruxelles) - I could go on and on and on, these are just European cities that English speakers have decided, fuck it, I can't pronounce it, I can't spell it either, it just sounds too bloody foreign to me: I'm just going to turn Köln into Cologne and the local inhabitants in Köln will just have to get used to the fact that their city has an English name. But hey, with smaller towns, the English haven't gotten round to corrupting their names: take the small seaside town of Scheveningen in the Netherlands, it is not an easy place name to pronounce but it would be totally un-PC to try to "anglicize" that name in this day and age! Certainly, when we hear people speak in English and they mention Rome or Paris, we don't really bat an eyelid when it is pronounced the English way. But if you're a reporter in China, reporting on this story - then surely you would have heard the locals pronounce Wuhan as 'Oo-hun', so surely they should make an effort? Likewise, Daegu is actually pronounced more like Tay-gu, with a T rather than a D. So why are white people so freaking lazy? Or should we just accept that Wuhan has an 'English' name now like Rome, Moscow, Prague and Vienna?

Q6: Can you really trust people to self-isolate/self-quarantine? 

Now I read a story from Singapore about the very strict measures taken by the Singaporean government to deal with people who had recently returned from China who deemed to be high-risk when it came to spreading the virus. This includes surprise home visits by health officials and those who break their quarantine are indeed hit by harsh punishments. The government in Singapore is also ready to offer S$100 a day to those in self-quarantine to compensate for their loss of earnings - it is not much but for those on low-income, that at least means that they are able to pay their bills during the quarantine. So, hats off to the Singapore government for managing the situation so well, but in the UK, ooh boy. The government are asking people to self-isolate/self-quarantine but there are no checks whatsoever, they're just trusting people to do the right thing but no one has any clue if they are doing it. Furthermore, there is no money offered to those who are unable to work because of the quarantine - at times like this, I can only look at the British government and shake my head in disbelief. I just don't trust British people. I remember watching a Youtube video how a Japanese farmer in rural Northern Japan had put out all his fresh produce in a shed by the roadside with the prices marked out and there was an 'honesty box' there, for people to leave the money - guess what? It totally works because Japanese people in that community are very, very honest! If you did the same thing in England, all the vegetables and the honesty box would be gone in a matter of minutes. So some measures would work in a place like Japan, but in the UK, hell no, we need to tag these people in quarantine and monitor them with GPS trackers or else it wouldn't work at all. Hence, the UK needs to do things the Singaporean way - not the Japanese way as British people are just not as honest.

Okay, so that is it from me on this topic, over to you. Let me know what you think please, many thanks for reading.