Swine flu

Imagine if a vaccine for Covid-19 was approved tomorrow, and that within weeks we had all been vaccinated. Would life be able to go quickly back more or less to normal? Don’t bet on it. The long shadow of Covid-19 will mean mass panic every time another novel virus comes to light. Indeed, news of such a virus comes today in a paper by a team from China’s Agricultural University published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They say they have identified a flu virus with pandemic potential, which is circulating in the pig population and has already infected significant numbers of humans who work with pigs. Crucially, however, it has not yet demonstrated any ability to be passed from human to human.

Life is a risky business. Danger is everywhere. In New York, even the pigeons are a threat. A friend recalled a graduate school class in which he was told that some 20 people each year die from diseases contracted from pigeon dung. Twenty people! Why hasn’t Mayor de Blasio confiscated all the pigeons? Banned people from walking on the same streets where the pigeons congregate? Enforce a regimen of 'social distancing' among the birds? As of this afternoon, there are about 5,000 reported cases of the Wuhan flu in the US. Ninety-five people in this country have died from it. Ninety-five. Twenty-five of those, more than a quarter of the total, are associated with one place, the Life Care Center of Kirkland, Washington, a long-term, critical care facility.