How in the Coronavirus World are you?

Who's over COVID19? Who's had enough of masks, comical fist bump/handshakes, while going stir-crazy with caged-up kids and other halves? The trouble is, this pesky strain of Coronavirus won't go away quietly. To defeat it, we the human race have to get the number of COVID19 cases to zero. Yes zero. Everywhere. 

The thing about viruses is that they don't do border control. They spread faster than toupees in a hurricane. The Spanish Flu of 1918 reached remote islands within months, without the aid of modern air travel. In fact, all it needed to travel was air itself. So, it's down to us to stop COVID19 from returning again and again, like an unwelcome uncle who seems to crash permanently on your sofa.

The really tricky thing about COVID19 is that the total number of cases isn’t known. Only cases confirmed by a Coronavirus test are actually known. Databases are being built so that visualisations of the curve can explain if we humans are making progress. The only way to get to zero, is to be a hero and carry on following the Coronavirus protocol.

Of course, there are heroes and zeros when it comes to countries and testing. If you’re Australian, South Korean or Slovakian then you can breathe a little easier, as your governments test a lot. If you’re Brazilian, Mexican or Pakistani, not so much, as you guys do very little testing and therefore don’t know how many confirmed cases you actually have on your hands.

The real danger to countries who test very little is that cases of COVID19 go unreported. Some of their citizens are in effect walking time bombs. Governments are left in the dark because the number of confirmed cases might only be a fraction of actual cases.

For a country to make a dent in the armoury of COVID19, the trajectory of their daily number of cases needs to curve towards zero. For countries who test a lot, the likelihood of having undetected cases is smaller. In an ideal world, the aim of every country should be to test in relation to the severity of its outbreak. Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world.

The Slovaks, Thais, Kiwis, South Koreans and of course, the Germans monitored the outbreak properly from the start or caught up rapidly after the initial outbreak. Over time they were able to bend the curve, bringing down the number of confirmed cases. The Austrians, Icelanders, Slovenians, Tunisians and Latvians also have done pretty well. Bravo! Bleib sicher!

Unfortunately, if you’re Brazilian, Mexican, American, British, Swedish, Indian, Pakistani, South African or Nigerian, your government isn’t testing in relation to the size of its outbreak. The curves of these countries aren’t getting remotely near to zero and I’m afraid to say, you’ve got a higher chance of actually contracting COVID19. Sad but true.

If we’re all going to come out of this global pandemic still breathing, we need to tackle COVID19 on a global level, not a local one. To be safe anywhere on the planet ever again, every region, every continent, every suburb needs to make progress against the pandemic. Which means getting every nation’s curve to hit zero. Currently, the human race is a country mile from that target. Stay safe people.x