Daniel Hannan Picks a Number: A Problem of Density and Virus

Where the rest of the United Kingdom, including even papers like the Mail, have been guarded, nervous about unlocking a Covid19 lockdown, there's one paper that has been surging ahead in wanting things opened up.

The Telegraph.

Asa Bennett is just one article away from telling us that staying indoors is for snowflakes, and the lesson we should learn from the Bubonic Plague is that dying is for wimps. Janet Daly has always been clear that it's basically just a bit of a cough and we shouldn't go panicking. And Daniel Hannan has been demanding we release lockdown since a few days after it started. With exciting, go-getting headlines such as "If Sweden succeeds, lockdowns will all have been for nothing", "It's time to start loosening the lockdown" and, on 28 March, "This unprecedented curtailment of our freedom must end as soon as possible". Which we'd all agree with, with the reasonable caveat, "as long as it's not going to kill half a million people."

Death-Defying Daniel has a special place in his heart for Sweden's approach. And yesterday's column is a gem. Hannan has realised that you can con the British public over Brexit by waving your hands and shouting "opportunity" and "project fear". But faced with an actual threat outside our doors, we react by doing what we're told and being very careful. Now Daniel Hannan yesterday used some statistics to prove we should get out and start dying for the country.

I don't want to suggest that this was deliberate. But on the other hand, the following is what happens when you pick the stats you want, to fit the outcome you've already defined. He says this, proving that we should unlock because not too many Swedes are dead yet:

"Stockholm is more densely populated than London".

Yeah, I was surprised, too. In my head, London is a teeming metropolis, while Stockholm is more kind of Brighton, only with better social provisions. So I went to Wikipedia to check - well, you do, don't you?

So first up - which areas am I comparing? Problem. For Stockholm, Wikipedia gives population data for the municipality, the urban area, and the metropolitan area. Since the London "metropolitan area" includes places like Dunstable, and I've no idea where in Sweden is like Dunstable, let's go with the first two.

•  Capital city 974,073
•  Density 5,200/km2 (13,000/sq mi)

•  Urban 1,605,030
•  Urban density 4,200/km2 (11,000/sq mi)

For Greater London, I suppose I could compare the Ceremonial County, or the EU region. I've gone with the region, which is very slightly bigger as it contains odds and sods like the City of London. And the corresponding figure is 

• Population 8,546,761
• Density 5,437/km2 (14,080/sq mi)

So if you take a whole city, London is more densely populated than Stockholm.

But I think what's actually being compared here is the most densely populated area. On this, Stockholm does beat London. I assume Daniel Hannan has been looking at this Guardian summary 

On this basis, a chunk of West London comes in at 20,477 people per square kilometre, while Stockholm comes in at  26,120. So yeah, there is definitely a square kilometre where Stockholm is denser. But consider that the most densely populated square kilometre in Athens is denser again (28,880 people per square kilometre) and yet Greece, despite - or because of - a health service in a far worse state than ourselves or Sweden, avoided issues by not thinking it was special, not taking it on the chin, and protecting its people. 

And consider that is just one square kilometre. London has 1,569 of the things. And there's far more densely populated ones of those in London than there are in Stockholm - hence the overall figures. For instance:  

• Islington 16,097
• Tower Hamlets 16,057
• Hackney 14,681
• Kensington and Chelsea 12,884
• Lambeth 12,157

Between them, just those five boroughs have a higher population than Stockholm. 

So unless I'm missing something - which I may be - the statement "Stockholm is more densely populated than London" is true. As long as you very carefully pick which bit of Stockholm you are talking about. As I say, if you know what you want to prove, you can find the figures to do it.

It's also worth nothing that the Swedes aren't just running around hugging each other and generally holding Coronavirus parties. The people are to a large degree locking themselves down wherever possible, because Swedes don't like dying either. Given it's one of the most atheistic cities on earth, after all, they probably feel they have more to lose. The city is closing down bars that break the personal distancing rules. And incidentally, after people plugging that Stockholm would be reaching herd immunity soon, the evidence that's coming in suggests that it's actually just a quarter of the way there.

Incidentally, as well as being more densely populated than Sweden, four times more Londoners go on the underground each day than their Swedish friends. And I think we can all agree that cramming people into metal tubes that travel quite slowly is a very efficient way of spreading virus.

There's a nice little line in Daniel Hannan's piece: 

"One of the small ironies of the debate is that many people who spent three years decrying the idea of British exceptionalism as a Europhobe fantasy now find themselves arguing that we must remain in lockdown for longer than Continental countries." 

Yes, that's very ironic. Because if we hadn't had the Europhobic fantasy that we were different to everyone else, we'd have locked down when we had the warnings, our Prime Minister wouldn't have run round hospitals shaking people's hands, Dominic Cummings wouldn't have discovered that the trouble with "herd immunity" is that he and people he loves are part of the herd, we wouldn't have spent 3 weeks thinking we could "take it on the chin", we wouldn't think singing "Happy Birthday to You" was a protective chant, and we'd probably be loosening lockdown by now with a level of infection that we could track and trace, and with maybe 20,000 more people alive than we now have. Ironic, indeed.

Let me put it this way. If this really were a war, Daniel Hannan wants to be General Melchett. And he wants you to be Blackadder and Baldrick for him. Yeah, a few of us may die, not that he wants that. But overall, it will be better for the country. Better work on that Charlie Chaplin impression. There's no evidence that sticking your pants on your head and going "Wibble" helps. 

**Late Edit** 

I find that Daniel Hannan told us in February that Covid19 was unlikely to be as lethal as a normal influenza. Albeit he does say he's not an epidemiologist, immunologist or pathologist. It's OK, Daniel. We guessed that. 

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