Categories
Publications

Individual variation in susceptibility or exposure to SARS-CoV-2 lowers the herd immunity threshold – medRxiv

We searched the literature for estimates of individual variation in propensity to acquire or transmit COVID-19 or other infectious diseases and overlaid the findings as vertical lines in Figure 3. Most CV estimates are comprised between 2 and 4, a range where naturally acquired immunity to SARS-CoV-2 may place populations over the herd immunity threshold once as few as 10-20% of its individuals are immune.

https://off-guardian.org/2020/07/07/second-wave-not-even-close/

Categories
Opinion

Why has coronavirus fled London? – The Spectator

[I]f you believe herd immunity is only reached at 60 per cent, you should be terrified at any loosening of lockdown. If you don’t, then you must reconcile antibody testing that says 80 per cent are still susceptible with the difficulty the virus seems to encounter in marching very far past 20 percent of the population.

That is the reconciliation my hypothesis achieves. I propose that there may exist forms of human resistance to this virus that don’t show up in Covid-19 antibody tests.

[I]n focusing on that Covid antibody test alone as indicating a pass-or-fail immunity, we could be overlooking important ways in which humans may be endowed with, or acquire, other kinds of resistance. 

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-has-coronavirus-fled-london-

Categories
Videos

GRANDSTREAM: Prof DOLORES CAHILL and FIONA MARIE FLANAGAN

Categories
Opinion Videos

Professor Karol Sikora: fear is more deadly than the virus – UnHerd

  • Professor Karol Sikora says that COVID-19 behaves like pandemics in the past.
  • Society is scarred all over the world.
  • The virus will go but the fear will do the damage.

Note: YouTube has taken down the video. Please go directly to UnHerd’s site:

https://unherd.com/thepost/professor-karol-sikora-fear-is-more-dangerous-than-the-virus/

Professor Karol Sikora has become something of a celebrity in the UK over the past months for his expert commentary on the pandemic, and his unusual tendency for optimism rather than pessimism.

Virus ‘getting tired’
– In the past two weeks, the virus is showing signs of petering out
– It’s as though the virus is ‘getting tired’, almost ‘getting bored’
– It’s happening across the world at the same time

Existing herd immunity
– The serology results around the world (and forthcoming in Britain) don’t necessarily reveal the percentage of people who have had the disease
– He estimates 25-30% of the UK population has had Covid-19, and higher in the group that is most susceptible
– Pockets of herd immunity help *already* explain the downturn
– Sweden’s end result will not be different to ours – lockdown versus no lockdown

Fear more deadly than the virus
– When the history books are written, the fear will have killed many more people than the virus, including large numbers of cancer and cardiological patients not being treated
– We should have got the machinery of the NHS for non-corona patients back open earlier

Masks and schools
– Evidence on masks is just not there either way so it should be an ‘individual decision’
– We should move to 1m social distancing which means restaurants and bars could reopen
– More schools should reopen in June as ‘children are not the transmitters of this virus’
– We should be getting back to the ‘old normal’ not a ‘new normal’

Categories
Videos

Debunking the Narrative (With Prof. Dolores Cahill)

Categories
News

Q&A: Nobel laureate says COVID-19 curve could be naturally self-flattening – Dr. Michael Levitt, Stanford Daily

If Sweden stops at about 5,000 or 6,000 deaths, we will know that they’ve reached herd immunity, and we didn’t need to do any kind of lockdown. My own feeling is that it will probably stop because of herd immunity. COVID is serious, it’s at least a serious flu. But it’s not going to destroy humanity as people thought.

Categories
Videos

German virologist: Covid-19 is less deadly than we thought – Professor Hendrik Streeck, UnHerd

Freddie Sayers talks to Professor Hendrik Streeck about why he thinks lockdown measures were initiated too quickly, and how his findings show a Covid-19 fatality rate of 0.24-0.36%. The deadliness of Covid-19, measured by the “Infected Fatality Rate” or what percentage of infected people end up dying, has become an issue of global significance.

  • COVID-19 is less deadly than initially thought
  • Fatality rate between 0.24-0.36%
  • Transmission between families seems low
  • Enclosed spaces with large gatherings seems to spread the virus
  • Waiting for a vaccine seems unrealistic
  • We will not be able to eradicate COVID-19 without a vaccine but there has not been any successful vaccine against any coronovirus
  • COVID-19 will be like any coronavirus
  • We may be able to manage the virus with basic hygiene
Categories
News

Herd immunity may only need 10-20 per cent of people to be infected – The Spectator

 A team led by Gabriela Gomes of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine argues that it is wrong to assume that herd immunity will only be achieved when 60 per cent of people have been infected. It is more likely, they argue, that the true figure lies between 10 and 20 per cent. The 60 per cent figure, they say, is based on the idea that we are all equally likely to contract the virus. In reality, there is a wide variation in an individual’s susceptibility to becoming infected. People who are frail or who have greater exposure to the virus – perhaps because they are working in an intensive care unit – are in practice far more likely to contract the disease. As the epidemic progresses the pool of easily-infected individuals dries up and the virus has to search out new victims who are less-easily infected.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/herd-immunity-may-only-need-a-10-per-cent-infection-rate

Categories
Videos

There never was a surge but we’re in danger of losing our capacity to deal with the second wave because we panicked – Tony Heller

Tony Heller compares COVID-19 with other pandemics and explains why the lockdown may create an even more devastating second wave.

Medical professionals say there never was a surge, hospital activity is at a low and we’re in danger of losing our capacity to deal with the second wave because we panicked.

Categories
News

Why lockdowns are the wrong policy – Swedish expert Prof. Johan Giesecke, 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

Summary from 21st Century Wire.

21st Century Wire
Categories
Publications

Projecting the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 through the postpandemic period – Sicence Magazine

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/14/science.abb5793

Categories
News Videos

Perspectives on the Pandemic | Dr. David L. Katz | Episode 3

  • 00:58-How to minimize the risk of COVID-19
  • 03:52-Comparing the responses to a global pandemic
  • 08:53-Who is most at risk
  • 13:44-Is our global response warranted?
  • 17:17-Comparing COVID-19 to the flu
  • 20:55-Is the risk really that high?
  • 23:53-What is the fatality rate versus other common risk factors?
  • 25:2900:58-How to minimize the risk of COVID-19
  • 03:52-Comparing the responses to a global pandemic
  • 08:53-Who is most at risk
  • 13:44-Is our global response warranted?
  • 17:17-Comparing COVID-19 to the flu
  • 20:55-Is the risk really that high?
  • 23:53-What is the fatality rate versus other common risk factors? 25:29-The risk of labeling COVID-19 as a ?pandemic?
  • 26:14-Are the COVID-19 tests reliable?
  • 28:58-Should we be concerned about herd immunity?
  • 30:16-On the chances of getting a vaccine
  • 31:47-The return of ?measles parties??
  • 34:30-Breaking down the pros and cons of herd immunity
  • 37:25-Is lockdown making the problem worse?
  • 40:01-How to really hashtag Flatten the Curve
  • 45:45-Can we really trace the exposure for every person?
  • 48:06-Is authoritarianism growing in the name of public health? 50:37-Who can we trust when this pandemic is over?
  • 54:54-Industries? roles in the pandemic
Categories
Publications

Significant levels of herd immunity in the UK – Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford – medRxiv

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20042291v1

Categories
News

Oxford study: Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population – The Financial Times

https://www.ft.com/content/5ff6469a-6dd8-11ea-89df-41bea055720b

Categories
News

Oxford University: COVID-19 may have been circulating in the UK since Jan 2020 and much of the population may already be immune – Yahoo News

https://news.yahoo.com/oxford-study-suggests-millions-people-221100162.html