Ships and Sealing Wax

You came into existence because your “parent” invaded a cell in someone’s body. It gave up its genetic material and died so that the cell would produce new copies, you are one of them. Finally the cell ejected you and died itself, leaving you to float around and, if you are lucky, find another cell to invade. You may have to be quick because if you are unlucky, the person you invaded will die and that is the end of your prospects. On the other hand, they might survive but will have made antibodies that prevent you reproducing and kill you.

Before either of these happens, you might be one of those viruses that get ejected from the host when it coughs. You float around in the outside world, in the air, maybe settling on some surface. Unfortunately this isn’t a good environment for you and if you don’t find a person to invade soon, you are finished. If you strike lucky, you find your way into another person. Maybe they breathe you it, or maybe touch the surface where you are sitting and pick you up. Later, they touch their face and are breathed in and you get into their lungs. Away you go inside them, floating around until you hit a cell that you can invade.

At first, the world is a fertile place for you, there are lots of people for your kind to invade. Unfortunately, over time, they either die or they develop antibodies which thwart you. They might start social distancing so that when you are coughed out into the world, you can’t find a new host in time before you die. They might develop a vaccine and so they all have antibodies which stop you in you tracks. Eventually the world becomes a less and less fertile place for you. The heyday of your kind flourishing in their trillions are past. There are fewer and fewer people available to invade and so you eke out an existence attacking the weak and vulnerable.

After your brief and dazzling career, you sink into obscurity. At some point another virus comes along and becomes all the rage for a time. You are forgotten, just a page of history. It’s no fun being a virus.

I keep hearing calls that we need to “follow the science” as we plan to lift the lockdown. The problem with this is twofold.

Firstly, science isn’t able to predict the future with any certainty. The predictions being made are based on computer models which hope to be able to capture mathematically all the things that can affect the situation. This isn’t easy and it is hard to get a model that is perfectly right. On top of that, even if the models are perfect, there are still many things that are not known and assumptions have to be made. Some of the things that we don’t currently know can be scientifically investigated, but this takes time. An example would be the level of protection gained once someone has had the disease. Other things (such as the people’s willingness to comply with restrictions) are harder to determine and may be quite volatile. As we don’t know so many things, the scientists have to make assumptions for the unknown variables. Unfortunately are lots of unknowns so that there are many possible scenarios depending on the assumptions made. Deciding on the most likely outcome becomes a matter of judgement, not science.

Secondly, the progress of the disease is only one issue. People’s lives, their jobs, the economic situation, other health issues and the willingness of people to adhere to restrictions are all things that have to be taken into account. There is no computer model or scientific expert that can tell anyone the right answer.

Our politicians have to take all the data, all the best judgements (many of which are judgements, a posh word for guesses, even if made by famous scientists) and decide what to do. As always, different people will have different ideas and there will be considerable debate.

After it is all over, we will know how good the decisions were. One thing that is certain, there will be many things that don’t go as planned. How could it be otherwise as there are so many things that we don’t know.

Another thing that is certain is that those who made the decisions, in good faith, with all the best advice available, will be pilloried in the future by those who have the power of hindsight. It’s tough at the top!