Discipline is vital during a crisis 

It has been said the UK and the US for all intents and purposes are virtually one and the same and yet completely different. And it is often also said that you can tell a nations character during its time of true crisis. 

A great example of this was during the tsunami of 2004 in Thailand whereby the country all came together and everyone sacrificed what they could not only to help friends and neighbours but also foreigners that were there visiting their lands. 

Well here we are in the middle of our very own crisis and it has become apparently clear what the British people are made of. People forget that literally one month before the crisis hit, Britain was still fairly divided by political ideology. But if you ask most British people now they are very much behind their political leaders as they admit mistakes have been made but they are pulling out all of the stops to do the best they can for the British public. A recent survey showed that trust in the Government, the NHS and the emergency services as a whole including police are at an all-time high. In fact, the only group that has received terrible ratings are the media who have at every step of the way bungled their attempts to belittle the Government continuing to play their silly petty games which there obviously is no desire nor appetite for during these times. 

There are of course some realities that the British public is fully aware of such as the actual average amount of deaths at this time of year without COVID-19 is around 10,000 to 11,000 per week and we are only slightly above this even with the high number of deaths from the disease, the fact that the UK Government was very slow to react to the impacts of the coming disease, the very high death rate as compared to Germany or some other developed wealthy nations, and yet the British people have all set aside all of their own feelings and are all seen to be pulling together as one. 

The US, on the other hand, has only ramped up its rhetoric and political divisions plus many of its citizens believe they have some special inalienable rights and therefore these rights supersede any common sense approach to the crisis. Although to be fair the situation in America is much more nuanced than I just mentioned, with each State reacting in its own way, the way their health care system works and plenty more. 

I myself am in two minds about the correct response whether or not to shut down the entire economy as a way to stop the spread which is showing to be working although it is a very slow and long drawn out response that is passive in its nature. 

The country’s that have been most successful in beating the virus ie fewer deaths and stopped the spread of the disease are the country’s that implemented ‘contact tracing’ and then locked down the infected people so as not to spread the virus. 

What is ‘contact tracing’? Let’s take South Korea as an example as they were very well prepared for this pandemic having made mistakes and learnt from them from the first SARS 1 outbreak. 

Contact tracing is whereby if a patient, let's call them patient zero, shows up with symptoms for the disease and then has a positive test result, by using technology the medical services can trace back within the past 10 days who patient zero has been in direct contact with. The medical teams can then visit these individuals find out who they have been in contact with and ask them to self isolate for 14 days, providing them with all the necessary items they need during their lockdown. This method is superbly effective in shutting down the spread of the virus quickly and with the least amount of damage to the economy as possible. The other fact is that nearly the entire population of South Korea wore face masks. Ok, so why is contact tracing so effective? It is thought that in a normal population the Ro (spread rate) of the virus is 2 to 3, meaning one person will infect 2 to 3 other people. So one person infects 3 people, those 3 infect 3 more making 9 people infected, then those 9 infect 3 people each making 36 infected and so on leading to exponential growth. Another factor with the SARS-CoV 2 virus is that it takes anywhere from 4 days to 7 days for people to show any symptoms for the disease, therefore, it can spread without even people knowing, so wearing face masks is essential for those with the virus to NOT spread it. And the last point is as we mentioned the Ro is 2-3 but it takes on average 4 days to infect these  other 3 people, so by carrying out contact tracing medical services can shut down the spread of the virus very quickly. There are some delicate issues with contact tracing though as we shall see. 

Constantly the media pushes the Government on its testing facility and why it is still not testing as much as other countries. My question to this is why? What is the point of testing everyone if you are not going to do anything with the tests? Ok, it may give you more insight into the spread and the actual death rate but what good is that at stopping the virus if you only test people and then when they’re really sick they go into hospital anyway? 

You may answer well at least health workers will know if they have it or not. And? 

The test is to test for the Coronavirus not antibodies, therefore what good does it do to know whether you have the virus or not there is little that will be done about it. 

The only real point of testing people should be to carry out effective contact tracing but, and here’s the actual crux of it, the smart sophisticated people of our wonderful country are afraid that the Government will be able to track their every move and big brother will always be watching them. Really, like they are not already doing that? Have you got an Amazon Echo device?  Or do you own an Apple phone or any android device that knows more about you than you know about yourselves? Do not be so naive as to think that everything you do cannot be traced or tracked at every single stage. How do you think social media marketing works? 

Therefore It’s a simple choice; turn on a simple app (you will have that control) that allows contact tracing in times of crisis, such as now, and stop the need to close down the entire economy and ruin millions of people’s lives or don’t have the contact tracing facility and let’s shut down the entire economy, lose trillions of pounds in wealth and suffer for years to come because that is the option that we have. 

During my time in the Royal Marines, there were multiple times when we had to follow dubious orders that at times were downright dangerous to our lives and yet we did what we were expected to do and if it was completely outrageous to speak to the company sergeant or sergeant major and trust him to take it up with the powers that be. But we still performed our duty. Did we know certain things were not correct? Yes. Did we blindly allow ourselves to be brainwashed? No. But because of our training and self-discipline, we did the necessary deed. And that is exactly what the British public is doing now. Are there certain things that could be done better? Yes, most probably but they can wait until we are through this all standing side by side in it together as one nation. This should be an example for the media and the US to take a look when this is all over and done with and really think about. 

I for one am quite proud of the British people and how we have held our reserve. This is the self-discipline as a nation that we have within us and this is what can help us to push us forward into whatever comes next and hold strong safe in the knowledge we, our generation went through a very tough situation and held firm and stood proud side by side. I write this on St Georges day of all days so “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”