Saturday 2 May 2020
The woodpecker of Regent’s Park (Biitli )
It was in Regent’s Park, shortly after dawn, that I met the green woodpecker. The thing did not look well, and I was not used to seeing it on a path. There are said to be four pairs of green woodpecker in the park. I have seen them from time to time as I have stagger-stumbled by. Normally there is at least one drumming on a tree trunk, but occasionally two. Despite the lockdown, there is always a photographer nearby studiously focussing a telephoto lens, or an optimist clutching an iPhone.
This woodpecker was different, as it was on the path and nowhere near a tree. It was completely unperturbed as it looked up at me, although I was alone. As one does to woodpeckers shortly after dawn, I said, “Good morning.” The woodpecker said nothing but hopped awkwardly to the path’s edge and began pecking the grass, I assumed for ants. Ants are to a woodpecker like a well-done steak is to me. Vegans, please accept my apologies.
The situation this morning – 2 May 2020 (courtesy Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University)
Yet this woodpecker was behaving oddly. It did not fly away and looked much like I have seen with rabbits that sadly develop myxomatosis. Usually in the month of September, should you come across a rabbit by accident in the country, you expect it to dash away, but it does not. It remains motionless, looking at you through bulging eyes, and you realise the poor animal is ill and its time is almost due. It flashed through my mind in Regent’s Park that the woodpecker might also have been sick. But perhaps I was imagining it, as I had recently read that there is such a thing as an avian coronavirus, which may have been found in parrots, but also in chickens, turkeys, owls, hawks, and dare I say it, woodpeckers. The Regent’s Park green woodpecker was either very relaxed in the face of a passing stagger-stumbler – normally it will dash off in a millisecond and I was looking particularly horrid – or it was not at its best.
After a brief hesitation, I nodded to the bird, for a moment I thought it nodded back, and I was on my way, worrying that green woodpeckers can get Covid-19. That is the last thing we need in London to add to the chaos that surrounds us.
Should the world reach a point when Covid-19 ceases to be a problem, and at the moment there is no sign of that, I hope life changes for the better, as mankind has a long history of not learning from its mistakes. My wish is wonderfully expressed in a poetic video, and by poetic I do mean a rhyme. If you wish to shed a tear, have a look, but keep a tissue handy.
When all is said and done, the one modification I would like to see is to dissuade sick employees from coming to work. This has been a huge problem for many years as absenteeism costs countries large sums of money. In the USA, it is said to create an economic loss of US$150 billion annually. This figure is £100 billion in the UK, €1.7 million in Italy, or R25 billion in South Africa. Sums of this order can be repeated worldwide. It is no wonder that ailing staff feel they must struggle into work, and that their efforts will make them look worthy. They ignore the fact that their appearance may infect others. Surely, to even the most brain dead of individuals, the current Covid Crisis has shown the world that mankind’s biggest enemy is mankind itself? Please, please, coughers and splutterers of the future, stay at home hereafter until you feel completely better. The workplace has no wish to see you.
I understand I can begin to feel slightly happier about immunity. A little while ago, towards the end of April, the WHO depressed me by saying that the chances of immunity appearing after Covid-19 infection were small. What is more, some patients had developed the disease more than once. Both are good reason to worry.
Immunity is not assured after an infection (Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels)
The problem was, when WHO made its statement, that no study had evaluated whether the presence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 conferred immunity to subsequent viral infection. WHO was speaking in the context of being able to issue so-called immunity passports for those who might wish to travel, or even return to work. However, I understand it now appears that the patients who developed the disease more than once might not have done so, and the finding was an error of testing. Meanwhile, there is a fair bit now appearing in the scientific literature about immunity.
Studies on Covid-19 have suggested that 10-20% of symptomatically infected people develop little or no detectable antibody, so immunity may not be assured after infection, but it is still more probable than not. In terms of how long immunity is likely to last, the best estimate comes from work with closely related coronaviruses. This suggests that an antibody response can be detectable for more than one year after hospitalisation.
Most of these data come from patients who have been hospitalised with significant disease. For those in the community, the response may be different. For the hospital group, roughly 90% develop IgG antibodies within the first two weeks of symptomatic infection, which coincides with disappearance of the virus. Anecdotal evidence for those with Covid-19 in the community suggests that this figure is under 10%. If this is true then there will be a need for substantial mass vaccination programmes. In this respect there are presently more than 100 Covid-19 vaccines under development in different parts of the world. Surely at least one will find the solution? My fingers are obviously crossed for Oxford.
The WHO has thus changed its tone and now says they expect most people who are infected with Covid-19 to develop an antibody response, and that this will provide some level of protection. Are they correct? I have no idea and, as yet, I do not believe anyone has the solution. My guess is that this updated statement was made to give the world some hope. The WHO has also reinforced that the coronavirus remains a global health emergency, as the disease begins to pick up pace in Africa and South America.
Covid-19 was first declared a pubic health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020. At that time only 98 of the then almost 10,000 cases had occurred outside China. Now the numbers are extraordinary with 3.2 million cases in 187 countries, and still counting upwards. By global standards, and assuming the figures can be believed, China has barely been troubled.
Armed protesters in Michigan
Alarmed by the economic slowdown, plenty of US states have begun their return to public life already. This worries me. I wager there will be about two weeks of freedom, people will feel briefly happy, and the disease will once again pick up pace. But there have already been protests against stay-at-home orders, including by some who were carrying weapons. One Twitter user said it clearly about these demonstrations:
“Why? Because America has descended into madness. It’s hard to accept, yet America 2020 is just Somalia, but with Wi-Fi.”
He has a point.
But it is a difficult situation and the title of a New York Times lead article says it all: “Your life or your livelihood: Americans wrestle with an impossible choice.” It is not just the USA faced with this dilemma, but the whole world. At some point all governments will have to accept fatalities as part payment for economic survival.
Right now, leaders of all countries are between a rock and a hard place.
