22 April 2020: Gerhard Sundborn, Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland, says the Plan B group is receiving information from across New Zealand indicating the real human tragedy of lockdown is greater than the lives which may have been saved.
In a post to the Covid Plan B website, Sundborn says one piece of information from inside a district Health Board has heightened fears that suicides may have increased.
“A person in a top level DHB position has told us that the number of suicides in that region has risen, although the information is unobtainable under current rules empowering CEOs.
“Whether or not the report is accurate, the stress of lockdown-induced events will be taking a terrible toll on people and families.
“The elderly are alone, the sick are not seeking help, the newly unemployed are afraid, and people with mental health issues are without a network or health facilities to help.
“Strict conditions during the lockdown has meant families have not been able to farewell the more than 2600 other people who died this past month – that has exacerbated their grief.”
“As these tragic experiences grow, devastating families and communities, this will become a silent ‘counter-epidemic’ to Covid-19.”
Last week, think tank Koi Tū: Centre for Informed Futures, founded by former Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister Sir Peter Gluckman, released a report predicting that rates of depression, anxiety and suicide will increase because of the pandemic.
Similarly, one of New Zealand’s leading suicide prevention centres, The Taranaki Retreat, has said there is a link between the lockdown and an increased suicide risk.
The police have admitted there is an increased risk of self-harm incidents but say there is no evidence yet.
“The 13 coronavirus related deaths in New Zealand are undeniably sad. However, throughout the lockdown period, an additional 2,688 people have died from less publicised yet equally terrible illnesses.
“Staying home may be saving some lives, but it is also taking others.”
/ENDS
Contact: Gerhard Sundborn 021 100 3989
Gerhard Sundborn, Senior Lecturer Population and Pacific Health, the University of Auckland, urges us to consider that while staying home may be saving some lives, it is causing death and devastation to many more.
On Thursday 26th March in response to Covid-19, in an unprecedented action, our government enacted a state of emergency to lock our country down to prevent a purported
The modelling that generated these frightening statistics is questionable. When we look at the actual number of infections of covid-19 in New Zealand in proportion to those deaths ‘possibly’ related to covid-19 it is apparent that this modelling was incredibly misleading. Renowned Stanford University epidemiologist Professor John Ioannidis raised the notion that much of the debate and statistics around covid-19 is a “once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.”
| Deaths during the 4-week lockdown | |
| Covid-19 ‘related’ | 13 deaths |
| All other causes | 2,688 deaths |
After 28 days, 12 elderly people have sadly died in their 70s, 80s and 90s. It has not been established if they died with Covid-19 or from the virus. Although these deaths are undoubtedly sad, when viewed from the perspective of ‘years of life lost’, this is nothing like a wartime tragedy as modellers have made it out to be.
On average our country has had one Covid-19 related death every two and a half days.
Meanwhile, by comparison, across the country, two hundred and forty New Zealanders die every two and a half days from less publicised but equally tragic health conditions such as: heart disease, cancers, suicide, diabetes, pneumonia, respiratory infections, the flu and old age. Over the four week ‘lockdown’ period to date approximately 2,688 New Zealanders have died from other causes.
Like the twelve Covid-19 related deaths, these 2,688 non-Covid related deaths are not merely statistics. They are individuals – our mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, brothers, sisters and friends. Each loss of life is heartbreaking for those left behind.
Regrettably, the strict conditions imposed during this ‘lockdown’ has meant that for those 2,688 + 12 individuals who have departed – children have not been able to farewell dying parents in hospitals, dying people have not been surrounded by their loved ones during their final days, and funerals have taken place in empty funeral halls with no more than a lonesome widow by the departed one’s casket. These unconscionable conditions are outlined on a pandemic response funeral management plan prescribed by our Ministry of Health and based on a scenario that 32,000 deaths had occurred, which was last updated in 2012.
Within our Tongan community, a friend explained that already his family has endured these restrictions in the passing of four family members on separate occasions since the lockdown began. No doubt, for the close family and friends of each of the 2,688 and 12 deaths during this period – additional stress, depression, and grief is likely to be experienced long into the future as a consequence of not being able to celebrate their loved one’s life with the dignity and respect deserved. Where is the dignity and humanity afforded to anyone or family in such circumstances?
Dr Elana Curtis, Associate Professor in Māori Health has described similar experiences in her Māori community and speaks to the “terror being unleashed on my people”, specifically relating to tangi.
A workmate explained to me her frustrations with this ‘lockdown’ as her first grandchild was expected and she was primed to support her daughter during such a special time. These plans had been derailed. The emotional anguish was clear and understandably so.
My grandmother is 93 and lives in a retirement village close by. Her memory is vague these days and she is thought to have a mild case of Alzheimer’s dementia. She has been accustomed to seeing her family every day or two, does not like to socialise with others and is becoming increasingly agitated, lonely, and confused. She often asks why we have not visited and has spoken of ‘what is the use of being around if I can’t see my family’ even going as far as saying she should end it all. Along with this, our team has received reports of increased rates of suicides from District Health Board members. It was distressing to hear of the 93-year-old man from the Kapiti Coast who developed panic attacks and eventually died as a result of social isolation measures, rather than from the virus. My fear is that my grandmother is giving up and may well die of loneliness and despair before we can see her again, hold her hand, comfort her with idle chat over a cup of tea, a smile or a hug.
The question must be asked how many more of these ‘silent casualties’ is the lockdown responsible for?
While these are anecdotes, our team has received e-mails from District Health Board members who state that suicides have increased during the lockdown. As Treasury forecasts increasing unemployment of up to 26%, this is not unexpected, since evidence shows that suicide risk triples in frequency during similar circumstances.
These silent deaths and silent tragedies combine with growing evidence that the health risk of the pandemic has been exaggerated, to suggest that staying home is saving some lives but taking others.
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
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?
A group of health experts who believe the Government’s lockdown response has been too harsh say… They’re concerned the Government is getting all its scientific advice from an echo chamber as it prepares to decide our immediate future on Monday.
World famous biophysicist Michael Levitt: information suggests that this is not a particularly bad year for [virus /flu] deaths.
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
After sparking the first serious debate in New Zealand about the best way of beating Covid-19, Simon Thornley, a member of the Plan B group, explains why he has hope for a safe and swift exit.
There are two approaches offering hope for beating Covid-19.
The Government says the threat is terrible, so elimination is necessary, and that will require a long period of management.
The public health professionals in our group say the threat is major for a small number of people, but we can and must protect them, that the virus wave is abating and immunity growing, and that means we can exit early. Fortunately, that also means hundreds of thousands of people can be saved from economic disaster.
The data shows that internationally and here, the threat of Covid-19 is abating. History will tell us whether this was from lockdown, or immunity growing. That doesn’t matter now, because the data points to the same conclusion: we can shift into what our government calls Level 2.
The major threat is not Covid-19, but the talk of eliminating it and hanging on for a vaccine.
Waiting for a vaccine sounds like soldiers telling each other that their misery will be over by Christmas. But Christmas comes and they are still in the trenches.
As an epidemiologist, I know that vaccines often don’t arrive. I remember the first time I heard that a vaccine for rheumatic fever was five years away. That was ten years ago. There still isn’t one.
Elimination is an impressive goal. We will be the first country in the world to achieve it. But I’m not sure people appreciate what that requires. It is only viable if every person who gets Covid-19 is identified, tested, isolated and quarantined. That’s hard, because at least half of people with Covid-19 don’t know they’ve got it.
I found this out in the recent Auckland measles outbreak. Much of the community were immune, and cases presented in typical fashion. It didn’t end because we stopped it, but because the disease burnt out. People who were susceptible to measles developed immunity, until the disease could no longer spread. For measles, we had additional weapons at our disposal too: we had a reliable test for immunity and a vaccination.
COVID-19 is sneakier than measles. Iceland found out that about half of test-positive cases had no symptoms. Almost 1% of the community tested positive. If the same were true in New Zealand, 50,000 people would now have the virus.
To eliminate the virus we have to find every person and quarantine them to prevent further spread. We’re a small country. We could do it.
But is it worthwhile if population immunity is doing the job? The finding of widespread immunity was an important landmark in the fight against swine flu in 2009. The disease was not as serious as first thought – and immunity was high enough to halt the spread of the virus. A German study showed that in one town, 14% were immune, while 2% had active infection. A similar US study reported that about 3% were immune.
In New Zealand, we don’t know the level of immunity to Covid-19. Perhaps our immunity levels are already high and the virus is being eliminated ‘naturally’. Like swine flu, we need to test for immunity before we take on the Herculean task of eliminating it.
Our hope is that immunity is occurring, because that means New Zealand can exit swiftly. Unfortunately, there are signals that it’s not happening as fast as elsewhere.
Since New Zealand started lockdown, active infections have declined from their peak by 22%, whereas Australia has fallen more steeply (44%).
Since the lockdown, cumulative per capita cases have grown at a greater rate in New Zealand compared to most Australian states (Figure 1). Infected cases have progressively declined for the last three weeks in Australia. Australia has had a much looser definition of lockdown, with 90% of the economy continuing to operate, compared to about 50% here.
This is similar to other countries which have soldiered on, albeit with “distance” practices, such as Sweden, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Iceland, and South Korea.
Let’s address again the threat posed by the virus.
In a conservative estimate, Cambridge statistician David Spiegelhalter noticed that age-related mortality rates from the virus in Wuhan closely matched annual mortality rates in the British population.
His conclusion was that getting the virus is like squeezing one year’s mortality risk into two weeks or so – the duration of the illness.
Whether we like it or not, people aged more than 80 years have a one in ten chance of dying each year – that is similar to their chance of dying with COVID-19.
Yes, there have been “thousands of deaths” as the headlines claim – but these are not unexceptional. Overall mortality is indeed high in Europe because Covid-19 does compromise health, but no higher than observed during the 2016/17 influenza season.
This gives hope that, with our lower population density, the virus is not going to overburden our health system – which was one of the main drivers for the lockdown.
The threat of economic disaster scares me personally just as much as the threat of the virus initially scared me professionally. Rising unemployment, business closure and State benefits remind me of my childhood, deeply affected by Dad’s unemployment and consequential mental health.
My hope is that other kids don’t have to experience what I did. The data shows we don’t need to wait until Christmas – we can emerge from our trenches now.
Simon Thornley, Senior Lecturer Epidemiology and Biostatistics, The University of Auckland.
Note: Figure 1. Cumulative cases (PCR positive) of COVID-19 per million, by days since lockdown, comparing New Zealand with Australian states.
Source: Australian and New Zealand Government statistics.
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