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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’

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News

How the coronavirus death toll compares to other pandemics, including SARS, HIV, and the Black Death – Business Insider

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-deaths-how-pandemic-compares-to-other-deadly-outbreaks-2020-4?r=US&IR=T

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Videos

Covid-19 – Britain’s Disastrous Response Will Have Devastating Consequences – David Starkey

What is unique about this pandemic–apart from the fact that it’s rather small–is that the damage that it does is self-inflicted.

This is a very odd plague. It’s rather small in scale but it’s gigantic in consequences because we have chosen to inflict a form of economic suicide on ourselves.

This week on “So What You’re Saying Is…”: Dr. David Starkey argues that a calamitous series of events and decisions caused a panicked British government to recklessly abandon its sensible coronavirus plan for one that is likely to harm the nation far more than the virus itself.

Comparing this virus with historical pandemics Starkey believes the dire situation we are encountering today has a different cause. Earlier pandemics such as the Black Death eradicated up to half of the population of Europe. In contrast, although it is profoundly tragic on a personal level to the individuals and familiies it afflicts, coronavirus is nowhere near as devastating on a population-wide level as previous pandemics. Consequently, Starkey argues, the Conservative government was correct to follow a similar path to Sweden which was far more relaxed than elsewhere in Europe.

This approach suited Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s libertarian attitude and personality. But on a single weekend there was a calamitous confluence of events and decisions that caused the Tory government to panic (Northwick Park hospital overwhelmed, Imperial College modelling showing potential 500,00 deaths etc.) and enforce an extreme lockdown without any plan to deal with the epidemic. It was simply a goal to protect the NHS.

Protect the NHS: The Tory Government, says Dr. Starkey, was desperate not to be seen as responsible or the NHS being overwhelmed. Eager to prove to the traditional Labour “Red Wall” that the Conservative Party really was their natural home, the British government prioritised the NHS’s capacity to deal with Covid-19 over everything else– but disastrously this included its treatment of cancer patients etc. A bizarre and unprecdented abandoning of the Hippocratic oath that we have not seen in other countries, argues Starkey.

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News

WHO exposed: How health body changed pandemic criteria to push agenda – The Express

In the years following the [Swine Flu] pandemic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) faced fierce criticism over its handling of the situation.

Some medical experts doubted whether the H1N1 outbreak was really a pandemic at all.

Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, a German doctor and former member of parliament, had been watching the spread of swine flu in Mexico City – where the virus was first recorded – and was puzzled at the reaction of the WHO.

Dr Wodarg eventually launched an inquiry into the Swine Flu pandemic and the WHO’s dealings with the pharmaceutical industry in the lead up to the N1H1 pandemic.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200512142529/https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1281081/who-world-health-organisation-coronavirus-latest-swine-flu-covid-19-europe-politics-spt

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News

World Health Organization Scientists Linked to Swine Flu Vaccine Makers – ABC News (2010)

Scientists who advised the World Health Organization on its influenza policies and recommendations—including the decision to proclaim the so-called swine flu a “pandemic” had close ties to companies that manufacture vaccines and antiviral medicines like Tamiflu, a fact that WHO did not publicly disclose.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200325100604/https://abcnews.go.com/Health/SwineFlu/swine-flu-pandemic-world-health-organization-scientists-linked/story?id=10829940

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News

Drug companies face European inquiry over swine flu vaccine stockpiles – The Guardian (2010)

Council of Europe to discuss whether pharmaceutical firms spread alarm over pandemic to boost orders of medicines

European health chiefs are to hold emergency talks about whether pharmaceutical giants have unduly influenced governments into squandering public money on vast stockpiles of unnecessary swine flu drugs.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130909085314/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/11/swine-flu-h1n1-vaccine-europe

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News

European hearing airs WHO pandemic response, critics’ charges – The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (2010)

At today’s hearing, several committee members pressed the WHO and vaccine company officials on two main issues. They expressed deep suspicions that vaccine industry experts on WHO advisory groups improperly influenced the WHO’s assessment of the pandemic in order to financially benefit pharmaceutical companies. Council members also questioned the WHO official, Dr Keiji Fukuda, special advisor on pandemic influenza to the WHO director-general, about confusion surrounding consideration of severity in its definition of a pandemic, which was revised at about the time the novel H1N1 virus was identified.

Some government public health officials and influenza experts have strongly rejected Wodarg’s claims, defending vaccine stockpiling as a prudent public health response and calling the charges “preposterous.”

In his opening statement, Wodarg said he was skeptical about the threat of the H5N1 virus and the contracts that countries had in place with vaccine makers in the event of a pandemic. “WHO had the trigger,” he said, alluding to the pandemic plans of some countries that activate the contracts when the WHO declares the highest alert level. He speculated that vaccine makers are making a financial windfall from what he claims are more expensive patented and adjuvanted vaccines. He also argued that the billions that governments have spent on pandemic vaccines could be better spent on other health issues.

He charged that the change in pandemic definition “made it possible to turn a run-of-the-mill flu into a pandemic and translate into millions for vaccine for no good reason.”

Wodarg also claimed that adjuvanted vaccines used in Europe were not adequately tested, especially in children, and expressed doubts about the safety of cell-based pandemic vaccines.

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2010/01/european-hearing-airs-who-pandemic-response-critics-charges

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Publications

Time variations in the transmissibility of pandemic influenza in Prussia, Germany, from 1918–19 – BMC (2017)

The COVID-19 epidemic curves are consistent and follow the Gompertz curve. Similar distributions have been reported for Influenza, such as the 1918/19 epidemic in Prussia.

Epidemic curve of pandemic influenza in Prussia, Germany, from 1918–19. Reported daily number of influenza deaths (solid line) and the back-calculated temporal distribution of onset cases (dashed line). Daily counts of onset cases were obtained using the time delay distribution from onset to death (see Table 1). Data source: ref [18] (see [Additional file 1]).

https://tbiomed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-4682-4-20

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Publications

Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza – The Center for Biosecurity (2006)

The threat of an influenza pandemic has alarmed countries around the globe and given rise to an intense interest in disease mitigation measures. This article reviews what is known about the effectiveness and practical feasibility of a range of actions that might be taken in attempts to lessen the number of cases and deaths resulting from an influenza pandemic. The article also discusses potential adverse second- and third-order effects of mitigation actions that decision makers must take into account. Finally, the article summarizes the authors’ judgments of the likely effectiveness and likely adverse consequences of the range of disease mitigation measures and suggests priorities and practical actions to be taken.

http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/resources/publications/2006/2006-09-15-diseasemitigationcontrolpandemicflu.html