Professor Hugh Montgomery, speaking on the BBC this week made a very eye opening revelation.
In illustrating how infectious the Corona virus is he compared it to the common cold. A person with a cold infects about 1.5 others. Ten layers of infection down the road this one person will be responsible for 30 infections.
"A person infected with Covid-19 on the other hand, on avergage infects 2.5 other people. By the tenth layer of infection this person will be responsible for 59,000 infections!..
Going by this equation it would take only 40 people behaving irresponsibly to infect Kampala's daytime population of 2.4 million.
It is true that of the infected people less than ten percent get critically ill, that is need to be admitted to the intensive care unit. That is assuming a generally healthy population with a responsive health system. And even fewer die from complications due to the cororna virus.
It is also true that going by the Asian and European experience the older people are more vulnerable and more likely to die. Our increasingly sedentary lifestyle, a function of higher income or just trying to keep up with the Jones, means more of us fall in this latter bracket.
A few facts are lost in those statistics. While its initial symptoms are not unlike the common cold and can prove a minor inconvenience as we go about our everyday lives, if unchecked can progress quickly into a pneumonia-like affliction and require urgent medical attention.
That is where all hell breaks loose.
In comparing Germany and Italy the record shows that the ability to prevent the disease going terminal depends on the number of Intensive Care Unit(ICU) beds a country has.
"Germany has one and a half times more ICU beds than Italy, and beyond being more vigilant, has meant they have been able to keep the fatalities to a fraction of the Italian ones for a comparable number of infections...
If for nothing else this is why we need to be extra diligent in observing preventative measures -- washing hands, social distancing and early managment of the disease if infected, and extra vigilantin spotting the rule breakers and setting them straight or reporting them to the authorities.
When they talk about ICU beds in any country, chances are they are not empty. There are people occupying those beds and everybody else will have to wait in line to get a chancec at the bed.
That is why we saw horrific footage of victims in Spain, lying in the hospital corridors, as if in a third world hospital. They were waiting their turn to occupy a hospital bed. It goes without saying that the bigger the delay the likelier it is that you will die.
Beyond the elderly, people with undedrlying conditions -- hypertension, diabetes, HIV/AIDS are suscecptible to contracting the disease. So more people than we think are in danger of falling sick from covid-19.
I know that if one is reckless with his own life it is useless to invoke the danger they pose to people around them.
But yes that is a real danger. Just because you beat the system and managed to catch one with friends at the bar or a round of golf at the club you could be bringing it home too.
In the latest release of the new infections, there was an eight month old baby in Iganga who it is suspected contracted it from her father who had recently returned from Kenya.
Thankfully people who are not adhereing to this advice are more doing it out of ignorance, believe it or not, than out of some stupid defiance of the government.
Thankfully, because if they get to know about the virus and its potential harm to the and their loved ones lives they can adjust their behaviour. Thankfully too that its ignorancec and not stupidity, because if it was stupidity there would be no hope of them learning and changing their behaviour.
And if one is not convinced yet there is one last card up my sleeve. The current restrictions of movement will go away sooner if we adhere to the protocol better. We need to keep that decision with ourselves rather than with the government.
If the infections get out of hand government will have no choice than to impose further restrictions on us.
In Wuhan and now in Italy, they have imposed total lock down. No one is supposed to move around. In parts of Italy last week to move around you needed to have written permission or be fined 200 euros.
Going by the experience of South Korea, which has been able to bring down infections dramatically after an initial fumble, lock downs are not mandatory.
Have no doubt this is a war, or at least the beginnings of one. If it escalates the rule book will be thrown out the window, the army will step in and all your heckling and smart aleking will count for nothing. That is if you are allolwed to do so at all.
