We’re publishing an original piece today by an engineer called Paul Bird in which he has tried to calculate the total loss of life due to Covid in 2020 in England and Wales. He’s done that by working out the average life expectancy within each population cohort, calculating the average loss of life among those who died ‘involving’ Covid in each cohort, and then producing a sum total: 814,264 years of life lost. He then tries to put that number in context.
It is difficult to relate to numbers like these. What do they mean?
Clearly, the overall size of the population is important. The impact of 100,000 people dying (for whatever reason) in a country of one million is rather more serious than in a country of 100 million.
The population of England and Wales in 2019 was just over 59 million, so 814,264 lost life-years is equivalent to 0.014 life-years per person, or five days.
Again, that figure is difficult to relate to. No-one wants to lose even one day of his or her life. However, the statistic does give the possibility of comparison with other things, such as the life lost to diseases and lifestyle choices we are more familiar with.
It also provides a way to gauge the proportionality of lockdown. How do the collateral harms of lockdown, which everyone is having to endure, compare to the life-time saved by lockdown? (At the time of writing it is not clear how many Covid deaths were saved by lockdown in 2020. Initial work on international comparisons suggests none at all.)
In strictly numerical terms, how does the time period five days compare to average life expectancy of 81.25 years?3 One way of visualising it would be to take a piece of string one metre long representing 81.25 years and cut off a piece representing the lifetime lost to Covid averaged over the whole population. How long would the offcut be? If you had been closely following the BBC’s coverage you might reason as follows: “Well, hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives to Covid, and there are millions of people in the country, so maybe, I guess, the offcut would be a tenth? 10 centimetres?” That dedicated viewer would be wrong. The actual length of string corresponding to five days is 168 micrometres. That is, less than a fifth of a millimetre, a bit thicker than a human hair. You’d need specialist tooling to make the cut, and the string cut off would disintegrate into individual strands which would be hard to see with the naked eye.
This is an interesting way of looking at the impact of Covid and worth reading in full.
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Interesting that the bar is called “Lola’s” – in homage no doubt to the Kinks’ song written by the great Ray Davies, even more relevant now than when it was written, 54 years ago.
Here is what Wikipedia says about the “controversy for its lyrics”:
‘In a Record Mirror article entitled “Sex Change Record: Kink Speaks”, Ray Davies addressed the matter, saying, “It really doesn’t matter what sex Lola is, I think she’s all right”. Some radio stations faded the track out before implications of Lola’s biological sex were revealed. On 18 November 1970, “Lola” was banned from being played by several radio stations in Australia because of its “controversial subject matter”, though some began playing “Lola” again after having made a crude edit, which sounded like the record had jumped a groove, to remove the line “I’m glad I’m a man and so’s Lola”.
The last line is pure genius (as is the whole song). In a tale all about gender ambiguity, the final line, “I’m glad I’m a man and so is Lola”, is brilliantly ambiguous. It can be interpreted EITHER as (a) I’m glad I’m a man and Lola is glad I’m a man, OR (b) I’m glad I’m a man and Lola is a man.
The second interpretation would now be regarded as “transphobic” by the current trans cult, but Ray Davies was so prescient that he wrote an ambiguous line with an alternative meaning which takes the wind out of the sails of any accusation of ‘transphobia’!
I met her in a club down in old Soho
Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca-Cola
C-O-L-A, cola
She walked up to me and she asked me to dance
I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice she said, “Lola”
L-O-L-A, Lola
Lo-Lo, Lo, Lo-Lola
Well, I’m not the world’s most physical guy
But when she squeezed me tight, she nearly broke my spine
Oh, my Lola
Lo-Lo, Lo, Lo-Lola
Well, I’m not dumb but I can’t understand
Why she walked like a woman, but talked like a man
Oh, my Lola
Lo-Lo, Lo, Lo-Lola
Lo-Lo, Lo, Lo-Lola
Well, we drank champagne and danced all night
Under electric candlelight
She picked me up and sat me on her knee
And said, “Little boy, won’t you come home with me?”
Well, I’m not the world’s most passionate guy
But when I looked in her eyes, well, I almost fell for my Lola
Lo-Lo, Lo, Lo-Lola
Lo-Lo, Lo, Lo-Lola
Lola
Lo-Lo, Lo, Lo-Lola
Lo-Lo, Lo, Lo-Lola
I pushed her away
I walked to the door
I fell to the floor
I got down on my knees
Then I looked at her, and she at me
Well, that’s the way that I want it to stay
And I always want it to be that way for my Lola
Lo-Lo, Lo, Lo-Lola
Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls
It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world
Except for Lola
Lo-Lo, Lo, Lo-Lola
Well, I’d left home just a week before
And I’d never ever kissed a woman before
But Lola smiled and took me by the hand
And said, “Little boy, I’m gonna make you a man”
Well, I’m not the world’s most masculine man
But I know what I am, and I’m glad I’m a man
And so is Lola
Lo-Lo, Lo, Lo-Lola
Lo-Lo, Lo, Lo-Lola
https://youtu.be/LemG0cvc4oU?si=is5SaMNm15zyv3-w