The advent of the Coronavirus

A running journal from the first weeks of lockdown, Lausanne, March 2020.

The advent of the Coronavirus is so difficult to comprehend. Three weeks ago, it was a local outbreak of flu that affected one city in China, far, far away from where we live. Now our lives are significantly perturbed by its spread. On the most abstract level, it shows how difficult it is for us to understand exponential growth, where each person can infect n number of others, and these can each infect n more. Depending on how fast this goes, it really does not take long for a huge segment of the population to be exposed. Say, if each person infects 2 others per day starting with one person, then in one week, it is 128 people, and in one month it is 1,070,000,000 people. Of course factors such as isolation and common sense make the real number much lower, but it is terrifying nonetheless. This social distancing really helps, though: if we get the numbers down to, say, 1.5 people per day, then after a month it is only 190,000 people infected, or about 5000 times less. Rather, the spread becomes much, much slower, so that the system isn’t overloaded.

More concretely, all the classes are either cancelled or moved to an online platform. We were just told today that we should work from home unless going to work is necessary. The Swiss federal government has advised all residents to not travel. All of that does not really matter that much except that I want to see you. The uncertainty makes planning all the harder, since I don’t know if I will be detained in the UK or you would in Switzerland.

I realize the virus is affecting people far more severely than it does me. I don’t really understand the rationale behind stocking up and hoarding food. Perhaps I don’t really understand how things work, but don’t people eat the same amount? Same goes for toilet paper, the supply and demand hasn’t changed. I would have thought only things like hand sanitizers and soaps would actually run out because people wash their hands a lot more frequently. But they surely don’t wipe their butts more? I suppose it is possible for the supply to dwindle as the producers all get sick.

Though the fact of the matter is, this is a virus. On a longer time scale, we know exactly what will happen. By June it will have peaked, and then all will go back to normal. Sure pandemics like this don’t happen often, but it is worrying because a lot of large scale changes will happen to the world in our life time. We are more fortunate than most, and can weather changes better. But things like climate change can and will significantly alter how we behave. It isn’t necessarily bad, and I know that together we can solve any problem.

So is all this panicky behavior psychological in nature?

You know how sometimes you hear a song, you get this warm fuzzy feeling, reminding you of the past. Just the past in general, and not even any particular moments. Dilemma by Nelly does that for me. My high school years when I first arrived in Canada, this song was on the radio 24/7.

Oh also, the reason why the water turns red is because the exposed aloe gets oxidized. The same thing causes apples to turn color after you leave one bitten out for a while.

Switzerland just introduced new measures, elevating the overall social panic around the virus.

I kept on thinking about the tendency for people to start hoarding unnecessary things in great quantities. I went for a walk around Lausanne this morning and the city does seem quite a bit more empty than usual. Everyone seems to be keeping their distance (I didn’t shower this morning, so maybe I just stink). I anticipate that most people will start feeling the psychological effect of this isolation sooner or later. Depending on how long it lasts, this can create a certain problem, at least for the segment of population who are more likely to be depressed (e.g. the elderly).

I am sure this has been studied extensively from a psychological perspective, but since the virus seems to be on everyone’s mind, let’s look at it from a virological point of view. A person may get physically ill, then after a while they get better. Eventually they return to their healthy state. Analogously, a person may get sad, or experience depression, and get better.

Conversely, a person may experience elevated levels of happiness when something good happens. This phenomenon has no analogy in the physical sense, at least in an acute way. We cannot all of a sudden become more healthy than we are.

Transmission of disease, through contact, or exchange of fluids, or blood, etc. In these physical mechanisms, we can identify the carrier (e.g. saliva). But if we are situated in a group of sad people, or in a society where everyone is borderline panicking about an epidemic, we get affected psychologically and begin to feel the same way. People casually refer to this as contagious, or infectious. Though we usually reserve those words for happy occasions, e.g. her laughter is infectious. My hypothesis is, the rate of one’s infectious laughter can be quantified. Just like the closer you are to an infected person, the more likely you will be infected (hence the 2 meter guideline), some “artificial” mechanism infects the perceiver of the laughter, and makes them happy too.

In extreme cases, physical damage can be attributed to mass hysteria. [1] We ought to be able to view it as the spread of a psychological infection.

[1] Tam, Theresa (2 March 2020). "Women charged after Sydney supermarket toilet roll row". twitter. Retrieved 13 March 2020.

I have been staying with Jung and Stefan for the past week to stave off the surge of loneliness that was surely to come at some point. I suppose it is another curve that needs to be flattened.

The lab is meeting regularly over Zoom and reporting on the progress of research. It almost seems as if we are all merely working from home by choice. I start to wonder why it is that we are able to more or less function, not just as human beings but as researchers.

Is it because we are more able to focus when there is work at hand, or are more analytical people inherently less feeling?

I suppose with most traumatic events, a lot of people seem to be in denial, or willfully ignorant of the virus’ relentless assault. Others are in full panic mode where they hoard things that they probably don’t even need.

From my perspective, this outbreak is quite textbook. Mathematically speaking, exponential growth is the expected outcome when the infected can carry on to infect others. It is also expected for people to behave the way they do. So I am not surprised when the supermarkets get emptied, or that people suffer. It is hard for me to assign an emotion to that suffering.

That is not to say I don’t want to help. I do, as a matter of fact, but I just don’t get emotionally distraught.

It has been a week since we were told to work from home. The exponential growth of total infected has shown little sign of abating anytime soon. I am fortunate to be amongst friends, and able to work remotely.

All of the news has been focused on COVID-19. Logically I know going out and keeping my distance from people, I will not get infected. But the whole time I’ve been out, I always get the feeling of fear, of what-ifs.

It gets harder when there are additional obstacles in my way. Even little things like the coffee machine smelling burnt. It gets compounded, and it is not rational, but each little thing affects me a lot. I need to start writing my application, like now.

I just read a piece by Nick Kristof on the deadly effect of loneliness. If I were to randomly be teleported to somewhere in the contiguous US, I’d most likely land in the middle of nowhere with nothing in sight for miles. But if I were to travel to the next closest inhabited place, I would witness a sense of independence and self-reliance that I will never see in Europe. This is probably born out of necessity, and it probably presents a society with a lower standard of living. In such a capitalist society, human lives have no intrinsic value, and the only value we provide is as drivers of the never stopping economic engine. As logic would dictate, some humans are left behind as the train of economy roars on. The onslaught of rejection and failure becomes more and more relentless, and one’s psyche more distraught.

In a futile attempt to relive fonder memories, we resort to drugs and alcohol, to violence and destruction, only to further descend into a bottomless pit of misery. I am in one of my more contemplative moods.

new word of the day: conterminous