Covid19 - Exaggeration or underestimation of risks

At the time of writing, there were more than 70,500 confirmed cases and over 1,700 deaths globally. Yet, these numbers are a far cry from the H1N1 epidemic which saw more than 760 million cases and over 284,000 deaths between 2009 and 2010.

Even the common flu causes as many as 5 million cases of severe illnesses and half a million deaths in a typical year of seasonal outbreaks in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. The case-fatality rate of the COVID-19 appears to be about 2 per cent of all cases, and lower for cases outside of China,which is lower than that of the SARS outbreak from 2002 to 2003 of almost 10 per cent.
Compared to these numbers, the COVID-19 should not be a cause for panic. Yet, the reaction to mainstream media reporting on the virus seems disproportionate....

This heightened public concern in the case of the COVID-19 may seem baffling given its relatively low number of fatalities compared to other viruses. But risk psychologists argue that this reaction is, in fact, expected because individuals’ risk perception tends to be guided by cognitive short-cuts such as the “memorability heuristic”.... CNA

The above is from an article in the CNA on a report by researchers from the NUS-Lloyd’s Registration Foundation Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk (IPUR). It it timely to educate the public on the power of the media and the power of certain people or parties that have different agenda to hype about this Covid19 epidemic.  Is the risk of the Covid19 exaggerated in this case?

By now we have reasonable data to show how serious this Covid19 is compares to H1N1 and SARS. The situation in South Korea seems out of control. Italy and Japan are two candidates, including Iran that may be the next centre of Covid19 explosion. We are lucky and well managed to contain our spread. We have two days of only 1 new case and a day of 2, excluding an imported case from Wuha. Yesterday we have 0 case.

At this point we may breath a sigh of relief that it is not that serious after all in Singapore, or it is, or could it be worse? Many may have taken for granted that the spread is being contained but forgotten that had China not locked down a few major cities, the spread could be horrendous given what we have seen earlier. The immediate locked down of Wuhan and a few Chinese cities have arrested the spread and kept a lid on this epidemic and today we may gloat that it is not that serious. What if China has not locked down its cities, how widespread would this Covid19 be? A few hundred million infected cases?

On the other hand the Americans have been crying hell and screaming about how dangerous this covid19 is and still blaming China for all sorts of stupid reasons and allegations. They took the lead to ban Chinese citizens from entering America and cancelling many flights, in a way cutting off people travelling between the two states. A few western countries like Australia quickly followed suit. Over reaction, over exaggeration? Did the Americans know something that the world did not, that this Covid19 is not just like a common cold and could be like H1N1 and spread around the world like H1N1, infecting millions of people and causing more deaths that what we are seeing today? Trump is furious for the return of infected Americans on cruise ships. Why?

With two sides of the coins in our face, have we over exaggerated or underestimated this Covid19 virus? Would the govt think that hey, this is not really a problem, can be easily handled and we can still go about increasing our population to 6.9m, to 10m, to 20m? Singapore has no fear of a virus or disease epidemic, we can control and manage them and we can have our cake and eat it too?

The initial contact of this virus were in the churches, a shop and a hotel. What if the initial contact was in a jam pack train? What would the scenario be like? How would the contact tracing effort be like to trace people from a moving train?  Would the seriousness of this epidemic be underestimated and all caution thrown to the wind and the govt continues to press on with its open leg immigration policy to increase the population by another few millions? Can Singapore risk an epidemic of this nature and survive or be totally wiped out in a matter of months?

Lets hope our super talented millionaire ministers would take a step back and think carefully about such an epidemic and do not underestimate the risks involved and our survival as a congested city state of 6.9m or 10m or 20m.