Covid-19 and war: Two fractions of a similar problem

In Melbourne, schools have re-opened fully with requirements for regular state-sponsored Covid-19 rapid antigen testing and masks indoors, along with use of air purifiers andoutdoor learning spaces.

One of our weekly family rituals now includes antigen testing on Thursday and Sunday evenings. The boys treat the process as a race to see whose test develops the control (C)line first. It is a nice way to destigmatize an otherwise daunting reality, that we live in timesof constant Covid-esque danger. Seeing the ‘C’ line reassures me that we ran the testcorrectly, then 15 minutes later, the lack of a test (T) line allows me to breathe an invisible sigh of relief.

Equally, a daily morning ritual for me consists of completing a Wordle, a Quordle, looking up daily Covid-19 case numbers then calculating the test positivity rate based on PCR testing.

Now that case numbers in Australia include antigen testing, total case numbers are less informative because negative antigen test results are not reported. To gauge virus’s presence in the community, proportions are more useful. To calculate a proportion one needs the denominator of total test results returned, regardless of positivity.

My son observed me doing this calculation today and was surprised that a smaller number could divide a larger number. I explained that it is like the fractions he is learning at school. If we divided the community (proxied by number of tests) into 100 slices of pie, the percentage tells us how many of those slices have Covid-19. As long as the slices of pie with Covid-19 continues to drop, we are on the right track.

Of course, the number of slices of pies today with most adults in the community being vaccinated with two or three doses of Covid- 19 vaccines is not the same flavor as they were two years ago when people were completely vulnerable to a new and mysterious virus. The Covid-19 waves in vaccinated communities take the form of a bad cold, fevers and body aches, and of course self-regulated isolation, which ends within a week.

Still, the fraction of people who still require oxygen and hospitalization cannot be trivialized (approximately one slice of the community pie)—is enough to push healthcare systems into overload if some level of action to contain the rapidness of the virus spreading is not taken.

Melbourne is now apparently on the other side of a brutal Omicron outbreak that began just last month, while our friends and family in Malaysia are currently waiting to climb and surpass its daunting peak. But one thing we know about viruses is they have a predictable lifecycle, and with that cycle comes a predictable epidemic pattern. I can look at the data, calculate the fractions and make sense of the pandemic. I can reassure myself and equally be on the alert, by interpreting these epidemic numbers conveyed by public health authorities.

Human aggression on the other hand is far less predictable, more erratic, and utterly incomprehensible at times.

In a world where too many headlines are either about Covid-19 or inane Twitter feeds, news of a large-scale invasion is not the change of tide one would ever want or expect. Reading the recent news of Russia invading Ukraine, the tables turned, and I found myself asking my 8-year-old, “Why do people want to go to war?”

He explained simply, “Maybe because they want more land? More power?”

This may be true for most wars in the past, but it today the answer is not as straightforward. The true motivations why anyone with power chooses to send their people to war may be a mystery as difficult to resolve as the true origins of a novel virus. But we could also argue, while we do not know why, signs of warning were always there for the emergence of both.

One fraction I found particularly jarring is that of all nuclear warhead stockpiles available on Earth in 2017, 45.6% belong to Russia and 42.4% belong to the United States. The numbers have drastically dropped since the peak of nuclear warfare capacity in 1986 (each country with a mind-numbing 40,000 and 20,000 warheads, respectively then) but the proportion has been fairly constant since 1975.

One of my favorite quotes about power was popularized in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. In the scene, Batman finally captures Joker and he is dangling upside down.

“This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object,” he muses, a maniacal and triumphant grin on his face.

This is the ‘irresistible paradox’, which may be far more common than previously appreciated. Pursuing poverty eradication with a capitalistic economy. Environmental conservation alongside rapid development. Nuclear-powered nations maintaining peace.

If we looked retrospectively at the tango the key dancers of a constant hot and cold war have been entwined in, it almost appears that we had a blind spot to what was always coming. The battle of ideologies like constant tsunamis bearing against a deeply staked mountain, seemingly co-existing in peace, may have been a convenient illusion we chose to believe.

The absolute number of deaths from war have significantly declined, and it is comforting to believe we are headed permanently towards a time of peace. Yet, the number and proportion of smaller conflicts within states, and starkly those with foreign intervention have actually increased. The wars may have ceased but the problems were never solved.

Looking at the data, even someone oceans away from the heart of the conflict can feel a quiet sense of dread akin to greeting an impending storm without an umbrella. And what of those who are thrown in the depths of a tango they did not sign up to dance?

Regardless of motivation and signs, what is clear is that countless innocent (or if we were to count, more than 1.8 million people in Ukraine, or approximately 4% or 4 in every 100 people of the entire population) have lost a place to call home, and at dire threat of losing their lives and loved ones.

What is clear is that such numbers and fractions cannot be accepted and must be solved. They may take place in a foreign land few of us have stepped on, but just like a viral pandemic which did not recognize the limits of national borders, the brunt of a longstanding paradox and its implications has now become everyone’s problem.