Category: International

Sweden’s approach is working

21 April: “Encouraging signs” that Sweden’s approach is working, and will work over the longer term. Sweden’s authorities proposed a liberal approach based on individual responsibility because it can be tolerated for longer and it has the effect of ‘flattening the curve’.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-swedish-experiment-looks-like-it-s-paying-off

UK Expert: lockdown now will outweigh coronavirus harm

Professor Carl Heneghan, director of the centre for evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, told Radio 4’s Today programme: “In fact, the damaging effect now of lockdown is going to outweigh the damaging effect of coronavirus.”

https://in.news.yahoo.com/lockdown-damage-outweighs-coronavirus-warning-121940675.html?

Levitt, Nobel laureatte: No evidence of large loss of life

World famous biophysicist Michael Levitt: information suggests that  this is not a particularly bad year for [virus /flu] deaths.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018743210/no-evidence-that-covid-19-is-causing-huge-loss-of-life

 

Pre-eminent intl’ epidemiologist: protect only the old and frail

Extraordinary interview with Prof. Johan Giesecke at Unherd.

  • UK policy on lockdown and other European countries are not evidence-based
  • The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only
  • This will eventually lead to herd immunity as a “by-product”
  • The initial UK response, before the “180 degree U-turn”, was better
  • The Imperial College paper was “not very good” and he has never seen an unpublished paper have so much policy impact
  • The paper was very much too pessimistic
  • Any such models are a dubious basis for public policy anyway
  • The flattening of the curve is due to the most vulnerable dying first as much as the lockdown
  • The results will eventually be similar for all countries
  • Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people.
  • The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%
  • At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available

Swedish expert: why lockdowns are the wrong policy

 

Australia and NZ: Compared

Australian chief medical officer Professor Brendan Murphy talks to NZ’s Epidemic Response Select Comittee on how long term vigilence, without lockdown, is suppressing virus impact.

https://www.facebook.com/NZParliament/videos/255297012184000

https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/national/aussie-health-chief-on-where-nz-got-lucky-around-covid-19/

Wuhan Covid-19 lockdown ends

April 11: The people of the city where the first virus was first detected are taking their first cautious steps outside after being confined for three months.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/12/wuhan-celebrates-its-liberation-as-covid-19-lockdown-ends

N.Y. Avoids Predicted Surge at Hospitals

New York virus cases

April 10: Officials had estimated that 140,000 hospital beds might be needed to treat coronavirus patients. Only about 18,500 were in use by week’s end.

https://www-nytimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus-hospitals.amp.html

Ioannidis says emerging data suggest COVID19 doesn’t warrant extreme reaction

https://youtu.be/QUvWaxuurzQ?t=2
April 3. John Ioannidis explains that emerging data on COVID-19 suggests the disease does not warrant the extreme Western response.

Ioannidis: Not enough data for big decisions

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/
March 17: John P.A. Ioannidis, professor of medicine, epidemiology, and population health, at Stanford University School of Medicine, says the public health response could be a fiasco because big decisions are being made without enough data.