The need for speed: can we outpace Covid?

The Spanish flu pandemic a century ago resulted in around 50 million deaths worldwide. Its second wave was over ten times more deadly than its first. History is repeating, with the global death toll from Covid-19 this second winter already three times that of the first. In the UK, the number of deaths in this second wave is close to double the number we suffered in the first wave.

The death toll in the first wave, while tragic, is somewhat understandable. A deadly pandemic came out of the blue, and we had to work out the best way of responding. But we cannot use this excuse to explain the higher death toll in our second wave, as we have had months to prepare this time. Of course, part of the reason for the higher death toll is that our second wave is over a full winter, unlike the first waves that started in March in the UK for both Covid-19 and the Spanish flu a century ago. But another reason is that the virus just operates much faster than most of our responses to it.

One way of looking at this difference in speeds is to use an analogy with ‘dog years’. It is often said that a human year is the equivalent to seven ‘dog years’. Covid-19 can deliver the growth and evolution in a year that has taken the human race hundreds of years. A human year might therefore be the equivalent of hundreds of ‘virus years’, as the virus operates hundreds of times faster.

But our difficulties in dealing with the virus are made much worse because our response is dependent on our social-political system — which operates in ‘government years’. ‘Government years’ are much slower than human years because of, for instance, the need to build consensus across departments and political groups, and to ensure decisions are documented robustly in case of a future inquiry.

Around the world, some governments, especially tyrannies, have managed to operate faster; and some confederations, such as the EU, have operated even slower than usual government years.