Covid Plan BA CDC study found that wearing a mask made no difference to catching Covid19.
71% of case-patients (ie. infected) and 74% of control-participants (not infected) reported always using cloth face coverings or other mask types when in public.
The CDC didn’t highlight this finding, but the finding that people who caught Covid19 were twice as likely to have gone out to eat or drink.
The cost of lockdown was missed diagnosis, possibly leading to illnesses going unidentified.
A study of a Dunedin primary care clinic found that during lockdown tests and referrals fell by almost 100%. It was likely not quite this bad across the country, but the MoH won’t report the data.
Referrals 2019: 17 2020: 0.
Lab tests 2019: 61 2020: 1.
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/gp-contact-referrals-affected-lockdown-study
Big Question answered: It turns out that the antibodies you make when you get Covid19 protect you for at least five month, like most other viruses. This doesn’t include the T-cells and other immunity variations that also protect us.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-sars-cov-antibodies-immunity.html
Abstract: To estimate the infection fatality rate of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) from data of seroprevalence studies. Methods Population studies with sample size of at least 500 and published as peer-reviewed papers or preprints as of July 11, 2020 were retrieved from PubMed, preprint servers, and communications with experts. Studies on blood donors were included, but studies on healthcare workers were excluded. The studies were assessed for design features and seroprevalence estimates. Infection fatality rate was estimated from each study dividing the number of COVID-19 deaths at a relevant time point by the number of estimated people infected in each relevant region. Correction was also attempted accounting for the types of antibodies assessed. Secondarily, results from national studies were also examined from preliminary press releases and reports whenever a country had no other data presented in full papers of preprints. Results 36 studies (43 estimates) were identified with usable data to enter into calculations and another 7 preliminary national estimates were also considered for a total of 50 estimates. Seroprevalence estimates ranged from 0.222% to 47%. Infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 1.63% and corrected values ranged from 0.00% to 1.31%. Across 32 different locations, the median infection fatality rate was 0.27% (corrected 0.24%). Most studies were done in pandemic epicenters with high death tolls. Median corrected IFR was 0.10% in locations with COVID-19 population mortality rate less than the global average (<73 deaths per million as of July 12, 2020), 0.27% in locations with 73-500 COVID-19 deaths per million, and 0.90% in locations exceeding 500 COVID-19 deaths per million. Among people <70 years old, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.57% with median of 0.05% across the different locations (corrected median of 0.04%). Conclusions The infection fatality rate of COVID-19 can vary substantially across different locations and this may reflect differences in population age structure and case-mix of infected and deceased patients as well as multiple other factors. Estimates of infection fatality rates inferred from seroprevalence studies tend to be much lower than original speculations made in the early days of the pandemic.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v3
Irish doctors call for living with the virus with a “proportionate de-escalation of the current exclusive focus on Covid-19 to the exclusion of all other health and wellbeing needs of our Irish society”.
The frontline doctors in the group say they feel more confident about managing the disease now and believe “we can effectively co-exist with the virus”. They say current “unilaterally enforced national strategy” has not evolved in step with improve scientific understanding since the spring.
“We are in effect managing this as a ‘crisis’, from day to day, level to level – as though it were March 2020 when the actual crisis was present,” according to the letter.
Other signatories include surgeon Martin Feeley, who resigned as clinical director of the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group last month after criticising the country’s approach to tackling the virus; one-time contraception campaigner Dr Andrew Rynne, who spoke at an anti-lockdown and anti-mask march in Dublin earlier this month; and retired GP and Aontú councillor in Derry, Dr Anne McCloskey, who has compared using masks to stop the spread of the virus to “using a sheep fence to keep out mosquitoes”.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/doctors-letter-calls-for-new-strategy-to-co-exist-with-covid-19-1.4384968
Vulnerable people, he believes, should continue to shelter in place, and anyone living or working in a high risk setting should receive weekly COVID-19 testing and careful contact tracing. He recommends similar measures for meat packing plants, prisons and especially nursing homes, where Centers for Disease Control data shows about one-third of all deaths have occurred.
At the same time, Ioannidis is convinced that shelter in place orders are doing great harm to the rest of society.
“We know that 95% of the population has practically minimal risk,” he said, adding “It’s unlikely that in the current situation we are really saving lives. I think that probably we’re killing people by following some of these measures for forever.”
According to the American College of Emergency Physicians, 29% of Americans are avoiding or delaying medical care due to fear of catching the coronavirus.
Dominic Battel, a 38-year-old father of two, put off going to the hospital after feeling chest pains. It was a Sunday in April and he spent the day working on his house and playing with his kids. His wife, Cortney, said Dominic was afraid if he went to the hospital he would catch the coronavirus.
Stanford Professor Warns COVID Shelter-in-Place Orders Are ‘Killing People’
Iceland gives us a unique insight into Covid-19 infections since it has one of the highest per capita testing rates in the world, over 10 fold greater than New Zealand.
What’s more they are very open about the severity of cases, and the proportion that need hospital treatment and intensive care.
Iceland has also conducted community surveys of their population. This information is not publicly available in New Zealand. While tables of these figures may be useful, it is sometimes difficult to understand the sense of scale from them.
Euler diagrams scale numbers or percentages to an area of a circle or ellipse. Overlapping relationships may also be depicted. The outer circle represents the 356,000 population of the Nordic country, the grey is the roughly 44% of the population who have been tested, the blue indicates the ~4,000 people (2.5% of all tests) who returned positive. The red indicates those who required hospital treatment (~5% of test positives), with the small yellow circle indicating the 1% of test positives who were treated in intensive care.
Deaths (10 at the time of writing – meaning a case fatality ratio of 0.25%) were too small to render on the diagram.
This study, which outlines antibody testing in a sample of 30,576 people in Iceland suggests that half of all PCR + cases were detected. Therefore, the infection fatality ratio is about half of the case-fatality ratio, so about 0.125%.
This diagram illustrates that in Iceland, only ~1/20 positive Covid infections resulted in the need for hospital treatment. With the high rate of per-capita testing, this information gives us a more accurate assessment of the clinical severity of Covid-19 infection than is otherwise available from countries where testing is more directed at only people with cold or flu symptoms. The plot offers a visual sense of the burden of the virus to hospital and intensive care resources.
Iceland data (16/10/20)
12 October 2020
Media Release
The Covid Plan B group is reassured by the shift of international policy and science consensus toward what had been a dissenting position six months ago; learning to live with the virus.
Over the weekend, the WHO’s David Nabarro said that lockdowns caused more harm than good, a position advocated by Covid Plan B back in April 2020.
But early in the Covid-19 crisis, the World Health Organisation supported lockdowns to contain ‘intense transmission’ of the virus, listing six conditions that must be met to lift such measures.
In a remarkable turnaround, Dr David Nabarro has stated that “Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer”.
He also commended the Great Barrington Declaration, an internationally supported statement against lockdowns, which instead calls for a change in government policy toward focused protection of the elderly and those who are vulnerable to the virus from pre-existing medical conditions, while letting the rest of the population return to normal life.
Dr Simon Thornley, spokesman for Covid Plan B, welcomed Nabarro’s statement as “a major change from the World Health Organisation”.
“We have drawn attention to the severe and disproportionate financial costs of lockdown policies in New Zealand.
“The virus is not as deadly as first claimed, so we must adjust our policies accordingly.
“The latest estimates for the infection fatality ratio, a measure of the severity of the virus, are between 0.15 to 0.2 0%, which is concordant with the range of figures for past influenza epidemics.
“Crippling our economies and sacrificing our children’s education can no longer be justified, since the harm from these policies outweighs any benefits.
“Our health system has largely avoided severe outbreaks in hospitals and nursing homes, and this is where the focus of our response to the virus should be.”
Contact: Simon Thornley, 021 299 1752
8 October 2020
Media Release
Six months after the panicked reaction to Covid-19, dissenting scientists and the public are gaining ground internationally, coalescing this week in a show of force behind the Great Barrington Declaration, a statement for protecting the vulnerable but otherwise returning to normal.
The Covid Plan B group, which originally opposed lockdowns and the elimination goal, is a co-signatory of the Declaration. The GB Declaration is headed by Jay Bhattacharya and Sunetra Gupta, who headlined Plan B’s international symposium on Covid-19 in August. The Declaration has been signed by over 1000 biological scientists and over 1500 medical practitioners.
Dissent is now being voiced within virtually every Western nation; specially organised groups of academics and professionals have taken their critique directly to the public (eg. lockdownsceptics.org, and the German Corona Investigative Committee); and as public protest on the streets and via passive or active civil disobedience.
Simon Thornley, group spokesperson, says dissent is rising because after six months of social and economic restrictions and six months of data about the virus, the truth is now readily apparent.
“This virus does not warrant this panic and these restrictions.
“The CDC (US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention) currently says its best estimate is an average Infection Fatality Ratio of 0.65%, but for people 50 to 69 years old it’s 0.5% and for adults under 50 it’s 0.02 percent – less than the average IFR for seasonal flu.
“Yet in New Zealand, some epidemiologists still claim the IFR is closer to 1%. This figure led to predictions of 60,000 deaths in Sweden, which was wrong by a factor of ten. Yet these claims aren’t questioned and are still promoted. This bizarre situation reveals a dangerous intransigence of politicians, scientists, and commentators.”
Thornley says the first announcement of New Zealand’s next Government should be an undertaking not to go back to Level Three or Four lockdowns.
“The best approach are safe havens for those with vulnerable health conditions; ensuring good infection control in rest homes and hospitals, robust personal hygiene, and tracing, tracking and isolation of cases, including with serology tests.
Thornley said if elimination was removed as the goal, and lockdowns rejected, the group was prepared to support ‘flattening the curve’, and to enjoin the growing number of dissenters in New Zealand to adopt reasonable precautionary measures.
“The next Government just needs the courage to say ‘we all did our best, but we can’t afford to do it again’.”
/ends
Contact: Simon Thornley, 021 299 1752
Covid Plan B members have signed a global petition against Covid lockdowns, other over-reactions and urging a return to normal.
The petition was formulated by our international colleagues; Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University; Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University; and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School.
Check out the growing list of international academics and compare and contrast with the New Zealand experts advising the NZ Government.
Dr. Rodney Sturdivant, PhD. associate professor of biostatistics at Baylor University
Dr. Eitan Friedman, MD, PhD. Founder and Director, The Susanne Levy Gertner Oncogenetics Unit,
Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, MD, MPH a physician with the VA health system
Dr. Michael Levitt, PhD is a biophysicist and a professor of structural biology at Stanford University.
Dr. Eyal Shahar, MD professor (emeritus) of public health at the University of Arizona
Dr. David Katz, MD, MPH, President, True Health Initiative and the Founder and Former Director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center
Dr. Laura Lazzeroni, PhD., professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of biomedical data science at Stanford University Medical School
Dr. Simon Thornley, PhD is an epidemiologist at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Dr. Michael Jackson, PhD is an ecologist and research fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
Dr. Jonas Ludvigsson, pediatrician, epidemiologist and professor at Karolinska Institute and senior physician at Örebro University Hospital, Sweden.
Dr. Sylvia Fogel, autism expert and psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and instructor at Harvard Medical School, USA.
Dr. Andrius Kavaliunas, epidemiologist and assistant professor at Karolinska Institute, Sweden
Prof. Udi Qimron, Chair, Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Ariel Munitz, Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Motti Gerlic, Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology, Tel Aviv University
Dr. Uri Gavish, an expert in algorithm analysis and a biomedical consultant
Dr. Paul McKeigue, professor of epidemiology in the University of Edinburgh and public health physician, with expertise in statistical modelling of disease.
Prof. Ellen Townsend, Self-Harm Research Group, University of Nottingham, UK.
Prof. Matthew Ratcliffe, Professor of Philosophy specializing in philosophy of mental health, University of York, UK
Prof. Mike Hulme, professor of human geography, University of Cambridge
Dr. Cody Meissner, professor of pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine, an expert on vaccine development, efficacy and safety.
Dr. Mario Recker, Associate Professor in Applied Mathematics at the Centre for Mathematics and the Environment, University of Exeter.
Prof. Lisa White, Professor of Modelling and Epidemiology Nuffield Department of Medicine, Oxford University, UK
Prof. Angus Dalgleish, MD, FRCP, FRACP, FRCPath, FMedSci, Department of Oncology, St. George’s, University of London
Prof. David Livermore, Professor at University of East Anglia, a microbiologist with expertise in disease epidemiology, antibiotic resistance and rapid diagnostics
Dr. Helen Colhoun, professor of medical informatics and epidemiology in the University of Edinburgh and public health physician, with expertise in risk prediction.
Prof. Partha P. Majumder, PhD, FNA, FASc, FNASc, FTWAS National Science Chair, Distinguished Professor and Founder National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, KalyaniEmeritus Professor Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata
Dr. Gabriela Gomes, professor at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, a mathematician focussing on population dynamics, evolutionary theory and infectious disease epidemiology.
Prof. Simon Wood, professor at Edinburgh University, a statistician with expertise in statistical methodology, applied statistics and mathematical modelling in biology
Prof. Anthony J Brookes, Department of Genetics & Genome Biology, University of Leicester, UK
Prof. Sucharit Bhakdi, em. Professor of Medical Microbiology, University of Mainz, Germany
Prof. Stephen Bremner,
Professor of Medical Statistics, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, University of Sussex
Prof. Yaz Gulnur Muradoglu, Professor of Finance, Director at Behavioural Finance Working Group, School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London
Prof. Karol Sikora MA, PhD, MBBChir, FRCP, FRCR, FFPM, Medical Director of Rutherford Health, Oncologist, & Dean of Medicine