EvidenceNotFear
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With a purely statistical perspective, [Prof Michael Levitt] has been playing close attention to the Covid-19 pandemic since January, when most of us were not even aware of it. He first spoke out in early February, when through analysing the numbers of cases and deaths in Hubei province he predicted with remarkable accuracy that the epidemic in that province would top out at around 3,250 deaths.
Nobel prize-winning scientist: the Covid-19 epidemic was never exponential”
With the prevalence of coronavirus infection running at about 5%, test manufacturers and regulators alike will have to guard against false positives.
This phenomenological study assesses the impacts of full lockdown strategies applied in Italy, France, Spain and United Kingdom, on the slowdown of the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. Comparing the trajectory of the epidemic before and after the lockdown, we find no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth rate, doubling time, and reproduction number trends. Extrapolating pre-lockdown growth rate trends, we provide estimates of the death toll in the absence of any lockdown policies, and show that these strategies might not have saved any life in western Europe. We also show that neighboring countries applying less restrictive social distancing measures (as opposed to police-enforced home containment) experience a very similar time evolution of the epidemic.
As a concluding remark, it should be pointed out that, since the full lockdown strategies are shown to have no impact on the epidemic’s slowdown, one should consider their potentially high inherent death toll as a net loss of human lives.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717v1
[T]he Government overlooked two vital pieces of evidence that raise frightening questions about the impact of its draconian lockdown strategy – and whether lockdown was ever even necessary.
The renowned microbiologist suggested to Holyrood’s health committee on Tuesday that fears a fresh wave of deaths could hit Britain in the autumn or winter were based on the mistaken assumption that the coronavirus acts in the same way as influenza.
Despite decades of research, consensus regarding the dynamics of fear appeals remains elusive. A meta-analysis was conducted that was designed to resolve this controversy. Publications that were included in previous meta-analyses were re-analysed, and a number of additional publications were located. The inclusion criteria were full factorial orthogonal manipulations of threat and efficacy, and measurement of behaviour as an outcome. Fixed and random effects models were used to compute mean effect size estimates. Meta-analysis of the six studies that satisfied the inclusion criteria clearly showed a significant interaction between threat and efficacy, such that threat only had an effect under high efficacy (d = 0.31), and efficacy only had an effect under high threat (d = 0.71). Inconsistency in results regarding the effectiveness of threatening communication can likely be attributed to flawed methodology. Proper tests of fear appeal theory yielded the theoretically hypothesised interaction effect. Threatening communication should exclusively be used when pilot studies indicate that an intervention successfully enhances efficacy.
The average experimental vaccine has a 6 per cent chance of ultimately reaching the market.
A decade of painstaking fiscal repair-work was undone within the first few hours; and that was just the start. The direct cost of Britain’s stimulus package is £70 billion which, as Alok Sharma, the Business Secretary, confirmed on Friday, is considerably higher than in other countries.
The indirect costs are harder to assess, but will surely be gargantuan. The first nine days of the crisis pushed half a million more people onto the dole, wiping out five years of rising employment. With every day that our shops remain shut, the benefits bill will rise – just as tax revenues dry up.
I don’t think we yet understand how vast a hit we are taking. It has become commonplace to compare the coronavirus to the Second World War, but our domestic economy continued to function even at the height of the Blitz. Shops, pubs and schools stayed open, and cinemas were closed for only two weeks.
Lockdown might actually be slowing the tendency of this new disease to get milder with time. Which raises an important question: might the lockdown be causing more harm than good.
Two and a half thousand years ago Hippocrates told us that medicine should ‘First, do no harm’, and this is still a key tenet. Making absolutely sure that the treatment is better than the cure takes a long time and requires that we carefully examine as many angles as possible. Unfortunately, in the rush to apply the lockdown treatment for Covid, this principle was the first casualty.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/could-the-lockdown-have-side-effects-no-one-has-considered
Approximately 20% of people had an increase in antibodies against influenza in their blood after an influenza “season”. However, about three-quarters of infections were symptom-free, or so mild they weren’t identified through weekly questioning about whether participants had a cough, cold, sore throat, or a “flu-like illness”.
https://www.nhs.uk/news/medical-practice/three-quarters-of-people-with-flu-have-no-symptoms/
This is a Phase 1/2/3, randomized, placebo-controlled, observer-blind, dose-finding, vaccine candidate-selection, and efficacy study in healthy individuals.
| Actual Study Start Date : | April 29, 2020 |
| Estimated Primary Completion Date : | October 29, 2021 |
| Estimated Study Completion Date : | April 6, 2023 |
You can see there isn’t any hope at all for coronavirus. It won’t even make the top 10. It’ll be lucky to make it even a noticeable blip once 2020 is over.
Why? See, what happens is that these bugs come, kill off a bunch of people. But many of these, since they’re old, would have died this year anyway. Sad, but true. That means if you’re looking for 2020 to be a banner year, don’t bother.
Human behaviour is central to transmission of SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and changing behaviour is crucial to preventing transmission in the absence of pharmaceutical interventions. Isolation and social distancing measures, including edicts to stay at home, have been brought into place across the globe to reduce transmission of the virus, but at a huge cost to individuals and society. In addition to these measures, we urgently need effective interventions to increase adherence to behaviours that individuals in communities can enact to protect themselves and others: use of tissues to catch expelled droplets from coughs or sneezes, use of face masks as appropriate, hand-washing on all occasions when required, disinfecting objects and surfaces, physical distancing, and not touching one’s eyes, nose or mouth. There is an urgent need for direct evidence to inform development of such interventions, but it is possible to make a start by applying behavioural science methods and models.
Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%.
This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection. Further research is needed to inform the widespread use of cloth masks globally. However, as a precautionary measure, cloth masks should not be recommended for HCWs, particularly in high-risk situations, and guidelines need to be updated.
This will affect the road haulage industry substantially, which already suffers from a HGV driver shortage of 59 thousand drivers according to an October 2019 FTA report. Government statistics show that there are approximately 300 thousand HGV drivers in the UK3, meaning if 20% of drivers are off sick at once, this will effectively temporarily double the driver shortage to 120 thousand. What this could mean on a short-term basis is that there is a marked increase in subcontracting out jobs to other hauliers, as some hauliers will be much harder hit than others in terms of driver numbers – due to various factors such as regional considerations and timing.
Generally speaking, 40% to 50% of patients with severe respiratory distress die while on ventilators, experts say. But 80% or more of coronavirus patients placed on the machines in New York City have died, state and city officials say.
…Similar reports have emerged from China and the United Kingdom. One U.K. report put the figure at 66%. A very small study in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the disease first emerged, said 86% died.
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- Professor Neil Ferguson was not doing science.
- Lockdowns are worse than useless.
- It was known to everyone that the lockdown would cause a catastrophe.
- Isolating nursing homes would have prevented the load of hospitals.
- The lockdown approach taken by most governments was a human catastrophe that should never have happened.
- All we have done is slowed the spread of herd immunity and increased the risk to the elderly.
- We have wasted a lot of time, money and lives.
- The spread of respiratory diseases are predictable and relatively short.
- Bill Gate’s comments about the need to lockdown until a vaccine is ready is absurd and has nothing to do with reality.
- We don’t need a vaccine for COVID-19.
- “I don’t know where the government finds these so-called experts who very obviously don’t understand the very basics of epidemiology.”
- Tragic stories from some doctors are not representative of the general experience. We don’t stop living our lives because something goes wrong in a particular place.
- The Swedish approach shows that the draconian measures taken in other countries were unnecessary.
- We may see a ‘Second Wave’ rebound but it may be low.
- There is no reason to believe that COVID-19 will be fundamentally different from other coronaviruses.
- Having a novel virus is not novel.
- We have no science about the effect of social distancing.
- The COVID-19 disaster is a failure of the people to take control of the government.
- There is no reason to wait before opening up schools and businesses.
…this isn’t proof, but it’s pretty good evidence the lockdowns caused a lot of harm. Physical harm, at the least.