Covid-19 developments

Israelis are out on the streets in protest against the government's handling of the epidemic. (Incidentally, congratulations to BBC News Channel in reporting on the start of this unrest. Foreign news coverage had dropped off markedly in favour of domestic reporting, but it is good to see the corporation making use of its extensive world-wide network of reporters again.) Much has been made on social media of the way that female leaders had handled the pandemic, but it seems to me that the distinction is between liberal democratic heads of government and those elected on an ultra-nationalist ticket, playing on electors' baser instincts. Trump, Putin, Johnson, Bolsonaro, Modi and the Gantz/Netanyahu coalition fall into this category; the more liberal - and male - prime minister of South Korea has handled the emergency well, in the face of difficulties which have not challenged the others.

Carrie Gracie, BBC's former China editor, has obtained an interview with Hong Kong microbiologist Prof Yuen Kwok-yung which confirmed that Chinese politicians suppressed information about Covid-19 ascertained by the country's scientific experts. In her Guardian article, she draws attention to a three-week period in which, according to Prof Andrew Tatem of the University of Southampton: “If the same interventions that were put in place on 23 January had been put in place on 2 January, we may have seen a 95% reduction in the number of cases.”

Given that we now know that a few well-off citizens of Wuhan must have carried the virus to France and Italy on their holiday tours in early winter (and business travel might have triggered the outbreaks in Iran) before it was even noticed in China, that 95% may be slightly on the high side. However, it shows the dangers of blinkered politicians' ignoring clear evidence from their country's scientists. The USA and UK have ostensibly more open societies. Yet President Trump and Prime Minister Johnson failed to act on the knowledge which was already in the public domain in January. Johnson delayed not for three weeks but for two full months and it could be argued that Trump and Republican state governors have not properly taken scientific evidence on board yet.

The UK applied lock-down, then face-covering and is only now quarantining incoming travellers from Covid-19 hot-spots. It was the wrong way round. If quarantine or at the very least, testing and tracing, had started from early January as it had in Taiwan (whose citizens were already conditioned to face-covering at any hint of widespread respiratory disease) then a nationwide and economically-damaging lock-down might have been averted.