1200 Studies COVID-19
Special Investigation
Lockdowns- Effectiveness and Harms
Table of Contents with interactive links to the location in the eBook
What prompted lockdowns in the first place?
Sweden- The World’s control group that followed all previous pandemic strategies
Sign the Great Barrington Declaration- It is essentially the Sweden model
So, do lockdowns achieve their stated goals?
Highly respected Stanford professor calls lockdowns the "biggest public health mistake we've ever made”
New study looking at data from 160 countries shows lockdowns don’t save lives
Evidence surrounding lockdown ineffectiveness and harms
32 Studies showing the ineffectiveness of lockdowns in changing eventual outcomes or reducing deaths from COVID-19
Let’s now look at some graphic displays of the ineffectiveness of lockdowns
Where did the seasonal flu go?
Look at how hospitals and medical systems have portrayed the flu in recent years.
More data on lockdown stringency ineffectiveness….
The lockdown and economic paradox
How about looking at global death rates compared to latitude…
The collateral damage from lockdowns is enormous!
What are some of the devastating costs to locking down people under 65?
Stanford’s Dr. Scott Atlas, the one Coronavirus Task Force member that was a voice of reason, science and common sense lays it out nicely
Worse than lockdowns not saving lives, evidence is streaming in that they are killing millions worldwide
Children in developed countries face many pandemic related hardships, but in third-world countries it is a matter of life and death
More evidence that the collateral damage from Lockdowns is horrific
Young people are particularly damaged by lockdowns
More on lockdown failures and the resulting disastrous consequences
Infant deaths decline during lockdown- Is there a vaccine connection?
PCR testing drove a false narrative used to justify lockdowns
More resources
• Learn more about the many other facets of the failed COVID-19 responses • Learn more about the controversial subject of vaccines • Learn about all things COVID-19 that you will never hear from the mainstream media
What prompted lockdowns in the first place?
“Professor” Neil Ferguson, the person that turned the world upside down brags about using China’s lockdown model and fear to paralyze the world
In a December 25th, 2020 interview with the London Times Ferguson stated that “they” could “get away with it”, meaning getting the west to use authoritarian lockdown on its people. Merry Christmas everyone. Ferguson, the infamous person that started the global hysteria over COVID-19 by predicting 2.2 million people would die in the U.S. and 500,000 in the U.K. started the wheels of fear mongering and hysteria in place. Ferguson, of the Bill Gates funded Imperial College of London has been widely criticized for creating flawed modeling that was completely exaggerated, yet so effective at accomplishing what he brags about in this interview. Now, why would someone tied to Bill Gates want to lockdown the world? You be the judge. From the December 28th Infowars article about the Ferguson interview with The Times. In an article published Christmas Day by The Times, Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London bragged about convincing European governments to adopt the Communist Chinese model of authoritarian lockdowns as a response to COVID-19.
Here are some select excerpts and quotes.
However, thanks to the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian measures, he said, “people’s sense of what is possible in terms of control changed.”
“I think people’s sense of what is possible in terms of control changed quite dramatically between January and March. […]If China had not done it the year would have been very different,” Ferguson told The Times.
He explained, “’It’s a communist one-party state,’ we said. ‘We couldn’t get away with it in Europe,’ we thought. And then Italy did it. And we realized we could.” (emphasis mine- let that sink in a minute!)
Ferguson claimed to have been “skeptical at first” regarding China allegedly flattening the curve, saying he “thought it was a massive cover-up by the Chinese.”
However, he now says the Chinese Communist Party’s data has since convinced him the lockdowns are responsible for defeating the virus, calling shutdown measures “an effective policy.” https://www.newswars.com/uks-professor-lockdown-brags-adopting-chicom-model-allowed-british-gov-to-get- away-with-shutdowns/ End of excerpts
“An effective policy” Neil? You obviously have had your head up somewhere and haven’t read any of the 30 or so studies published in the last several months proving that the lockdowns you have so effectively thrust upon the world have not moved the needle on mortality rates from COVID-19 one iota (studies I covered last month in
my newsletter). You obviously have not seen the catastrophic effects of the lockdowns you have championed and bragged about your involvement in. You are responsible in part for the hundreds of thousands of deaths of despair that will occur before this is all done, for the hundreds of thousands of children that will starve in third- world countries due to supply chain interruptions, for the loss of hundreds of thousands of independent and family-owned businesses around the globe. And, even for shifting much of the power and wealth away from the middle-class to the top globalist power players, people like Gates who has funded your work to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Hmmmmm, could there be a connection to your scheme?
And that is just the beginning. Let’s take a deeper dive into Neil’s historic past failures at predicting pandemics. It’s hard to understand why our government would place any credence on predictions by Ferguson, because he has a long track record of getting it wrong. From the article: “Ferguson and his Imperial College modelers have a notorious track record for predicting dire consequences of diseases. In 2002 Ferguson predicted that up to 50,000 people in UK would die from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, “mad cow disease”, possibly to 150,000 if the epidemic expanded to include sheep. A total of 178 people were officially registered dead from vCJD. In 2005, Ferguson claimed that up to 200 million (!) people worldwide would be killed by bird-flu or H5N1. By early 2006, the WHO had only linked 78 deaths to the virus. Then in 2009 Ferguson’s group at Imperial College advised the government that swine flu or H1N1 would probably kill 65,000 people in the UK. In the end, swine flu claimed the lives of 457 people.” Why this man isn’t flipping burgers by now or in jail is dumbfounding!
Neil certainly has been used as a useful idiot as you will see in the next section.
Connecting the dots by following the money trail-
There are deep and lucrative connections between Bill Gates and both Neil Ferguson and the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which seems to be our version of the Imperial College London as you will see below.
The following excerpts are from an article titled The Dubious COVID Models, The Tests and Now the Consequences, published on the Global Research website…https://www.globalresearch.ca/models-tests- consequences/5711194
“Neil Ferguson and his modelling group at Imperial College, in addition to being backed by WHO, receive millions from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Ferguson heads the Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium at Imperial College which lists as its funders the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Gates-backed GAVI-the vaccine alliance. From 2006 through 2018 the Gates Foundation has invested an impressive $184,872,226.99 into Ferguson’s Imperial College modeling operations.”
“Like Neil Ferguson at the Imperial College London, the University of Washington’s IHME is another project of the Gates Foundation. It was created in 2007 with a major grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In May 2015 IHME and the World Health Organization signed a major agreement to collaborate on data used to estimate world health trends. Then in 2017 IHME got an additional $279 million from the Gates Foundation to
expand its work over the next decade. That, in addition to another a $210 million gift in 2016 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fund construction of a new building to house several UW units working in population health, including IHME. In other words, IHME has been a crucial piece of the Gates global health strategy for more than 13 years.”
Now for the trifecta Even before the outbreak of the virus that led to the Ferguson debacle, Bill Gates was involved in Event 201, a simulation of a pandemic coronavirus outbreak that went from bats to humans and led to 65 million deaths worldwide and the collapse of world economies. The date of that simulation was October 18, 2019 in New York City. With the catastrophic predictions for world death and economic destruction of Event 201, followed by the Ferguson Imperial College prediction of 2.2 million deaths in the U.S., followed by the IHME models for deaths and predictions of hospitals overrun, all proved to be inaccurate my many multiples. All three have Bill Gates fingerprints all over them. It seems that Bill Gates has his tentacles everywhere on everything related to globalism, population control, control of global food supply and mandated world vaccination. One has to ask, why would Bill Gates invest so heavily into someone like Ferguson with such an abysmal track record of accuracy in previous disease modeling? (unless he knew what he was getting for his money). And for now, it seems that for his purposes, he made a pretty good investment.
Sweden- The World’s control group that followed all previous pandemic strategies
Thank God for Sweden! For those new to my newsletter, or haven’t been following the story, Sweden is the one country in the world that did things differently. They never locked down. They never required or even suggested their citizens wear face masks. They never closed restaurants, bars, gyms, schools or other businesses. Their economy has flourished. Their people are not suffering from higher than usual percentages of mental health issues, alcohol and drug use, suicide, domestic violence and other collateral damage. They have avoided deaths of despair that countries using lockdowns and business closures are experiencing. They have essentially asked their citizens to social distance whenever possible and follow good hygiene practices.
They made the same mistakes as virtually every other country by not doing enough to protect their elderly in nursing homes and long-term care facilities in the beginning of the pandemic. That is where a large percentage of their deaths came from early on and you can see that represented by the peak in deaths on the graph on the previous page. In addition, they had a very weak flu and pneumonia season in 2018-2019. Therefore, many of the elderly and susceptible individuals that would have succumbed to those illnesses the year before, became victims this year around from COVID-19. That increased especially their elderly deaths in the first wave. But other than that, it has pretty much been the textbook playbook that the authors of The Great Barrington Declaration are pushing for (https://gbdeclaration.org/ ). Obviously, they have and are continuing to do something right. This is exactly why I wish we would get the myopic focus off cases and look at hospitalizations, ICU capacity and deaths. Why should we really care how many cases there are if they aren’t causing serious illness, hospitalizations or deaths?
A July 23rd interview with Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s Chief Epidemiologist and the architect of Sweden’s approach to COVID-19 on the Unherd Podcast from Lockdown TV was very revealing. He confirmed that Sweden also made mistakes in how they handled nursing homes and long-term care facilities which inherently increased their death rates there. I also did an interview on a livestream from Ireland this week. The medical doctor that was also a guest on the show was named Dr. Marcus De Brun. He confirmed that the same thing happened in Ireland. I have heard similar reports from other industrialized countries. It appears that nearly all countries now have a similar COVID-19 horrific legacy. With an estimate of close to 50% of all deaths in the U.S. being in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, we are only now appreciating how devastating the poor decision making and lack of preventative measures were. But what has also become glaringly apparent is that if one were to subtract those fatalities caused by those errors, the magnitude of the casualties from COVID-19 would be only a fraction of today’s numbers. Then, if we subtract all the inaccurate death certificate numbers and another large chunk of those fatal cases would fall from the official count. One can only wonder what the TRUTH and the ACTUAL numbers really are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh9wso6bEAc
Here is how Sweden did compared to one of its neighbors, Belgium. Belgium enforced strict lockdowns from the beginning of the pandemic, closed businesses and enforced their restrictions. Yet, Sweden fared much better.
How about Sweden compared to New York City, which has a similar population (8.3 million) to Sweden (10.3 million)?
New York City also had a very strict lockdown. I remember seeing pictures of Times Square vacant. No pedestrians. No cars. In Sweden, bars, restaurants and schools were open. People were walking the streets. They were encouraged to maintain social distancing and good hygiene practices. They trusted the public to do that and they did. Wouldn’t it be great if our public officials could give personal responsibility to our people and trust them to do the right thing? Would a small fraction break the rules? I’m sure they would, just as I’m sure happened also in Sweden. One thing seems apparent, and that is that lockdowns don’t save lives. What saves lives is protecting the elderly and most vulnerable.
Sweden has been compared to a couple other of their neighboring Scandinavian countries like Norway, Denmark and Finland, as having a higher death per capita than them. But Tegnell said the following in the interview: “There seems to be a close connection to how many people introduced the disease at the same time… The spring holidays in Sweden are spread over four different weeks depending on different geographical regions. Unfortunately, Stockholm happened to have its spring holiday just when there was an enormous spread of Covid-19 in Europe … so a lot of Swedes living in the Stockholm area came back with the disease. And that
started an epidemic on a level that was much higher than the start of the epidemic in the South of Sweden, or in Finland or in Norway. Currently that’s to me the most likely theory – that if you have a massive introduction, it’s going to be a disease that is very, very hard to control.” Stockholm, in other words, was more like London or New York than Oslo or Helsinki in terms of introduction of the virus.”
Sweden update as of November 30th, 2020
AS CAN BE SEEN, THE AVERAGE DAILY CASES ARE 5X HIGHER THAN APRIL, BUT THE DEATHS ARE ONLY 1/3
On November 30th, there were 5,464 new cases & only 10 deaths.
How is Sweden doing as of April 22nd 2021?
So while cases are still up, deaths continue to decline (there were 5 on April 22nd). And as you will if you read my eBook on the PCR testing, cases do NOT equate to disease or necessarily to hospitalizations and deaths.
So, how do COVID-19 deaths per million compare to past epidemics in Sweden? This graph really puts things into perspective when comparing the lethality of COVID-19 with other previous infectious diseases. Look at the COVID-19 deaths per million spike on the far right compared to other infectious disease outbreaks over the last 150 years.
Sign the Great Barrington Declaration- It is essentially the Sweden model
Scientists, researchers, infectious disease experts, virologists, immunologists, epidemiologists, economists, public health experts and statisticians, medical, chiropractic, naturopathic and homeopathic doctors and hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens, have all signed onto the Great Barrington Declaration, declaring their support to end the lockdowns and provide an exit strategy from our current state of affairs in a safe and calculated way.
The three original authors of The Great Barrington Declaration are:
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations. Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.
Below is their mission statement and the number of people that have signed on in support of the declaration as of April 15th, 2021
I am calling on all citizens, medical professionals and scientists to sign on to The Great Barrington Declaration, as a sign of solidarity and a demand for the changes in policy needed going forward. Let’s send a signal loud and
clear that this is the way to move forward and open up societies. Not only that, but this is THE BEST and in my opinion the only model for future infectious disease outbreaks. Learn more and sign here: https://gbdeclaration.org/
And be sure to read their FAQs page to learn about their strategy for opening society and managing the virus. https://gbdeclaration.org/frequently-asked-questions/
So, do lockdowns achieve their stated goals?
That is the million-dollar question. John P.A. Ioannidis renowned Stanford epidemiologist, wrote an article published in statnews titled, A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data. https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the- coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/ In the article, he said the following: “One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric.”
Another revealing statement described how coronaviruses have been known to cause high death rates in the elderly. With scientists and health officials privy to this information, it is even more shocking that they didn’t know to protect these special vulnerable populations. Here is Dr. Ioannidis’ quote: “No, some say, pointing to the high rate in elderly people. However, even some so-called mild or common-cold-type coronaviruses that have been known for decades can have case fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect elderly people in nursing homes. In fact, such “mild” coronaviruses infect tens of millions of people every year, and account for 3% to 11% of those hospitalized in the U.S. with lower respiratory infections each winter.”
“These “mild” coronaviruses may be implicated in several thousands of deaths every year worldwide, though the vast majority of them are not documented with precise testing. Instead, they are lost as noise among 60 million deaths from various causes every year.”
The DISCUSSION from the article Dr. Ioannidis cited with the 8% case-fatality rate titled An outbreak of human coronavirus OC43 infectionand serological cross-reactivity with SARS coronavirus, from the Canadian Journal of Infectious Disease and Medical Microbiology, December 2006.
From that article: “We have characterized an outbreak of respiratory illness due to HCoV-OC43. The observed attack rate of 67% and case fatality rate of 8% underscore the pathogenic potential of HCoVs in frail populations. This adds to other observations underscoring that CoVs other than SARS-CoV may be responsible for a broader spectrum of disease than coryza (common cold) alone (21-23).”
Highly respected Stanford professor calls lockdowns the "biggest public health mistake we've ever made”
In a March 15th Newsweek article, Dr, Jay Bhattacharya one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration was candid about his feelings about the public health decisions that have been made not just here in the U.S., but across the globe.
This is the lead quote from the article: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford University Medical School, recently said that COVID-19 lockdowns are the "biggest public health mistake we've ever made...The harm to people is catastrophic." During the interview last month, Bhattacharya said that the declaration comes from "two basic facts." "One is that people who are older have a much higher risk from dying from COVID than people who are younger...and that's a really important fact because we know who his most vulnerable, it's people that are older. So the first plank of the Great Barrington Declaration: let's protect the vulnerable," Bhattacharya said. "The other idea is that the lockdowns themselves impose great harm on people. Lockdowns are not a natural normal way to live." He continued, "it's also not very equal. People who are poor face much more hardship from the lockdowns than people who are rich." In an email sent to Newsweek, Bhattacharya wrote: I stand behind my comment that the lockdowns are the single worst public health mistake in the last 100 years. We will be counting the catastrophic health and psychological harms, imposed on nearly every poor person on the face of the earth, for a generation. At the same time, they have not served to control the epidemic in the places where they have been most vigorously imposed. In the US, they have – at best – protected the "non-essential" class from COVID, while exposing the essential working class to the disease. The lockdowns are trickle down epidemiology. https://www.newsweek.com/stanford-doctor-calls-lockdowns-biggest-public-health-mistake-weve-ever-made- 1574540
Another article interview of Dr. Bhattacharya cut against the public narratives
In another article published on Lockdown Skeptics and provocatively titled Risk of Asymptomatic Spread Minimal. Variants Over-Hyped. Masks Pointless. An Interview With Professor Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Bhattacharya takes on some of the hottest topics related to lockdowns, masking and variants. “There are tens of thousands of mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. They mutate because the replication mechanisms they induce involve very little error checking. Most of the mutations either do not change the virulence of the virus, or weaken it. There are a few mutations that provide the virus with a selective advantage in infectivity and may increase its lethality very slightly, though the evidence on this latter point is not solid.”
“We should not be particularly concerned about the variants that have arisen to date. First, prior infection with the wild type virus and vaccination provide protection against severe outcomes arising from reinfection with the mutated virus. Second, though the mutants have taken over the few remaining cases, their rise has coincided with a sharp drop in cases and deaths, even in countries where they have come to dominate. Their selective infectivity advantage has not been enough to cause a resurgence in cases. Third, the age gradient in mortality is the same for the mutant and wild-type virus. Thus a focused protection policy is still warranted. If lockdowns could not stop the less infectious wild type virus, why would we expect them to stop the more infectious mutant virus?”
With regard to the hysteria and lockdowns in the U.K., Dr. Bhattacharya said the following:
“According to a meta-analysis by Dr John Ioannidis [Professor of Medicine at Stanford University] of every seroprevalence study conducted to date of publication with a supporting scientific paper (74 estimates from 61 studies and 51 different localities around the world), the median infection survival rate from COVID-19 infection is 99.77 per cent. For COVID-19 patients under 70, the meta-analysis finds an infection survival rate of 99.95 per cent.” “The CDC’s [Centres for Disease Control] and Prevention] best estimate of infection fatality rate for people ages 70 plus years is 5.4 per cent, meaning seniors have a 94.6 per cent survivability rate. For children and people in their 20s/30s, it poses less risk of mortality than the flu. For people in their 60s and above, it is much more dangerous than the flu.”
Regarding Asymptomatic cases, he said the following:
“The scientific evidence now strongly suggests that COVID-19 infected individuals who are asymptomatic are more than an order of magnitude less likely to spread the disease to even close contacts than symptomatic COVID-19 patients. A meta-analysis of 54 studies from around the world found that within households – where none of the safeguards that restaurants are required to apply are typically applied – symptomatic patients passed on the disease to household members in 18 per cent of instances, while asymptomatic patients passed on the disease to household members in 0.7 per cent of instances. A separate, smaller meta-analysis similarly found that asymptomatic patients are much less likely to infect others than symptomatic patients.” “Asymptomatic individuals are an order of magnitude less likely to infect others than symptomatic individuals, even in intimate settings such as people living in the same household where people are much less likely to follow social distancing and masking practices that they follow outside the household. Spread of the disease in less intimate settings by asymptomatic individuals – including religious services, in-person restaurant visits, gyms, and other public settings – are likely to be even less likely than in the household.”
And about mask mandates:
“The evidence that mask mandates work to slow the spread of the disease is very weak. The only randomised evaluation of mask efficacy in preventing Covid infection found very small, statistically insignificant effects [Danish mask study]. And masks are deleterious to the social and educational development of children,
especially young children. They are not needed to address the epidemic. In Sweden, for instance, children have been in school maskless almost the whole of the epidemic, with no child Covid deaths and teachers contracting Covid at rates that are lower than the average of other workers.”
And vaccine passports:
“Vaccine passports are a terrible idea that will diminish trust in public health and do nothing to improve the health of the population. Vaccine certificates are not needed as a public health measure. The Government had it right previously. The country should open up now that the older, vulnerable population has been vaccinated. The rest of the population is at much greater health risk from the lockdown than they are from the virus.” https://lockdownsceptics.org/risk-of-asymptomatic-spread-minimal-variants-over-hyped-masks-pointless-an- interview-with-professor-jay-bhattacharya/
New study looking at data from 160 countries shows lockdowns don’t save lives
Lifestyle and co-morbidities as risk factors for death from COVID-19
A large study looking at 160 countries through August 31, 2020 and published November 19, 2020 in the journal Frontiers in Public Health titled, Covid-19 Mortality: A Matter of Vulnerability Among Nations Facing Limited Margins of Adaptation, tested major indices from five domains (demography, public health, economy, politics, environment) and their potential associations with Covid-19 mortality during the first 8 months of 2020. Some very interesting and insightful conclusions were made, including the first bullet point on lockdowns. Lockdowns have destroyed businesses, lives, families and economies, increased mental health problems, suicides, domestic and child abuse and deaths from despair, but it appears have not saved lives.
From the article: • Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate.
• Countries that already experienced a stagnation or regression of life expectancy, with high income and NCD rates, had the highest price to pay. This burden was not alleviated by more stringent public decisions. Inherent factors have predetermined the Covid-19 mortality: understanding them may improve prevention strategies by increasing population resilience through better physical fitness and immunity. *NCD stands for metabolic and non-communicable diseases, which are represented by chronic diseases such as cardiovascular, respiratory and kidney disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer, autoimmune disease, etc. This makes the United States, which has some of the highest percentage of these diseases in the world vulnerable to higher rates of mortality than some of the Asian countries and those with healthier and more active lifestyles. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339/full
Let’s look at how well L.A. County’s severe restrictions have worked for them
Evidence surrounding lockdown ineffectiveness and harms
Here is an interesting quiz for you! The graph on the next page shows the deaths from the seasonal flu for Ireland, a country that was tightly locked down (and Ivor Cummins AKA the Fat Emperor’s home country) over the past 4 years.
A, B, C & D represent the last 4 years of flu and pneumonia seasons in Ireland, with one of them being 2019- 2020 when COVID-19 hit.. Can you pick out the COVID-19 2020 season? The blue bars represent various months “jumbled”, because if you know which month were March and April you would know which graph was for 2020.
The results are on the next page…
How did you do? Nothing too unusual about 2020 is there? Now with the months revealed
April 2020 looks a lot like January 2017 and 2018 doesn’t it?
Now let’s look at overall deaths in Ireland from the last 6 years. Does 2020 look different?
32 Studies showing the ineffectiveness of lockdowns in changing eventual outcomes or reducing deaths from COVID-19
The MOST important question we could be ask is whether the lockdowns have saved lives? To shut down entire economies, increase deficits by trillions of dollars, destroy small and medium size businesses, contribute to widespread depression, anxiety, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence and child abuse and increased suicide rates if we haven’t even moved the needle on the deaths would be INSANE! But that is exactly what we have done. And I intend to demonstrate that in this segment of my newsletter. Thanks to The American Institute for Economic Research for providing much of this information. https://www.aier.org/article/lockdowns-do-not-control-the-coronavirus-the-evidence/
1. A country level analysis measuring the impact of government actions, country preparedness and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes The Lancet Journals- July 21, 2020 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30208-X/fulltext From the conclusion: “Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people.”
2. W as G er man y’s Cor on a Loc kd ow n Necessar y? https://advance.sagepub.com/articles/preprint/Comment_on_Dehning_et_al_Science_15_May_2020_ eabb9789_Inferring_change_points_in_the_spread_of_COVID19_reveals_the_effectiveness_of_interv entions_/12362645
From the paper: “Therefore, it is obvious that the spread of the virus was already in decline before the first intervention. And it was even negative before the extensive lockdown. In a recent addendum, to their original article, Dehning et al. reconsider their model, using incident cases rather than reported cases. Their new principal result, shown in Fig3, corroborates our finding that Germany’s lockdown was superfluous.” (definition- Unnecessary)
3. Estimation of the current development of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Germany - Epidemiologisches Bulletin (Study in German)- April 2020 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341447502_Schatzung_einer_zeitabhangigen_Reproduktio nszahl_R_fur_Daten_mit_einer_wochentlichen_Periodizitat_am_Beispiel_von_SARS-CoV-2- Infektionen_und_COVID-19 I used the Google German to English translator and read the study. The best way to understand the effects of what they call their “Nationwide extensive contact ban” imposed March 23rd, 2020, is to see the graphs throughout the study and compare the trends before and after the imposition of the lockdown of March 23rd which is denoted by the vertical line from that date on the graphs.
4. Did COVID-19 infections decline before UK lockdown? Arxiv.org- May 2020- Revised September 2020 https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.02090
From the study: “A Bayesian inverse problem approach applied to UK data on COVID-19 deaths and the published disease duration distribution suggests that infections were in decline before UK lockdown, and that infections in Sweden started to decline only a short time later.”
“Taken together the results for England and Wales and Sweden raise the questions of firstly whether full lockdown was necessary to avoid health service overload, or whether more limited measures might have been effective (calling into question the implicit decision to heavily discount future life loss consequential on full lockdown in decision making – see Discussion), and secondly whether the several month duration of full lockdown was appropriate.”
5. The illusory effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in Europe Comment on Flaxman et al. (2020, Nature, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2405-7)
https://advance.sagepub.com/articles/preprint/Comment_on_Flaxman_et_al_2020_The_illusory_effe cts_of_non-pharmaceutical_interventions_on_COVID-19_in_Europe/12479987 From the paper: “In a recent article, Flaxman et al.1allegethat non-pharmaceutical interventions imposed by 11 European countries saved millions of lives. We show that their methods involve circular reasoning. The purported effects are pure artefacts, which contradict the data. Moreover, we demonstrate that the United Kingdom’s lockdown was both superfluous and ineffective.”
6. The end of exponential growth: The decline in the spread of coronavirus https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-end-of-exponential-growth-the-decline-in-the-spread-of- coronavirus/ From the study: “Some may claim that the decline in the number of additional patients every day is a result of the tight lockdown imposed by the government and health authorities. Examining the data of different countries around the world casts a heavy question mark on the above statement.” “It turns out that a similar pattern – rapid increase in infections that reaches a peak in the sixth week and declines from the eighth week – is common to all countries in which the disease was discovered, regardless of their response policies: some imposed a severe and immediate lockdown that included not only “social distancing” and banning crowding, but also shutout of economy (like Israel); some “ignored” the infection and continued almost a normal life (such as Taiwan, Korea or Sweden), and some initially adopted a lenient policy but soon reversed to a complete lockdown (such as Italy or the State of New York). Nonetheless, the data shows similar time constants amongst all these countries in regard to the initial rapid growth and the decline of the disease.”
7. Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions against COVID- 19 in Europe: a quasi-experimental study Medrxiv- May 2020 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.20088260v2.full.pdf Surprisingly, stay-at-home measures showed a positive association with cases. This means that as the number of lockdown days increased, so did the number of cases. The stay-at-home measures showed an inverted U quadratic effect with an initial rise of cases up to day 20 of the intervention followed by a decrease in cases. These results suggest that stay at home orders may not be required to ensure outbreak control.
8. Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic. medRxiv- https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717v1
The Abstract: “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.”
9. Trajectory of COVID-19 epidemic in Europe medRxiv- https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.26.20202267v1
From the article: “The classic Susceptible-Infected-Recovered model formulated by Kermack and McKendrick assumes that all individuals in the population are equally susceptible to infection. From fitting such a model to the trajectory of mortality from COVID-19 in 11 European countries up to 4 May 2020 Flaxman et al. concluded that “major 5 non-pharmaceutical interventions – and lockdowns in particularv– have had a large effect on reducing transmission”.”
The article goes on to debunk the Flaxman analysis that lockdowns and other extreme measures significantly reduced mortality.
10. Effect of school closures on mortality from coronavirus disease 2019: old and new predictions The BMJ- September 2020 - https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3588 From the article: “Stronger interventions, however, are associated with suppression of the infection such that a second wave is observed once the interventions are lifted. For example, adding place closures to case isolation, household quarantine, and social distancing of over 70s substantially suppresses the infection during the intervention period compared with the same scenario without place closures. However, this suppression then leads to a second wave with a higher peak demand for ICU beds than during the intervention period, and total numbers of deaths that exceed those of the same scenario without place closures.”
“We therefore conclude that the somewhat counterintuitive results that school closures lead to more deaths are a consequence of the addition of some interventions that suppress the first wave and failure to prioritise protection of the most vulnerable people.”
“When the interventions are lifted, there is still a large population who are susceptible and a substantial
number of people who are infected. This then leads to a second wave of infections that can result in more deaths, but later. Further lockdowns would lead to a repeating series of waves of infection unless herd immunity is achieved by vaccination, which is not considered in the model.”
“Postponing the spread of covid-19 means that more people are still infectious and are available to infect older age groups, of whom a much larger fraction then die.”
“Nevertheless, in all mitigation scenarios, epidemics modelled using CovidSim eventually finish with widespread infection and immunity, and the final death toll depends primarily on the age distribution of those infected and not the total number.” My comment: This is a validation of the concept that COVID-19 should be allowed to spread in children and young people, which in turn would protect the elderly and most vulnerable.
11. Modeling social distancing strategies to prevent SARS-CoV2 spread in Israel- A Cost-effectiveness analysis medRxiv- https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.30.20047860v3.full.pdf
Results: A nationwide lockdown is expected to save on average 274 lives compared to the “testing, tracing, and isolation” approach. However, the ICER will be on average $45,104,156 (median $ 49.6 million) to prevent one case of death.
12. Too Little of a Good Thing- A Paradox of Moderate Infection Control Epidemiology- July 2020 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2652751/
Mortality due to infectious diseases dropped precipitously in developed countries decades before the advent of specific interventions such as vaccination or antimicrobial treatment. This decline has been variously attributed to improved nutrition, water purification, and reduced opportunity for transmission. Epidemic theory dictates that a reduction in the force of infection by a pathogen is associated with an increase in the average age at which individuals are exposed. For those pathogens that cause more severe disease among hosts of an older age, interventions that limit transmission can paradoxically increase the burden of disease in a population.
13. Smart thinking, lockdown and Covid-19: Implications for public policy Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy- December 12, 2020 https://ideas.repec.org/a/beh/jbepv1/v4y2020isp23-33.html
From the Study: “The data do not support the dominant mental model, il-lustrated in Figure 1, that extreme lockdown is a necessary condition to minimize Covid-19 death rates.” “The narrow focus on the immediate effects of Covid-19 on death rates, with a further focus of on locking down the economy as the key to gaining control over these direct effects, ignores both the longer-term consequences of lockdown on death rates and on overall socio-economic wellbeing. This is acritical flaw of the extreme lockdown policy, which implicitly assumes that the negative ‘externalities’ of such policy will be less than the economic and human costs of lockdown, even with respect to the immediate death rate.” “Amongst the costs of lockdown is increasing unemployment. According to the International Labour Organization (2020) about 50 percent of the global workforce will lose their source of economic livelihood. Related to this, firms will go bankrupt, individuals will lose their homes, families will be impoverished, families will go hungry, family violence will increase, and mental breakdowns will increase. The World Bank (BBC, 2020) expected that 60 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty erasing the impressive gains to poverty alleviation that have taken place over the past few years. And, the negative impact of extreme lockdown policies hit the poor, middle income individuals, Gig economy employees, and SMEs, most of all. There is a highly inequalitarian impact of extreme lockdown policy that must be modelled and be given due analytical consideration. Of course, not all of these effects will last forever, much depends on government policy, but these longer-term effects of lockdown policy will reduce the wellbeing of billions of individuals globally. More specifically, the negative economic consequences of extreme lockdown policy will include increasing deaths from this type of policy which, I’ve argued, are not necessary to effectively combat the Covid-19 pandemic.
Deaths would be a product of suicide and mental health issues, poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, increasing mortality rates, and shortening individuals’ expected life span, for example (Pell & Lesser, 2020). It is even possible that deaths resulting from extreme lock-down induced economic depression could exceed the death resulting from Covid-19 (about 260,000 as of May 6, 2020; this is expected to increase). For example, the United Nations warns that hundreds of thousands of children will die as a result of lockdown induced economic depressions (Nichols,2020). The very real possibility that economic depression related deaths will be substantial needs to be carefully interrogated and estimated. The longer-term impact of lockdown policy must be carefully modelled and understood before adopting extreme lockdown policy which largely ignores the long-term consequences of such policy. But the point here is that such deaths can be largely avoided by adopting alternative existing methods of combatting Covid-19. These alternatives would minimize, in relative terms, the long-term negative effects on the economy and society at large.” “Where the dominant view was that extreme lockdown of the economy was the best course of action to minimize deaths, this perspective was adopted by policy advisers and decision-makers. Decisions had to be taken quickly and were made predicated upon what was believed to be the best course of action. However, the decision-making was skewed in the sense that alternative modelling scenarios ap- pear not to have been carefully considered, especially where there were viable alternatives to lockdown strategies. This lack of consideration appears to be related to the costs of deviating from herd behaviour and also to the lack of voice provided to alternative perspectives on how best to minimize the overall and long-term costs of Covid-19.”
Countries noted by red bars had minor or no lockdowns
14. SARS-CoV-2 waves in Europe: A 2-stratum SEIRS model solution medRxiv- October 23, 2020
This study used computer modeling to predict outcomes from various strategies of controlling spread of the virus.
From the study: “We also developed a death minimizing algorithm with the original intention of testing the general intuition that not impeding spreading among healthy <60 not only allows returning to normal life earlier but also can result in lower final deaths. Yet again, the tool led us to unexpected findings: Initial “Back in March 2020” death minimizing strategies included low isolation to healthy <60 (and also would have resulted in manageable ICU occupancy); After sub-optimal fitted strategies isolation to healthy <60 death minimizing values are negative (it took us a couple of weeks to let the algorithm search for values lower than 0.00).” “For locations far from the herd immunity threshold (HIT) we searched what isolation values allow to return to normal life in 90 days minimizing final deaths, shockingly all found isolations for healthy <60 were negative (i.e. coronavirus parties minimize final deaths).”
“Sweden’s lead epidemiologist (Dr. Anders Tegnell) designed a strategy that did not impede viral spread among healthy <60. In theory (sustainability aside) the strategy could allow speedily reaching HIT without infecting as many vulnerable individuals. If successful, it would mean that closing schools and workplaces not only is economically damaging but also sub-optimal in the sense that it results in a higher death count since vulnerable individuals cannot sustainably isolate for long periods.”
15. Di d Loc kd own Wor k? An Ec onomis t’ s Cros s -Country Comparison Aarhus University and the Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Stockholm – August 06, 2020 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3665588
Abstract: “I explore the association between the severity of lockdown policies in the first half of 2020 and mortality rates. Using two indices from the Blavatnik Centre’s Covid 19 policy measures and comparing weekly mortality rates from 24 European countries in the first halves of 2017-2020, and addressing policy endogeneity in two different ways, I find no clear association between lockdown policies and mortality development.” “Epidemiologists have tried to answer it, indicating that thousands and perhaps millions have been saved. These first answers have nevertheless been exclusively based on forecasts derived from empirically untested models (cf., Flaxman et al., 2020). Conversely, Chaudhry et al. (2020), in an exploratory analysis of data on Covid 19-related deaths across 50 countries, find no association between the degree of lockdown and death rates. Similarly, in the only empirical assessment of its kind to date that takes the endogeneity of policy responses into account, Born et al. (2020) use a synthetic control method to suggest that Sweden’s decision not to lock down society did not contribute to its death toll. They thus question the widely held political belief that lockdowns must have suppressed the spread of the virus.” “The problem at hand is therefore that evidence from Sweden as well as the evidence presented here does not suggest that lockdowns have significantly affected the development of mortality in Europe. It has nevertheless wreaked economic havoc in most societies and may lead to a substantial number of additional deaths for other reasons. A British government report from April for example assessed that a limited lockdown could cause 185,000 excess deaths over the next years (DHSC, 2020). Evaluated as a whole, at a first glance, the lockdown policies of the Spring of 2020 therefore appear to be substantial long-run government failures.”
16. FOUR STYLIZED FACTS ABOUT COVID-19 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH- August 2020 - https://www.nber.org/papers/w27719 Introduction: In this paper, we document these facts regarding COVID deaths using both simpledata smoothing procedures and a Bayesian estimation procedure that allows us toconstruct probability bands around our estimates of the growth of COVID deaths.
Abstract: We document four facts about the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide relevant for those studying the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on COVID-19 transmission. First: across all countries and U.S. states that we study, the growth rates of daily deaths from COVID-19 fell from a wide range of initially high levels to levels close to zero within 20-30 days after each region experienced 25 cumulative deaths. Second: after this initial period, growth rates of daily deaths have hovered around zero or below everywhere in the world. Third: the cross section standard deviation of growth rates of daily deaths across locations fell very rapidly in the first 10 days of the epidemic and has remained at a relatively low level since then. Fourth: when interpreted through a range of epidemiological models, these first three facts about the growth rate of COVID deaths imply that both the effective reproduction numbers and transmission rates of COVID-19 fell from widely dispersed initial levels and the effective reproduction number has hovered around one after the first 30 days of the epidemic virtually everywhere in the world. We argue that failing to account for these four stylized facts may result in overstating the importance of policy mandated NPIs for shaping the progression of this deadly pandemic. Conclusion: One of the central policy questions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic is the question of which non- pharmaceutical interventions governments might use to influence the transmission of the disease. Our ability to identify empirically which NPI’s have what impact on disease transmission depends on there being enough independent variation in both NPI’s and disease transmission across locations as well as our having robust procedures for controlling for other observed and unobserved factors that might be influencing disease transmission. The facts that we document in this paper cast doubt on this premise. Our finding in Fact 1 that early declines in the transmission rate of COVID-19were nearly universal worldwide suggest that the role of region-specific NPI’s implemented in this early phase of the pandemic is likely overstated. This finding instead suggests that some other factor(s) common across regions drove the early and rapid transmission rate declines. While all three factors mentioned in the introduction, voluntary social distancing, the network structure of human interactions, and the nature of the disease itself, are natural contenders, disentangling their relative roles is difficult. Our findings in Fact 2 and Fact 3 further raise doubt about the importance in NPI’s (lockdown policies in particular) in accounting for the evolution of COVID-19transmission rates over time and across locations. Many of the regions in our sample that instated lockdown policies early on in their local epidemic, removed them later on in our estimation period, or have not relied on mandated NPI’s much at all. Yet, effective reproduction numbers in all regions have continued to remain low relative to initial levels indicating that the removal of lockdown policies has had little effect on transmission rates. The existing literature has concluded that NPI policy and social distancing have been essential to reducing the spread of COVID-19 and the number of deaths due to this deadly pandemic. The stylized facts established in this paper challenge this conclusion. We argue that research going forward should account for these facts when assessing how important NPI policy is in shaping the progression of COVID-19.
17. Association between living with children and outcomes from COVID-19: an OpenSAFELY cohort study of 12 million adults in England medRxiv- November 02, 2020 - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.01.20222315v1 Findings: Among 9,157,814 adults ≤65 years, living with children 0-11 years was not associated with increased risks of recorded SARS-CoV-2 infection, COVID-19 related hospital or ICU admission but was associated with reduced risk of COVID-19 death (HR 0.75, 95%CI 0.62-0.92). Living with children aged 12-18 years was associated with a small increased risk of recorded SARS-CoV-2 infection (HR 1.08, 95%CI 1.03- 1.13), but not associated with other COVID-19 outcomes. Living with children of any age was also associated with lower risk of dying from non-COVID-19 causes. Among 2,567,671 adults >65 years there was no association between living with children and outcomes related to SARS-CoV-2. We observed no consistent changes in risk following school closure.
Interpretation: “For adults living with children there is no evidence of an increased risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes. These findings have implications for determining the benefit-harm balance of children attending school in the COVID- 19 pandemic.”
18. Exploring inter-country coronavirus mortality PANDA- Pandemics, Data and Analytics - https://www.pandata.org/papers/ “In countries where seroprevalence testing has been conducted, varying seroprevalence rates have been observed45678. These have seemingly countered the prevailing position of epidemiologists positing high rates of susceptibility and predictions that “herd immunity” would only be achieved at 60to 70% seroprevalence. Such predictions have been further countered by the lack of perceptible change in death rates upon the lifting of lockdowns, voluntary social distancing being eschewed at protest events and simple “disobedience” behaviours in the leisure context. Despite these falsifications, the proponents for lockdown measures remain adamant in core beliefs regarding the correct response measures. We have not been surprised by these phenomena, because we have long been persuaded by the idea that a significant proportion of all populations deal with the virus at the level of the cellular, or innate, immune systems910. In addition to the very large asymptomatic group, who test positive for coronavirus but never notice any symptoms, and the small symptomatic group, who fall ill and a small portion of whom die, there is another group involved. These “bouncers” have healthy immune systems and a large repertoire of Tc and Th cells. When infected, probably by low viral doses, their cellular immune systems deal with the virus effectively. The T-cell response is effective and a B-cell antibody response does not follow. They generate a level of cellular, but not humoral immunity. They are very unlikely to test positive on virology studies and never will on serology studies. They are unlikely to spread the disease by the very nature of their immune system response.” “It is noteworthy that neither average nor maximal lockdown stringency are at all correlated with the residuals or the response variable. Lockdowns do not appear to reduce deaths or flatten epidemic curves in any way.”
“The burden of proof for lockdown efficacy must surely reside with the proponents for this intervention. We find no evidence that is supportive and have yet to see evidence in support of this previously untested intervention.”
“Also, as we pointed out in our previous paper (“Quantifying years of life lost to lockdown”), we expect much greater mortality to result from lockdown than from COVID-19. It has been suggested that such mortality is already evident. Only a third of the excess deaths seen in the community in England and Wales can be explained by COVID-19.”
19. SARS-CoV-2 Transmission among Marine Recruits during Quarantine
New England Journal of Medicine – November 11, 2020 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2029717
From the study: “We investigated SARS-CoV-2 infections among (1,848) U.S. Marine Corps recruits who underwent a 2- week quarantine at home followed by a second supervised 2-week quarantine at a closed college campus that involved mask wearing, social distancing, and daily temperature and symptom monitoring. Study volunteers were tested for SARS-CoV-2 by means of quantitative polymerase-chain- reaction (qPCR) assay of nares swab specimens obtained between the time of arrival and the second day of supervised quarantine and on days 7 and 14.” “Our study showed that in a group of predominantly young male military recruits, approximately 2% became positive for SARS-CoV-2, as determined by qPCR assay, during a 2-week, strictly enforced quarantine. Multiple, independent virus strain transmission clusters were identified. Shared rooms and shared platoon membership were risk factors for transmission. Most study participants with positive qPCR tests were asymptomatic, and all cases among participants and nonparticipants were identified as the result of scheduled testing rather than clinical qPCR testing performed as a result of daily screening.”
20. Covid-19 Mortality: A Matter of Vulnerability Among Nations Facing Limited Margins of Adaptation
Frontiers in Public Health- November 19, 2020. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339/full
This study was MASSIVE looking at data from 160 countries!
From the Results: “Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate.”
Conclusion: “Countries that already experienced a stagnation or regression of life expectancy, with high income and NCD rates, had the highest price to pay. This burden was not alleviated by more stringent public decisions. Inherent factors have predetermined the Covid-19 mortality: understanding them may improve prevention strategies by increasing population resilience through better physical fitness and immunity.” This study clearly indicated that not only did lockdowns have no perceptible effect of death rates, but the countries that are hit the hardest are the ones with the highest rates of metabolic disease (diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular and kidney disease, obesity, etc.). And that explains why the U.S.A. is faring so poorly. We rank at the bottom in the world in the prevalence of these diseases.
21. Government Mandated Lockdowns Do Not Reduce Covid-19 Deaths: Implications for Evaluating the Stringent New Zealand Response
Taylor and Francis Online- August 18, 2020 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00779954.2020.1844786?journalCode=rnzp20
Abstract: “The New Zealand policy response to Coronavirus was the most stringent in the world during the Level 4 lockdown. Up to 10 billion dollars of output (≈3.3% of GDP) was lost in moving to Level 4 rather than staying at Level 2, according to Treasury calculations. For lockdown to be optimal requires large health benefits to offset this output loss. Forecast deaths from epidemiological models are not valid counterfactuals, due to poor identification. Instead, I use empirical data, based on variation amongst United States counties, over one-fifth of which just had social distancing rather than lockdown. Political drivers of lockdown provide identification. Lockdowns do not reduce Covid-19 deaths. This pattern is visible on each date that key lockdown decisions were made in New Zealand. The apparent ineffectiveness of lockdowns suggests that New Zealand suffered large economic costs for little benefit in terms of lives saved.”
22. Longitudinal variability in mortality predicts Covid-19 deaths medRxiv- December 30, 2020 - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.25.20248853v1
Abstract: “Within Europe, death rates due to covid-19 vary greatly, with some countries being hardly hit while others to date are almost unaffected. It would be of interest to pinpoint the factors that determine a country’s susceptibility to a pandemic such as covid-19.” “Here we present data demonstrating that mortality due to covid-19 in a given country could have been largely predicted even before the pandemic hit Europe, simply by looking at longitudinal variability of all-cause mortality rates in the years preceding the current outbreak. The variability in death rates during the influenza seasons of 2015-2019 correlate to excess mortality caused by covid-19 in 2020 (R2=0.48, p<0.0001). In
contrast, we found no correlation between such excess mortality and age, population density, degree of urbanization, latitude, GNP, governmental health spendings or rates of influenza vaccinations.” “These data may be of some relevance when discussing the effectiveness of acute measures in order to limit the spread of the disease and ultimately deaths. They suggest that in some European countries there is an intrinsic susceptibility to fatal respiratory viral disease including covid-19; a susceptibility that was evident long before the arrival of the current pandemic.”
From the discussion: “In the case of the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, the degree of social interactions are influenced by governmental policies ranging from milder regulations to lockdowns. The effectiveness of these measures in preventing the spread of infection and ultimately death is currently a matter of great debate. It seems clear to date that many countries that applied very strict measures, still have experienced very high infection rates and death tolls during the current pandemic. Although the present data cannot be used to evaluate the success of governmental measures, it is noteworthy that whatever factors that drove excess mortality rates in 2020 were present already in 2015-2019, ie during a period when no measures were undertaken in any country. Thus, our data suggest that there is an intrinsic susceptibility in certain countries to excess mortality associated with respiratory viral diseases including covid-19. We suggest that knowing about such susceptibility can be of value in preparing health care systems and directing timely help to a certain region when a pandemic hits a continent.”
23. Lockdown Effects on Sars-CoV-2 Transmission–The evidence from Northern Jutland medRxiv- January 04, 2021 - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.28.20248936v1
“We analysed anew unique data set arising from the selective mandated lockdown of 7 municipalities of the administrative region of Northern Jutland in Denmark, but not 4 others, as a consequence of spread of mink- related mutations in November 2020.”
From the Abstract: “Our analysis shows that while infection levels decreased, they did so before lockdown was effective, and infection numbers also decreased in neighbour municipalities without mandates. Direct spill-over to neighbour municipalities or the simultaneous mass testing do not explain this. Instead, control of infection pockets possibly together with voluntary social behaviour was apparently effective before the mandate, explaining why the infection decline occurred before and in both the mandated and non- mandated areas. The data suggest that efficient infection surveillance and voluntary compliance make full lockdowns unnecessary at least in some circumstances.” From the Conclusion: “Our analysis shows that while infection levels decreased, they did so before the mandate was announced, and the restrictions also had limited and statistically insignificant effects relative to neighbour municipalities without mandates, where infection levels also decreased markedly in Aalborg, the most important municipality not subject to lockdown. A direct spill-over effect to neighbour
municipalities was not seen.”
24. ASSESSING MANDATORY STAY-AT-HOME AND BUSINESS CLOSURE EFFECTS ON THE SPREAD OF COVID-19 European Journal of Clinical Investigation- January 05, 2020 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/eci.13484
“Because of the potential harmful health effects of mrNPI – including hunger2, opioid-related overdoses3, missed vaccinations4,5, increase in non-COVID diseases from missed health services6–9, domestic abuse10, mental health and suicidality11,12, as well as a host of economic consequences with health implications13,14 – it is increasingly recognized that their postulated benefits deserve careful study.” Abstract Background and Aims: “The most restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) for controlling the spread of COVID-19 are mandatory stay-at-home and business closures. Given the consequences of these policies, it is important to assess their effects. We evaluate the effects on epidemic case growth of more restrictive NPIs (mrNPIs), above and beyond those of less restrictive NPIs (lrNPIs).” Methods: “We first estimate COVID-19 case growth in relation to any NPI implementation in subnational regions of 10 countries: England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, and the US. Using first-difference models with fixed effects, we isolate the effects of mrNPIs by subtracting the combined effects of lrNPIs and epidemic dynamics from all NPIs. We use case growth in Sweden and South Korea, two countries that did not implement mandatory stay-at-home and business closures, as comparison countries for the other 8 countries (16 total comparisons).” Results: “Implementing any NPIs was associated with significant reductions in case growth in 9 out of 10 study countries, including South Korea and Sweden that implemented only lrNPIs (Spain had a non-significant effect). After subtracting the epidemic and lrNPI effects, we find no clear, significant beneficial effect of mrNPIs on case growth in any country. In France, e.g., the effect of mrNPIs was +7% (95CI -5%-19%) when compared with Sweden, and +13% (-12%-38%) when compared with South Korea (positive means pro-contagion). The 95% confidence intervals excluded 30% declines in all 16 comparisons and 15% declines in 11/16 comparisons.” Conclusions: “While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs. Similar reductions in case growth may be achievable with less restrictive interventions.”
25. COVID-19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink Preprint.org- November 04, 2020 - https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202010.0330/v2 This study has 177 references. Abstract: “The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) worldwide pandemic in 2020. In response, most countries in the world implemented lockdowns, restricting their population’s movements, work, education, gatherings, and general activities in attempt to ‘flatten the curve’ of COVID-19 cases. The public health goal of lockdowns was to save the population from COVID-19 cases and deaths, and to prevent overwhelming health care systems with COVID-19 patients. In this narrative review I explain why I changed my mind about supporting lockdowns. First, I explain how the initial modeling predictions induced fear and crowd-effects [i.e., groupthink]. Second, I summarize important information that has emerged relevant to the modeling, including about infection fatality rate, high-risk groups, herd immunity thresholds, and exit strategies. Third, I describe how reality started sinking in, with information on significant collateral damage due to the response to the pandemic, and information placing the number of deaths in context and perspective. Fourth, I present a cost-benefit analysis of the response to COVID-19 that finds lockdowns are far more harmful to public health than COVID-19 can be. Controversies and objections about the main points made are considered and addressed. I close with some suggestions for moving forward.” Conclusion: “The destruction of lives and livelihoods in the name of survival will haunt us for decades.”10 The decisions we made entailed “trade-offs that cannot be wished away.”10 The most affected by the pandemic response are “the poor, the marginalized, and the vulnerable,” while we in high-income countries have shifted “negative effects... to places where they are less visible and presumably less serious.”10 We must open up society to save many more lives than we can by attempting to avoid every case (or even most cases) of COVID-19. It is past time to take an effortful pause, calibrate our response to the true risk, make rational cost-benefit analyses of the trade-offs, and end the lockdown groupthink.
26. The effect of interventions on COVID-19 Nature- December 23, 2020 - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3025-y This was one of the latest papers to respond to and show the “Flaxman study”, which showed lockdowns to be an effective measure as flawed and inaccurate.
From the paper: “Flaxman et al took on the challenge of estimating the effectiveness of five categories of non- pharmaceutical intervention (NPI)—social distancing encouraged, self isolation, school closures, public events banned, and complete lockdown—on the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). On the basis of mortality data collected between January and early May 2020, they concluded that only one of these, the lockdown, had been effective in 10 out of the 11 European countries that were studied. However, here we
use simulations with the original model code to suggest that the conclusions of Flaxman et al. with regard to the effectiveness of individual NPIs are not justified. Although the NPIs that were considered have indisputably contributed to reducing the spread of the virus, our analysis indicates that the individual effectiveness of these NPIs cannot be reliably quantified.”
27. “ A Fi r st Liter atu re Review: Lockdowns Only Had a Small Effect on COVID-19” Center for Political Studies- Denmark by Jonas Herby, SSRN, January 6, 2021.
The Abstract: “How important was the economic lockdowns in the spring of 2020 in curbing the COVID-19 pandemic and how important was the lockdown in comparison to voluntary changes in behavior? In the spring, the overall social response to the COVID-19 pandemic consisted of a mix of voluntary and government mandated behavior changes. Voluntary behavior changes occurred on the basis of information, such as the number of people infected, the number of COVID-19-deaths and on the basis of the signal value associated with the official lockdown combined with appeals to the population to change its behavior. Mandated behavior changes took place as a result of the banning of certain activities deemed non-essential. Studies which differentiate between the two types of behavioral change find that, on average, mandated behavior changes accounts for only 9% (median: 0%) of the total effect on the growth of the pandemic stemming from behavioral changes. The remaining 91% (median: 100%) of the effect was due to voluntary behavior changes. This is excluding the effect of curfew and facemasks, which was not employed in all countries.”
28. Covid-19 lockdown policies: An interdisciplinary review Dr Oliver C. Robinson Associate, Professor of Psychology School of Human Sciences, University of Greenwich, London From the Abstract: Biomedical evidence from the early months of the pandemic suggests that lockdowns were associated with a reduced viral reproductive rate, but also that less restrictive measures had a similar effect. Lockdowns were not associated with reduced mortality in any studies apart from modelling studies. Psychological research supports the proposition that lengthy lockdowns may exacerbate stressors such as social isolation that have been shown to be strong predictors of falling ill if exposed to a respiratory virus. Research at the socioeconomic level of analysis points to the possibility that deaths associated with economic harms may outweigh the deaths that lockdowns save, and that the extremely high financial cost of lockdowns may have negative implications for overall population health in terms of diminished resources for other health issues.
29. Do Lockdowns Make a Difference in a Pandemic? C2C Journal - March 20, 2021
From the article: Randomized control trials may be the gold standard for generating scientific evidence, but such precision isn’t always possible. Natural experiments – such as comparing similarly-situated jurisdictions responding to the same crisis through different policy choices – offer the next best thing and sometimes the only thing. Using two carefully selected pairs of U.S. states, Masha V. Krylova examines key Covid-19 metrics across a year of hard and softer pandemic response policies. The results of her meticulously researched natural experiment provide important evidence on the efficacy of lockdowns and how we should tackle future pandemics. While aimed at fighting the virus’s spread, the interventions imposed a massive toll in areas including global hunger, domestic abuse, mental and physical health problems, suicides and bankruptcies. Despite these grim consequences and, more recently, the accelerating pace of vaccinations and the gratifying reduction in deaths from Covid-19, many North American governments remain reluctant to ease the restrictions. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mused lately that the Canada-U.S. land border would reopen “eventually”, while some public health figures are now calling for a third lockdown. Before we – again – do anything that drastic, we need to pose an important question: Did the lockdowns actually work? Not merely in the sense of keeping people at home and convinced that their governments were doing something; but in actually altering the course of the virus through the population. This should be a crucial matter of interest to every citizen and politician. It is key to rationally assessing the costs and benefits of imposing similar social and economic policies during the next serious epidemic. So, just how effective have all these restrictions been in containing the Covid-19 pandemic? Unintended consequences: The lockdowns and other restrictions imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic have triggered numerous other problems throughout society, including lengthy delays in elective surgeries as well as worrisome increases in mental health issues, domestic abuse and business bankruptcies. The report looked at 3 pairs of states with varying responses in levels of restrictions. Two are mid-sized, adjoining Midwest states: Minnesota and Wisconsin. Minnesota had a hard and extended lockdown (many schools are still not open, for example), while Wisconsin had a short lockdown followed by moderate restrictions. The other two are southerly coastal states – California and Florida. California has had a hard and ongoing lockdown, while Florida has sought every opportunity to ease restrictions and reopen. Two other seemingly suitable cases were omitted: New York, a hard-lockdown state, because of its unique circumstances (including heavy mass-transit use in its largest city, and its deadly nursing home scandal), and South Dakota, North America’s only jurisdiction to remain fully open throughout the pandemic, because of its small and non-urbanized population. Overall, the following relationships between the state rules and daily Covid-19 statistics are apparent: 1. The stay-at-home orders, which varied greatly in intensity and duration (and, anecdotally, in enforcement severity) seem to have made no observable tangible impact on the daily Covid-19 cases and deaths. Further, the most severe restrictions, such as a prolonged lockdown and nighttime curfew implemented in California in November, did not prevent the subsequent December-January spike in cases or fatalities. 2. Following imposition of statewide mask mandates, there was no observable change in the daily
infections or deaths in Minnesota, California or Wisconsin, nor in Florida, which never imposed this regulation statewide. 3. In contrast to the three other states, Florida experienced two distinct Covid-19 waves, while its daily Covid-19 cases and deaths grew less sharply during its cooler season and were distributed more evenly throughout the year. But does this trajectory translate into greater infection and/or death rates in Florida than in California or the other states? A review of the general statistics on Covid-19 cases and deaths might help answer this question. The number of deaths can be translated into the fatality rate, which reflects the proportion of people who died having been diagnosed with Covid-19. In harder-lockdown Minnesota, deaths per registered cases have been virtually identical to less restricted Wisconsin (1.39 percent vs. 1.35 percent), while California is slightly higher at 1.63 percent than Florida at 1.51 percent. Taken together, this evidence suggests that:
• Despite restrictions of differing severity and duration, there is little difference in the total number of Covid-19 infections and deaths across the four states, respectively, averaging around 9.22 percent and 0.14 percent of each state’s total population. The fatality rate is also comparable, although it is somewhat greater in California and Florida than in Minnesota and Wisconsin. This difference does not seem to be related to the regulations that were imposed.
• Regardless of the state-by-state restrictions, the percentage of deaths of people 65 and older is under 1 percent in each of the four states, with Florida having the lowest rate. As well, the two least-restricted states had the two lowest death rates in this category.
• Regarding the original rationale for imposing lockdowns – to “flatten the curve” – the least restricted state, Florida, experienced an overall rate of cases and deaths comparable to the other three states. Paradoxically, Florida’s double-hump pandemic also forms the flattest trajectory of the four states. Whatever policy choices Florida’s government made, or whatever luck the state benefited from, the least- restricted state, with the highest proportion of elderly, had arguably the greatest success in preventing the overwhelming of its hospitals as well as limiting deaths among its most vulnerable age group.
30. Delaying first Covid lockdown may have inadvertently saved more lives than it cost March 2021 From the article: A number of scientists and opposition politicians have claimed that delaying the decision caused tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. However, a University of Cambridge expert now argues that countries that locked down early effectively delayed part of their first wave until the winter, resulting in higher overall mortality. Dr Raghib Ali, a senior clinical research associate at the university's MRC Epidemiology Unit, said Britain's relatively late lockdown meant more people were infected in the spring, when underlying pressure on the NHS
was relatively light, meaning they were protected by antibodies come winter – when the service traditionally struggles to cope. "What happened in many other countries in Europe who also locked down and closed their borders at the same time is that they did have very small first waves in spring 2020 but this was followed by much larger second waves in autumn/winter 2021 and now into spring 2021 too,” he wrote. "And this has happened despite second and third lockdowns in many of these countries as people understandably struggled to maintain compliance with restrictions for months on end. "But based on current trends it seems likely that many of these countries that we thought were doing well due to their early lockdowns and small first waves will end up having higher excess mortality than the UK, including Czech Republic, Poland, Portugal, and many others." "The point is that getting the timing of lockdowns right is not straightforward, especially when you have to balance their very significant harms against their benefit, and there really is not good evidence that an earlier lockdown would have saved lives," he said. End of excerpts The take-away for me from this article, is that lockdowns do delay some people from getting infected and therefore may delay some casualties. However, this comes at a tremendous societal cost in suffering and collateral death. It also points out the seasonality in respiratory viral infections, a valid point and one that has played out as expected in this pandemic. And, interestingly as the next winter rolled around the flu virtually disappeared, dominated by the new kid on the block, SARS-CoV-2. Or is it just a case of misidentification?
31. A Year Later: Were Lockdowns Necessary?
From the conclusion Throughout this paper, we were questioning the notion of if the lockdowns imposed by governments around the world were in any capacity all that necessary. From describing what the coronavirus is and whom it affects the most to the high rates of depression and anxiety caused by the government restrictions, I hope to have successfully changed your mind to at least question the belief that we truly needed them. From lost wages to children falling behind in school to one in four women being trapped with their abusers we should deeply reconsider an outright lockdown.
32. Evaluating the effects of shelter-in-place policies during the COVID-19 pandemic
Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago. March 25, 2021. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), The United States of America
From the study: We estimate the effects of shelter-in-place (SIP) orders during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We do not find detectable effects of these policies on disease spread or deaths. We find small but measurable effects on mobility that dissipate over time. And we find small, delayed effects on unemployment. We conduct
additional analyses that separately assess the effects of expanding versus withdrawing SIP orders and test whether there are spill-over effects in other states. Our results are consistent with prior studies showing that SIP orders have accounted for a relatively small share of the mobility trends and economic disruptions associated with the pandemic. We reanalyze two prior studies purporting to show that SIP orders caused large reductions in disease prevalence, and show that those results are not reliable
But we find little evidence that SIP orders, as implemented, had much effect over and above all the other public messaging and voluntary behavior changes occurring nationwide. Although we find no detectable health benefits of SIP orders, we also find that they accounted for a small share of economic costs associated with the pandemic, consistent with other studies (6–9).
Furthermore, our study focuses on the early months of the pandemic, and the effectiveness of SIP orders could change over time. However, the previously presented evidence on the effectiveness of SIP orders appears to be mis-leading, and there is currently no compelling evidence to suggest that SIP policies saved a large number of lives or significantly mitigated the spread of COVID-19. However, this does not mean that voluntary social distancing—SIP practice as distinct from policy—was ineffective.
Let’s now look at some graphic displays of the ineffectiveness of lockdowns
This is a graph showing the lockdown stringency (black line) compared to the deaths August to current
As can be clearly seen, as lockdown stringency (black line) increased from November 2020 through February 2021, the death rates continued to climb. As importantly, from the start of the graph on the left as lockdowns eased mid-summer through most of the fall, we didn’t see the death rates go up. The increase in death rates starting in November is typical with any season as illness and deaths from respiratory viruses always exhibit a seasonality to them. This year was no exception.
The biggest difference is that the frail, sickly, elderly and Vitamin D deficient people that would have normally succumbed to the seasonal flu and pneumonia were now dying from COVID-19.
The following graphs are a powerful example of the shift from flu to COVID-19
Where did the seasonal flu go? All graphs are from the CDC’s website
Look at how hospitals and medical systems have portrayed the flu in recent years.
This is from Ireland, but very representative of the rest of the World.
Depending on where you live, hospital capacity (ER beds, ICU beds and general beds) may be sufficient or insufficient. Lockdowns were initially “sold” to us because we didn’t want the hospitals to be overwhelmed. Yet, if state, county and city governments would have prepared for a possible infectious disease outbreak and made sure that their potential capacity was able to ramp up to demand, we wouldn’t have had pressure on hospital systems. Not to mention the suppression of effective, inexpensive drugs and treatments that could have been employed by field doctors and clinics to treat people shortly after onset of symptoms. That alone could have prevented the surges we saw in hospitals across the country.
More data on lockdown stringency ineffectiveness….
This is a scatter graph showing Total Deaths per Million as the stringency of lockdowns and countermeasures increase.
The number of countries above the line is greater than below the line indicating a greater number of deaths per million as you move further to the right on the graph into greater stringency of societal restrictions. Another portrayal of that is to look at the portion of the graph on the far right. The section of the bars that projects farthest to the right is well above the line. The bottom line is that there is virtually no benefit as the
Stringency Index increases.
More on Sweden’s success
Note: Again, Sweden as the world’s control group having no lockdown, no masking and minimal societal interruption is in the upper left. It clearly shows that Sweden’s response is as good and even better than three of its neighbors in this 52-week trailing average.
Below is another graph showing that Sweden’s all-cause mortality rate is no worse as compared to their neighbors, who lived under stringent lockdowns throughout 2020.
Not only that but as this graph below shows, in the Scandinavian counties, 2020 (through December 11th) was not unusual when compared to previous years.
One point of interest is that Sweden had a very light mortality burden from the flu and influenza like illness in the winter of 2018-2019 as compared to neighboring countries. That left their population with more susceptible elderly people at the start of 2020, just in time for the onset of SARS-CoV-2. So if anything Sweden’s mortality burden should have been significantly higher than their neighbors.
Another comparison of Sweden against other European countries
The lockdown and economic paradox
Adding to the extensive look at the published research on the effectiveness of lockdowns that we did last month, it appears that several very poor countries have fared very well despite having light restrictions in place. Another interesting dynamic is economical. One would think that the countries with the most affluence and highest level of medical care would fare the best. After all, third-world countries and impoverished nations have the highest rates of infectious diseases and deaths from infectious disease. It would make sense that it would also be the case with COVID-19. But it’s not the case. When you look at the global map from John’s Hopkins below, you will clearly see that the countries that have done the worst are the western and European economic powerhouses with the most modern and advanced medical care available. It is a very odd paradox. For example, contrast Haiti with the United States. According to Johns Hopkins Data Tracker, the extremely poor country of Haiti ranks 160th in the world in deaths per 100,000 population from COVID-19. Surprisingly and tragically, the United States ranks 10th.
An interesting lockdown and economic case study In comparing the two nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, there are economic and lockdown stringency differences making this an interesting comparison. Haiti shares an island with the Dominican Republic (D.R.), so there is no geographic advantage to either. The stringency measures scale on the graphic below is scaled that the higher the number, the stricter the lockdown, masking and mitigation measures have been. You can see the red circle on the map below. The light blue section is Haiti (lockdown stringency index of 30+). The purple section is the D.R. (stringency index 70+), which is the same as the U.S. Therefore if degree of stringency works to save lives, one would think that the D.R. would have the upper hand.
So how have they fared with COVID mortality? D.R. has a death rate of 24/100,000 population Haiti has a death rate of 2/100,000 (and that is 14 times lower than the world’s average) Since they share the same small land mass, geography can’t be the explanation.
Economic reasons? Haiti is extremely poor. It ranks 170 out of 189 on the 2020 Human Development Index. The Dominican Republic ranks 88th out of 189 countries on the 2020 Human Development Index In Haiti, the Gross National Income per capita is $1730. The average annual income in the D.R. is $9,324 or about 5.4 times what the average Haitian worker makes. The average for Caribbean/Latin American developing countries is $14,098. (World Bank 2014)
Sources: http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/latest-human-development-index-ranking https://dominicantoday.com/dr/economy/2020/03/11/a-dominican-households-monthly-income-is-us777/
The economic advantage the U.S. has over Haiti is ENORMOUS! Just comparing the U.S. to Haiti without knowing the exact magnitude of the economic chasm between the two countries, it is strikingly obvious that economics can’t be the reason for their success. The U.S. has a death rate from COVID-19 of 155 per 100,000 people and Haiti has a death rate of 2 per 100,000 people. How can that possibly be? It definitely can’t be economics.
Can it be medical sophistication? Again, this is a no brainer. Haiti cannot hold a candle compared to the U.S. with regard to medical sophistication, advancements, technology, access to care, quality of hospitals, doctor to patient ratio, etc., etc., etc. So, how in the world are they doing so much better?
Several studies and numerous scientific experts have recognized that COVID-19 is particularly deadly in countries with the highest levels of diseases of western civilization… Some may call these diseases of affluence…. diseases like obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease including hypertension, kidney disease, various forms of dementia (often referred to as Type 3 Diabetes), lung disease and immunocompromise.
On the next page direct evidence of that. As you will see, the countries with the highest levels of chronic disease are the industrialized countries of the World. And those countries are the ones most directly affected by high levels of cases and deaths…. (note: the W.H.O. map was from March 2020, but for the most part the trends have held true throughout). The least affected countries seem to be the poorer countries as you will see. This is paradoxical when it comes to most infectious diseases.
How about looking at global death rates compared to latitude…
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-maps-and-cases/ Some theorize that countries closer to the equator have less seasonality (more year-round warmer weather) and therefore those countries would not have as much variance with seasonal respiratory infections as countries farthest from the equator. Other studies have failed to confirm that. Many studies have shown that vitamin D levels are higher in populations further from the poles, especially in Caucasian peoples. I say Caucasian because people with dark skin typically have lower levels of Vitamin D because the pigment in their skin block the U.V. rays from stimulating Vitamin D production. Higher levels of Vitamin D have been shown to be protective against COVID-19 in numerous studies since the start of the pandemic. (see my detailed article with dozens of references here: https://www.wellnessdoc.com/vitamin-d-status-as-it-relates-to-covid-19-complications-and-death/ ). You can see however from the map above, that many counties closer to the equator have faired poorly and many well. The same can be said for those farther from the equator, so there really doesn’t seem to be a definite connection with geography (despite the very strong evidence of the benefits of Vitamin D).
A study in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal looked at those climate and geographic factors such as latitude. The 2014 study titled Ambient Temperature and Respiratory Virus Infection, found various factors that play a role.
From the article:
Considerable study and attention has been put forth to further elucidate the mechanisms governing respiratory virus epidemicity worldwide. Specifically, environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, UV index, wind and rainfall have been implicated in the seasonality of respiratory virus infections. In this review, we will concentrate on two important pediatric pathogens, influenza virus and RSV, as well as discuss the environmental factors that affect the transmission of other respiratory viruses, such as the rhino-, adeno-, parainfluenza- and metapneumoviruses, which cause significant disease in the pediatric population. By far, the most research investigating the seasonality of respiratory infections has focused on influenza virus. Recently, large-scale epidemiological studies have demonstrated a relationship between weather conditions and influenza virus transmission, not only in temperate climates, but also in tropical and subtropical regions. In a study analyzing data from 85 countries, Azziz-Baumgartner et al11 observed that the timing of influenza epidemics in temperate climates, as expected, correlates with low temperature. After adjusting for mean monthly sunshine, precipitation, absolute humidity and latitude, peak infection rates were typically observed during or immediately following the coldest month of the year. In contrast, influenza viruses in the tropics tended to circulate year-round or to appear in multiple epidemics in a given year.11 A similar analysis of worldwide, laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infections corroborated these findings.12 Tamerius et al13 also investigated the role of environmental factors in the seasonality of influenza in temperate and tropical climates. Their analyses determined two main climatic conditions associated with influenza virus epidemics: “cold-dry” and “humid-rainy”. In temperate climates, annual peaks in influenza prevalence coincided with the low temperature and humidity of the winter months. In tropical locales, influenza virus circulation peaked during months with high humidity and precipitation, with biannual epidemics being more common in Asia and Central and South America. Influenza seasonality was more difficult to predict in subtropical locations, however. For example, in Senegal (15°N), influenza virus activity peaked during months with high humidity and precipitation, while in Hong Kong (22°N), influenza epidemics occurred biannually, once during the “humid- rainy” summer season and then again in “cold-dry” winter conditions.13 Similar patterns in tropical and subtropical locations were also documented by Bloom-Feshbach et al.12
From the conclusion:
Both laboratory and epidemiological data suggest that temperature plays a large role in the transmission efficiency of these viruses. Of course, temperature alone cannot fully explain the epidemiology of respiratory viruses in all parts of the world, and maximally efficient virus transmission is likely the result of several factors acting in concert, including, but not limited to, host defenses and immunity, virus infectivity and stability, as well as other environmental factors.
End of excerpts https://journals.lww.com/pidj/Fulltext/2014/03000/Ambient_Temperature_and_Respiratory_Virus.24.aspx
The collateral damage from lockdowns is enormous!
New CDC data shows that deaths of despair from lockdowns on people aged 20-49 years far eclipses deaths from COVID-19
A report published in The Daily Wire on Oct 22nd titled, New CDC Numbers Show Lockdown’s Deadly Toll On Young People, revealed some disturbing data that is being ignored by the mainstream media, data showing that the fear mongering, lockdowns, unemployment and business closures are having deadly consequences for young and middle-aged people. (link to original article with its references at end of this segment)
The new CDC numbers on increased deaths in young people from the lockdowns is devastating news. According the CDC, 20-49-year-olds have a 99.98% chance of surviving the virus, YET they now estimate that the number of excess deaths in that age group alone has eclipsed the deaths in this age group due to the virus by multiples. The former head of the FDA, a vocal proponent up to this point believes that a good percentage of the deaths were deaths of despair. To date, well over 100,000 small business have been forced to close permanently and many people in this age demographic have lost everything they have worked so hard for. As a result, suicides, drug overdoses, alcohol addiction and excess deaths from other reasons have skyrocketed. All this carnage in an age group that has an extremely low risk from CV19. We cannot afford any MORE LOCKDOWNS!
From the article: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed Wednesday that young adults aged 25-44 years saw the largest increase in “excess” deaths from previous years, a stunning 26.5% jump. The notable increase even surpassed the jump in excess deaths of older Americans, who are at much higher risk of COVID-19 fatality. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm?s_cid=mm6942e2_w
Moreover, according to the CDC, 100,947 excess deaths were not linked to COVID-19 at all. Since such young people are at very low risk for COVID-19 fatality — 20-49-year-olds have a 99.98% chance of surviving the virus, per CDC data — it has been suggested that the shocking increase in deaths is largely attributable to deaths of “despair,” or deaths linked to our “cure” for the disease: lockdown measures. Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, one of the most vocal and earliest proponents of lockdown measures, admitted this much during a Wednesday news appearance.
“I would suspect that a good portion of the deaths in that younger cohort were deaths due to despair, due to other reasons,” admitted Gottlieb (see video below). “We’ve seen a spike in overdoses, and I would suspect that a good portion of those excess deaths in that younger cohort were from drug overdoses and other deaths that were triggered by some of the implications of we’ve gone through to try to deal with COVID-19.” Critics roundly mocked President Donald Trump early in the pandemic for warning about excess deaths of despair under lockdown. Public health experts and others are now increasingly calling for an end to heavy- handed measures, citing a growing body of evidence that such policies are having drastic negative impacts on Americans’ physical and mental health.
Possibly the starkest impact has been the worsening of another U.S. health crisis: the opioid epidemic. Deaths from opioids were already rising as initial estimates from the CDC show 2019 to be the worst year on record with roughly 71,000 deaths. The crisis has worsened across more than 40 states during the pandemic, according to an analysis of local news reports by the American Medical Association. From the start of the year to the end of August, preliminary counts of overdose deaths have jumped 28% in Colorado, 30% in Kentucky, and 9% in Washington state over the same time frame last year, according to The Associated Press.
Calls to suicide hotlines spiked amid the pandemic as people, isolated at the direction of public health officials and scared of contracting COVID-19, suffered anxiety attacks and mental breakdowns. Calls to the Disaster Distress Helpline, which offers emotional support to people amid a natural disaster, jumped 890% in April compared to April 2019. Local law enforcement and health agencies in places such as Fresno, California, and Los Alamos, New Mexico, are reporting significant increases in death by suicide, sometimes as high as 70% in a month.
Many distressed callers reached out after losing a job or even their house after government-mandated closures plunged the U.S. to its highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. Stay-at-home orders devastated small businesses and pushed an estimated 8 million Americans into poverty, according to a recent study from Columbia University.
By the end of August, for example, Yelp found that 97,966 small businesses were forced to close their doors permanently because of lockdown restrictions.
"I would suspect that a good portion of the deaths in that younger cohort were due to despair, due to other reasons. We've seen a spike in overdoses," says @ScottGottliebMD on a CDC report finding 25-44 year olds are being hit hard trying to deal with the #COVID19 pandemic. pic.twitter.com/IW9L4YwaTq — Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) October 21, 2020. Scott Gottlieb is a former FDA Commissioner.
End of excerpts https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-cdc-numbers-show-lockdowns-deadly-toll-on-young-people?
What are some of the devastating costs to locking down people under 65?
Persons in that age group make up nearly 100% of the work force and those pursuing an education. And those are the people most impacted by the shutdown of our country. We must look at all the data, not just cases, hospitalizations and deaths. We must look at the economic toll to businesses, lost jobs and the fallout to families including homelessness and bankruptcies; not to mention the several trillion dollars of additional debt added to the country’s deficit. We must look at the societal toll, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, divorce, child abuse, child hunger. We must look at the mental health toll, the increase in suicides, depression, anxiety and stress. We have to look at all of the deaths and progression of diseases that weren’t able to be treated such as, people having heart attacks at home too afraid to go to the hospital (see graph below), people with cancer
unable to get their treatments or tests that could have caught growth of new of existing lesions, increased stress related illness exacerbating diabetes, hypertension, etc. (all increased risk factors with COVID-19 by the way) and of course obesity. It is estimated that what was already an obesity epidemic, will now be magnified significantly due to people being homebound, eating comfort foods to mitigate stress, lack of exercise with gyms closed, people being encouraged to stay indoors, etc. Now the mask mandates increasing the fear, further suppression of people’s immune systems and greater consequences across all of these considerations. And, when looking at age related death statistics, we realize that only approximately 4% of deaths are in people under 60. The next obvious question is, why are we continuing to deepen the wounds to the majority of society who are at such low risk?
Unintended consequences- Out of hospital cardiac arrests This graph shows data from 4 provinces in Italy and the Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrests (heart attacks, abbreviated OHCAs), in relation to the increase of cases of COVID-19. Compared to 2019 (gold color), you can clearly see that people in 2020 (blue), were dealing with heart attacks at home rather than going to the hospital where they belong. This is a clear example of the unintended consequences of shutting people out of hospitals and frightening them to the point that many refused to go out of fear of COVID. Note that the cases are per 100,000 inhabitants.
Excess deaths since the pandemic started- How much are non-COVID-19 related?
Another report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), July 1st 2020 titled, Excess Deaths From COVID-19 and Other Causes, March-April 2020, looked at excess deaths over the first couple of months of the pandemic and found that those deaths included large numbers of casualties in excess of what would normally have been expected. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768086 From the article: “The 5 states with the most COVID-19 deaths experienced large proportional increases in deaths from non- respiratory underlying causes, including diabetes (96%), heart diseases (89%), Alzheimer disease (64%), and
cerebrovascular diseases (35%) (Figure). New York City experienced the largest increases in non-respiratory deaths, notably from heart disease (398%) and diabetes (356%).” This data underscores the sad reality that many people have perished because of the fear and the lockdowns. This includes the fear and anxiety that undoubtably contributed to heart attacks and rapid progression of stress related diseases. It also includes the fear of contracting the virus if a person were to go to the hospital, intersecting with the lack of access to medical care due to the grossly exaggerated models of death projections from the pandemic.
In New York, people suffering cardiac arrest died as a result of the Do-Not-Resuscitate order
In a grim and heartless decision enacted April 21, 2020, New York State ordered a “do not resuscitate” order for first responders treating cardiac patients without a pulse. In addition, they stopped transporting cardiac patients to hospitals. https://nypost.com/2020/04/21/ny-issues-do-not-resuscitate-guideline-for-cardiac-patients/
From the New York Post story: “While paramedics were previously told to spend up to 20 minutes trying to revive people found in cardiac arrest, the change is “necessary during the COVID-19 response to protect the health and safety of EMS providers by limiting their exposure, conserve resources, and ensure optimal use of equipment to save the greatest number of lives,’’ according to a state Health Department memo issued last week. First responders were outraged over the move.” ““They’re not giving people a second chance to live anymore,’’ Oren Barzilay, head of the city union whose members include uniformed EMTs and paramedics, fumed of state officials. “Our job is to bring patients back to life. This guideline takes that away from us,” he said.”
In my opinion, this is paramount to murder. Sadly, this adds to New York’s horrible legacy of fatal decisions amid the COVID-19 pandemic. And, it highlights the grim reality of the countless non-infected casualties directly caused by the decisions and actions taken in response to this pandemic. If you watched Governor Cuomo’s daily press conferences, you could see, hear and feel that his level of fear and the fear he communicated to the public was EXTREME. And of course, those were the “shock value” clips that played daily on every news and media outlet across the country (and probably the world). This is just another example of failed leadership.
Stanford’s Dr. Scott Atlas, the one Coronavirus Task Force member that was a voice of reason, science and common sense lays it out nicely
On August 10th, President Trump announced the addition of Dr. Scott Atlas to his coronavirus taskforce. Dr. Atlas is a former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Dr. Atlas has been outspoken throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, recognizing and speaking to the many catastrophic consequences of the lockdowns to people, the economy, and society.
In an article published in The Hill May 25th, 2020, Dr. Atlas said this ... “Statistically, every $10 million to $24 million lost in U.S. incomes results in one additional death.” He went on to say…”The disease has been responsible for 800,000 lost years of life so far. The national lockdown is responsible for at least 700,000 lost years of life every month, or about 1.5 million so far, already far surpassing the COVID-19 total”. Importantly, that interview was May 25th. It is now the end of August. That means another 90 days have gone by and those devastating statistics have continued to grow to even greater proportions. If his estimate of 700,000 of life years lost per month is accurate, the life years lost total now is around 3.6 million!
He also said the following: “In addition to lives lost because of lost income, lights are also lost due to delayed or foregone healthcare.” Other experts have cited that the deaths from these instances may have already exceeded the deaths due to COVID-19. And, those deaths will continue long after COVID-19. Because the people with cancer that were not disgnosed early will be in later stages before the cancer is discovered. Because of the stress, anxiety and depression, death due to heart attacks will continue to rise. Suicides already at record highs will continue to rise. Drug overdoses will continue to rise as millions have turned to drugs and alcohol during this time and those addictions will take a tremendous toll in the future. The lockdown continuing beyond when the data clearly showed what we were dealing with and who the most vulnerable were, is what has precipitated this catastrophe. In addition, the media’s non-stop drumbeat of fearmongering has added fuel to the fire, and they should be held accountable as well
In another article published in The Hill May 03, 2020, he gave a 3-step solution to the lockdowns:
1. Let's finally focus on protection for the most vulnerable; that means nursing home patients. 2. Those with mild symptoms of illness should strictly self-isolate for two weeks. 3. Implement prioritized testing for three groups: nursing home workers, health care workers, first responders, and patients in hospitals with respiratory symptoms or fever.
In that same article he proposed the following: “Open all K-12 schools. Open businesses including restaurants and offices. Parks and beaches should remain open and outdoor sports should resume. There is no scientific reason to insist that people remain indoors.”
In an interview on Uncommon Knowledge, a production of the Hoover Institute June 23, 2020, Dr. Atlas said the following when asked about what should have been done differently. “But this is really… one of the several egregious failures of the policy implementation here. Because basically what we would sanely do, is consider the impact of what we're doing, as well as the impact of what we're trying to prevent. Instead, they did two things. They the policy makers in general, they put in the lock down they didn't care at all they did not calculate all the costs of the harms of the lockdown, the consequences of the lock down. They did they stop COVID-19 at all costs and they used hypothetical projection models that were so egregiously wrong, far far off, yet they keep citing those models. And so, the extension of the lock down is the problem. I think we can all understand why the initial lockdown was done. Once the fatality rate projections actually are data instead of projections. When we see what's going on, when we know who to protect, which we can talk about. We understand that the really disastrous consequences of what the continuation of the initial lockdown is doing.”
Child abuse- One of the disastrous consequences of the lockdown Dr. Atlas talked about is the dramatic rise in child abuse. He spoke of an E.R. doctor that wrote to him telling him that emergency room visits related to child abuse are up 35%. Dr. Atlas put a hard dose of reality on that statistic when he said “somebody that brings their child into the emergency room, that's not because they smacked them around and gave them a black eye. These are, and I'm saying this with sadness; these emergency room visits are for children that the parents think they might have killed them. They're unresponsive, or they have multiple broken bones. These are the most serious and they are due to the lockdown.” He went on to say that 40% of people in the $40,000 a year or under income bracket have lost their jobs. He related those devastating losses to the tremendous increase in alcoholism, stress and anger in the household, and stated that child abuse is one of the consequences of those dire economic realities.
On the opening of K-12 schools, Dr. Atlas is a big proponent of doing so. He said that statistically only two one- hundredth of 1% (0 .02%) of COVID-19 deaths were in children. That means that 99.98% are in people over age 18. He said that only one-tenth of 1% (0.1%) of the deaths are in people under the age of 24. To put it another way 99.9% of deaths are in people over the age of 24. To amplify that miniscule number, he gave the percentage of the population that children under age 18 represent. He said that children under the age of 18 represent 22.2% of the population.
When asked about the potential danger of children exposing teachers, he said that children are typically not spreading COVID-19 (as demonstrated in many studies). He did recognize that it can happen, but it is rare. Beside that fact, he described who teachers represent. He said in K-12 grades, 50% of the teachers are under 41 years of age. He also said that 82% of teachers are under 55 years of age. He said the risk for a person under 60 years of age of dying from COVID-19 is less than or equal to a seasonal influenza. So, the point he made was if we're going to shut the schools down to protect the teachers from COVID-19, we had better plan on shutting the schools down from November through April every single year due to concerns of seasonal flu.
The solution he gave for older or high-risk teachers was for those teachers to be able to teach remotely two classrooms of students. He cited the many benefits of children going to a school environment, everything from necessary socialization skills. to a superior learning environment, to increased activity, to improved nutrition for many underprivileged children. He then circled back to his comments earlier regarding serious child abuse when children cannot go to school. He stated that the school environment is the number one way that child abuse is recognized. It occurs when a child comes to school and a teacher or other faculty member notices signs of abuse. He said in this environment with lockdowns, all of those are going unnoticed and become missed opportunities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZqGSnVt8c8
I have seen Dr. Atlas many times on podcasts and interviews over the last 6 months. He is very well spoken, intelligent and shines the light into the deepest darkest shadows of the downstream effects of our response to the pandemic, areas that the mainstream media has completely ignored. One thing is for sure. We cannot use this same paradigm and strategy going forward, or heaven forbid if we ever have another “novel” viral outbreak. I believe that Dr. Atlas and those like him, will give us the best chance to use the science, the data and a rational approach that will take into account all of the effects of complete cost-benefit analysis in policy decisions going forward. If you have a chance, check out some of his interviews on YouTube.
Worse than lockdowns not saving lives, evidence is streaming in that they are killing millions worldwide
Numerous publications have been running stories that are showing the devastating effects of the lockdowns we are seeing across the globe. And the devastation is not limited to lost jobs, destroyed businesses, ruined marriages, domestic abuse, depression, anxiety and loss of hope. It also includes NON-COVID premature deaths, untimely excess deaths that are unprecedented in their cause and scope.
A November 2nd article published by the American Institute for Economic Research by Jeffrey Tucker titled Death by Lockdown, is very revealing. And, it asks some very important questions.
Highlights from the article: On March 28 – very early in the pandemic – AIER published an article that I felt at the time received far too little attention. “Drugs, Suicide, and Crime: Empirical Estimates of the Human Toll of the Shutdown” by economists Audrey and Thomas Duncan cited empirical literature on the human toll of economic devastation. This article forecasted more than 100,000 excess deaths due to drug overdoses, suicide, alcoholism, homicide, and untreated depression – all a result not of the virus but of policies of mandatory human separation, economic downturn, business and school closures, closed medical services, and general depression that comes with a loss of freedom and choice.
These two economists demonstrated that as bad as a virus is, policies that wreck normal social functioning will cause massive and completely unnecessary suffering and death. Because the article was so well-cited, with references to all the available literature, I thought it would make a difference. But after it appeared, it was crickets. I was amazed. Here you have a beautiful piece of research that perfectly forecasted the nightmare being created by politicians and their advisers and it made no dent in the national narrative.
Here we are seven months later and the worst has come true. These two economists should be considered prophets. Sure enough, the Centers for Disease Control has documented a shocking number of excess deaths not from Covid.
Dr. Scott Atlas Tweet that they summarize below:
The most startling data concerns the age group 25-44. This is a group with a Covid-related infection fatality rate of 0.0092%, which is to say barely a disease at all for nearly everyone in this group. And yet they are dying at a rate far above what is expected, and mostly from issues not related to Covid. There should not be any excess deaths. Instead, we find people dropping dead in ways that are shocking. Ways that have nothing to do with the virus, but everything to do with the public health and societal restrictions.
That’s the CDC’s way of saying: these policies are killing people. As for minimizing disruptions to health care, a major factor here is that people have been completely avoiding getting health care this year, for fear of Covid, for fear of contract tracing, and also because many medical services have been forcibly reserved for people with Covid, and to hell with everyone else. Cancer screenings, routine checkups, normal procedures, to say nothing of dentistry have certainly been disrupted. Now we can see the carnage in plain daylight.
People are dying across all demographics due to the radical transformation of life itself. In addition, new research is showing that there has been a huge increase in excess deaths in elder-care homes probably due to despair and loneliness from the prevention of family visits.
The whole pattern is extraordinary and deeply tragic. It was also entirely predictable. Instead of dealing rationally with a textbook virus, as we had done during the whole of the 20th century, we embarked on a new social/political experiment in lockdowns. We attempted to intimidate a virus with PhDs and political power, hoping that it would shrivel and die, and in so doing dramatically disabled human freedom and social functioning. What do we have to show for it? Massive carnage, and a virus that is still with us. https://www.aier.org/article/death-by-lockdown/
My comment: As horrific as these statistics are, the article did not even touch on the devastation being caused in third-world countries due to starvation and loss of social services, which I cover in the next section.
Children in developed countries face many pandemic related hardships, but in third-world countries it is a matter of life and death In a press release by UNICEF on November 19th titled UNICEF calls for averting a lost generation as COVID-19 threatens to cause irreversible harm to children’s education, nutrition and well-being, some shocking claims and predictions are made.
From the report: UNICEF warned in a new report today of significant and growing consequences for children as the COVID-19 pandemic lurches toward a second year.
Released ahead of World Children’s Day, Averting a Lost COVID Generation is the first UNICEF report to comprehensively outline the dire and growing consequences for children as the pandemic drags on. It shows that while symptoms among infected children remain mild, infections are rising and the longer-term impact on the education, nutrition and well-being of an entire generation of children and young people can be life-altering.
While children can transmit the virus to each other and to older age groups, there is strong evidence that, with basic safety measures in place, the net benefits of keeping schools open outweigh the costs of closing them, the report notes. Schools are not a main driver of community transmission, and children are more likely to get the virus outside of school settings.
COVID-related disruptions to critical health and social services for children pose the most serious threat to children, the report says. Using new data from UNICEF surveys across 140 countries, it notes that:
• Around one-third of the countries analyzed witnessed a drop of at least 10 per cent in coverage for health services such as routine vaccinations, outpatient care for childhood infectious diseases, and maternal health services. Fear of infection is a prominent reason. • There is a 40 per cent decline in the coverage of nutrition services for women and children across 135 countries. As of October 2020, 265 million children were still missing out on school meals globally. More than 250 million children under 5 could miss the life-protecting benefits of vitamin A supplementation programmes. • 65 countries reported a decrease in home visits by social workers in September 2020, compared to the same time last year.
More alarming data from the report include:
• As of November 2020, 572 million students are affected across 30 country-wide school closures – 33 per cent of the enrolled students worldwide. • An estimated 2 million additional child deaths and 200,000 additional stillbirths could occur over a 12- month period with severe interruptions to services and rising malnutrition. • An additional 6 to 7 million children under the age of 5 will suffer from wasting or acute malnutrition in 2020, a 14 per cent rise that will translate into more than 10,000 additional child deaths per month – mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
• Globally, the number of children living in multidimensional poverty – without access to education, health, housing, nutrition, sanitation or water – is estimated to have soared by 15 per cent, or an additional 150 million children by mid-2020.
More evidence that the collateral damage from Lockdowns is horrific
It is important to understand that the continued reaction of lockdowns, face masking, loss of other freedoms and all the collateral damage was originally because of the completely faulty modeling being pushed on governments and the comparisons that were made to the Spanish Flu or other serious flu pandemics over the last 100 years. Comparing COVID-19 to the Spanish Flu of 1918 is ridiculous on so many levels. This is especially true when within the first 45 days of the pandemic, we knew that the Infection Mortality Rate (IMR) of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 was far lower than originally thought. Shortly thereafter, we knew it was somewhere between 0.1% to 0.26%, about the same rate as a seasonal flu. Compare that to an estimated 10% mortality rate of the Spanish Flu of 1918. So, what is the whole truth and how do we process what we are experiencing?
Economists often measure and compare death or mortality statistics in terms of Life-Years- Lost. Not that one life is more important or valuable than another, but it is an important consideration in calculating remaining life potential.
This first graph shows the Peak Life Years lost from various pandemics of the 20th century and COVID-19. Life- Years Lost is an important calculation. When a child aged 5 loses their life and the average life expectancy is 80 years, that is 75 life-years lost. When a 75-year-old dies, that is 5 life-years lost from the average life expectancy. Because approximately 80% of deaths from COVID-19 are in people 80 years and older, the Life Years Lost is small in comparison to many other flu pandemics, which impact the young to a much greater extent. People have made completely inappropriate casual comparisons to the Spanish flu and COVID.
As can clearly be seen, the Spanish Flu far eclipses COVID-19 in Life-Years Lost.
In this next graph, we now see the various age groups and the excess mortality from 1918.
The World Health Organizations pandemic preparedness position recommended against home quarantine “of exposed” individuals in 2019. And note it says “Not recommended due to feasibility concerns with very low quality of evidence.”
Lockdowns 10 times more deadly than the COVID-19 pandemic itself
An August 31st article titled, Revolver Exclusive Study: COVID-19 Lockdowns Over 10 Times More Deadly Than Pandemic Itself, reports on the devastating effects of lockdowns on Life-Years-Lost. https://www.revolver.news/2020/08/study-covid-19-lockdowns-deadlier-than-pandemic-itself/
From the article: We encourage the fair reader to consult the title of this piece. The correct counterfactual is impossible to know. Real results from a country like Sweden or the UK are better than results from an epidemiological model with extremely limited out of sample validity and fundamentally unidentifiable parameters. The point of this quantitative thought experiment is mostly qualitative and aimed at making the single point to citizens and policymakers: small permanent or cohort-level increases in unemployment induced by the lockdowns easily wipe out the small, documented benefits of lockdowns The actual increases in unemployment in the United States are massive — exceeding the scale of the Great Recession. The long-run increase in unemployment cannot easily be constructed from contemporaneous cross-country data for the simple reason that those countries long-run employment evolutions haven’t happened yet, but it is reasonable to assume that COVID- 19 has run its course in say, New York or Sweden — which now has around 1-2 COVID-19 deaths per day. Revolver.news would be honored if someone stole these insights for Lancet, which has a quick turnaround (recall their Hydroxychloroquine debacle), the CDC’s in-house journals, or the NBER working paper series on epidemics/COVID-19. The economic devastation of the lockdowns will last for decades after the virus is brought under control, and it may lead to far worse ripple effects down the road. For the first time in its history, America has experienced what could be almost likened to a sudden stop in an emerging nation — a situation so crippling and perilous that long term financial and social stability have been legitimately threatened. How did this happen? It is worth reflecting for a moment on the institutional incentives in academia that led to the pandemic pandemonium and the U.S.’s almost assured future fiscal collapse. Our calculations imply that — from a lost life-years’ perspective — the COVID-19 lockdowns in the U.S. objectively caused far more harm than good to every age category. The life year losses are so large that it is difficult to see any kind of refinement justifying the current American policy combination.
Continued next page…
Figure 3 below shows the breakdown with the Swedish (left side) and the U.K. (right side) models. In the figure, the blue bars represent life-years saved from the lockdown, which are estimated by comparing the U.S.’s performance with Sweden and the U.K. The red bars represent life-years lost from the lockdown, which are estimated using the estimated reductions in life expectancy from unemployment and separations using U.S. data described above.
Combining these analyses, we found that an estimated 18.7 million life-years will be lost in the United States due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. Comparative data analysis between nations shows that the lockdowns in the United States likely had a minimal effect in saving life-years. Using two different comparison groups, we estimate that the COVID-19 lockdowns in the U.S. saved between a quarter to three quarters of a million life-years.
Young people are particularly damaged by lockdowns
The following charts and graphs dramatically show how young people are suffering far higher rates of mortality from the effects of the lockdowns and societal shutdown that from the virus itself.
This first chart looks at the numbers and place of death for 15 to 44 year-olds 2017-2020
This chart is just a small sampling from the Chicago area, that brings into question whether the drug overdose deaths listed below with COVID-19 as the secondary cause aren’t skewing the COVID-19 deaths listed in the chart above.
More on lockdown failures and the resulting disastrous consequences
An article published on the Pandemics, Data and Analytics (PANDA) website titled, Review update of recent science relating to Covid-19 policy by Denis Rancourt, PhD, provides some controversial and very convincing arguments supporting his statements you can see below. Summary The unprecedented measures of universal lockdowns, tight institutional lockdowns of care homes, universal masking of the general population, obsession with surfaces and hands, and the accelerated vaccine deployment are contrary to known science, and contrary to recent leading studies. There has been government recklessness by action and negligence by omission. Institutional measures have been needed for a long time to stem corruption in both medicine and public health policy.
The article is organized into the following sections: • Introduction –Iatrogenic pandemic of panic • Stringency of measures has no effect on total deaths assigned to COVID-19 • Corruption of science is being exposed Masks and PCR • Transmission is not by contact • Masking of the general population provides no detectable benefit
• Vaccines are inherently dangerous • Endnotes / Reference https://www.pandata.org/wp-content/uploads/PANDAReports-Review-of-Recent-Science-Relevant-to- COVID- Policy.pdf
An excellent article released on January 30th, 2021 by the American Institute for Economic Research (https://aier.org ) titled, The Catastrophic Impact of Covid Forced Societal Lockdowns, really outlines the horrific costs of the most devastating public health policy actions in history. Portions from the article: (The full article is a 20-minute read) The present Covid-inspired forced lockdowns on business and school closures are and have been counterproductive, not sustainable and are, quite frankly, meritless and unscientific. They have been disastrous and just plain wrong! There has been no good reason for this. These unparalleled public health actions have been enacted for a virus with an infection mortality rate (IFR) roughly similar (or likely lower once all infection data are collected) to seasonal influenza. Stanford’s John P.A. Ioannidis identified 36 studies (43 estimates) along with an additional 7 preliminary national estimates (50 pieces of data) and concluded that among people <70 years old across the world, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.57% with a median of 0.05% across the different global locations (with a corrected median of 0.04%). Let me write this again, 0.05%. Can one even imagine the implementation of such draconian regulations for the annual flu? Of course not! Not satisfied with the current and well-documented failures of lockdowns, our leaders are inexplicably doubling and tripling down and introducing or even hardening punitive lockdowns and constraints. They are locking us down ‘harder.’ Indeed, an illustration of the spurious need for these ill- informed actions is that they are being done in the face of clear scientific evidence showing that during strict prior societal lockdowns, school lockdowns, mask mandates, and additional societal restrictions, the number of positive cases went up! No one can point to any instance where lockdowns have worked in this Covid pandemic. It is also noteworthy that these irrational and unreasonable restrictive actions are not limited to any one jurisdiction such as the US, but shockingly have occurred across the globe. It is stupefying as to why governments, whose primary roles are to protect their citizens, are taking these punitive actions despite the compelling evidence that these policies are misdirected and very harmful; causing palpable harm to human welfare on so many levels. It’s tantamount to insanity what governments have done to their populations and largely based on no scientific basis. None! In this, we have lost our civil liberties and essential rights, all based on spurious ‘science’ or worse, opinion, and this erosion of fundamental freedoms and democracy is being championed by government leaders who are disregarding the Constitutional (USA) and Charter (Canada) limits to their right to make and enact policy. These unconstitutional and unprecedented restrictions have taken a staggering toll on our health and well-being and also target the very precepts of democracy; particularly given the fact that this viral pandemic is no different in overall impact on society than any previous pandemics. There is simply no defensible rationale to treat this pandemic any differently. There is absolutely no reason to lock down, constrain and harm ordinarily healthy, well, and younger or middle-aged members of the population irreparably; the very people who will be expected to help extricate us
from this factitious nightmare and to help us survive the damages caused by possibly the greatest self-inflicted public health fiasco ever promulgated on societies. There is no reason to continue this illogical policy that is doing far greater harm than good. Never in human history have we done this and employed such overtly oppressive restrictions with no basis. A fundamental tenet of public health medicine is that those with actual disease or who are at great risk of contracting disease are quarantined, not people with low disease risk; not the well! This seems to have been ignored by an embarrassingly large number of health experts upon whom our politicians rely for advice. Rather we should be using a more ‘targeted’ (population-specific age and risk) approach in relation to the implementation of public health measures as opposed to the inelegant and shotgun tactics being forced upon us now.
Current Data Concerning Lockdown Effects Let us start with the staggering statement by German y’s M in ist er of Econom ic Coo p erat ion an d Develo p men t , Gerd Muller, who has openly cautioned that global lockdown measures will result in the killing of more people than Covid itself. A recent Lancet study reported that government strategies to deal with Covid such as lockdowns, physical distancing, and school closures are worsening child malnutrition globally, whereby “strained health systems and interruptions in humanitarian response are eroding access to essential and often life-saving nutrition services.” What is the actual study-level/report evidence in terms of lockdowns? We present 31 high-quality sources of evidence below for consideration that run the gamut of technical reports to scientific manuscripts (including several under peer-review, but which we have subjected to rigorous review ourselves). We set the table with this, for the evidence emphatically questions the merits of lockdowns, and shows that lockdowns have been an abject failure, do not work to prevent viral spread and in fact cause great harm. This proof includes: evidence from Northern Jutland in Denmark, country level analysis by Chaudhry, evidence from Germany on lockdown validity, UK research evidence, Flaxman research on the European experience, evidence originating from Israel, further European lockdown evidence, Western European evidence published by Meunier, European evidence from Colombo, Northern Ireland and Great British evidence published by Rice, additional Israeli data by Shlomai, evidence from Cohen and Lipsitch, Altman’s research on the negative effects, D jap arid ze’s research on SARS-CoV-2 waves across Europe, Bjørnskov’s research on the economics of lockdowns, Atkeson’s global research on nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), Belarusian evidence, British evidence from Forbes on spread from children to adults, Nell’s PANDATA analysis of intercountry mortality and lockdowns, principal component analysis by De Larochelambert, M cCan n ’s rese arch on states with lowest Covid restrictions, Taiwanese research, Levitt ’s research, New Zealan d ’s research, Bhalla’s Covid research on India and the IMF, nonpharmaceutical lockdown interventions (NPIs) research by Ioannidis, effects of lockdowns by Herby, and lockdown groupthink by Joffe. The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) further outlines prominent public health leaders and agencies’ positions on societal lockdowns, all questioning and arguing against the effectiveness of lockdowns. A very recent publication by Duke, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins researchers reported that there could be approximately one million excess deaths over the next two decades in the US due to lockdowns. These researchers employed time series analyses to examine the historical relation between unemployment, life expectancy, and mortality rates. They report in their analysis that the shocks to unemployment are then followed by significant rises (statistically) in mortality rates and reductions in life expectancy. Alarmingly, they
approximate that the size of the Covid-19-related unemployment to fall between 2 and 5 times larger than the typical unemployment shock, and this is due to (associated with) race/gender. There is a projected 3.0% rise in the mortality rate and a 0.5% reduction in life expectancy over the next 10 to 15 years for the overall American population and due to the lockdowns. This impact they reported will be disproportionate for minorities e.g. African-Americans and also for women in the short term, and with more severe consequences for white males over the longer term. This will result in an approximate 1 million additional deaths during the next 15 years due to the consequences of lockdown policies. The researchers wrote that the deaths caused by the economic and societal deterioration due to lockdowns may “far exceed those immediately related to the acute Covid-19 critical illness…the recession caused by the pandemic can jeopardize population health for the next two decades.” Overall, the research evidence alluded to here (including a lucid summary by Ethan Yang of the AIER) suggests that lockdowns and school closures do not lead to lower mortality or case numbers and have not worked as intended. It is clear that lockdowns have not slowed or stopped the spread of Covid. Often, effects are artifactual and superfluous as declines were taking place even before lockdowns came into effect. In fact, in Europe, it was shown that in most cases, mortality rates were already 50% lower than peak rates by the time lockdowns were instituted, thus making claims that lockdowns were effective in reducing mortality spurious at best. Of course, this also means that the presumptive positive effects of lockdowns were and have been exaggerated grossly. Evidence shows that nations and settings that apply less stringent social distancing measures and lockdowns experience the same evolution (e.g. deaths per million) of the epidemic as those that apply far more stringent regulations.
How is Population Health and Well-being in the US Affected by Current Public Health Measures? Businesses have closed and many are never to return, jobs have been lost, and lives ruined and more of this is on the way; meanwhile, we have seen an increase in anxiety, depression, hopelessness, dependency, suicidal ideation, financial ruin, and deaths of despair across societies due to the lockdowns. For example, preventive healthcare has been delayed. Life-saving surgeries and tests/biopsies were stopped across the US. All types of deaths escalated and loss of life years increased across the last year. Chemotherapy and hip replacements for Americans were sidelined along with vaccines for vaccine-preventable illness in children (approximately 50%). Thousands may have died who might have otherwise survived an injury or heart ailment or even acute stroke but did not seek clinical or hospital help out of fear of contracting Covid. Specifically, and based on CDC reporting (and generalizable to global nations), during the month of June in the US, approximately 25% (1 in 4) Americans aged 18-24 considered suicide not due to Covid, but due to the lockdowns and the loss of freedom and control in their lives and lost jobs etc. There were over 81,000 drug overdose deaths in the 12 months ending in May 2020 in the US, the most ever recorded in a 12-month period. In late June 2020, 40% of US adults reported that they were having very difficult times with mental health or substance abuse and linked to the lockdowns. Approximately 11% of adults reported thoughts of suicide in 2020 compared to approximately 4% in 2018. During April to October 2020, emergency room visits linked to mental health for children aged 5-11 increased near 25% and increased 31% for those aged 12-17 years old as compared to 2019. During June 2020, 13% of survey respondents said that they had begun or substantially increased substance use as a means to cope day-to-day with the pandemic and lockdowns. Over
40 states reported rises in opioid-related deaths. Roughly 7 in 10 Gen-Z adults (18-23) reported depressive symptoms from August 4 to 26. There is a projected decrease in life expectancy by near 6 million years of life in US children due to the US primary school closure. These are some of the real harms in the US and we have not even discussed the devastation falling upon other nations. From June to August 2020, homicides increased over 50% and aggravated assaults increased 14% compared to the same period in 2019. Diagnosis for breast cancer declined 52% in 2020 compared to 2018. Pancreatic cancer diagnosis declined 25% in 2020 compared to 2018. The diagnosis for 6 leading cancers e.g. breast, colorectal, lung, pancreatic, gastric, and esophageal declined 47% in 2020 compared to 2018. From March 25 and April 10 in the US, “nearly one- third of adults (31.0 percent) reported that their families could not pay the rent, mortgage, or utility bills, were food insecure, or went without medical care because of the cost.”
Canadian expert's research finds lockdown harms are 10 times greater than benefits
Author of the article: Anthony Furey - Publishing date: Jan 09, 2021 • January 9, 2021
Dr. Ari Joffe is a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton and a Clinical Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at University of Alberta. He has written a paper titled COVID- 19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink that finds the harms of lockdowns are 10 times greater than their benefits.
The below Q&A is an exchange between Joffe and Anthony Furey. It is a 6 minute read and I’ve have copied it in its entirety because it really sums up much of the arguments against lockdowns, the harms they cause and the better way forward.
You were a strong proponent of lockdowns initially but have since changed your mind. Why is that? There are a few reasons why I supported lockdowns at first. First, initial data falsely suggested that the infection fatality rate was up to 2-3%, that over 80% of the population would be infected, and modelling suggested repeated lockdowns would be necessary. But emerging data showed that the median infection fatality rate is 0.23%, that the median infection fatality rate in people under 70 years old is 0.05%, and that the high-risk group is older people especially those with severe co-morbidities. In addition, it is likely that in most situations only 20-40% of the population would be infected before ongoing transmission is limited (i.e., herd-immunity). Second, I am an infectious diseases and critical care physician, and am not trained to make public policy decisions. I was only considering the direct effects of COVID-19 and my knowledge of how to prevent these direct effects. I was not considering the immense effects of the response to COVID-19 (that is, lockdowns) on public health and wellbeing. Emerging data has shown a staggering amount of so-called ‘collateral damage’ due to the lockdowns. This can be predicted to adversely affect many millions of people globally with food insecurity [82-132 million more people], severe poverty [70 million more people], maternal and under age-5 mortality from interrupted healthcare [1.7 million more people], infectious diseases deaths from interrupted services
[millions of people with Tuberculosis, Malaria, and HIV], school closures for children [affecting children’s future earning potential and lifespan], interrupted vaccination campaigns for millions of children, and intimate partner violence for millions of women. In high-income countries adverse effects also occur from delayed and interrupted healthcare, unemployment, loneliness, deteriorating mental health, increased opioid crisis deaths, and more. Third, a formal cost-benefit analysis of different responses to the pandemic was not done by government or public health experts. Initially, I simply assumed that lockdowns to suppress the pandemic were the best approach. But policy decisions on public health should require a cost-benefit analysis. Since lockdowns are a public health intervention, aiming to improve the population wellbeing, we must consider both benefits of lockdowns, and costs of lockdowns on the population wellbeing. Once I became more informed, I realized that lockdowns cause far more harm than they prevent.
There has never been a full cost-benefit analysis of lockdowns done in Canada. What did you find when you did yours? First, some background into the cost-benefit analysis. I discovered information I was not aware of before. First, framing decisions as between saving lives versus saving the economy is a false dichotomy. There is a strong long-run relationship between economic recession and public health. This makes sense, as government spending on things like healthcare, education, roads, sanitation, housing, nutrition, vaccines, safety, social security nets, clean energy, and other services determines the population well-being and life-expectancy. If the government is forced to spend less on these social determinants of health, there will be ‘statistical lives’ lost, that is, people will die in the years to come. Second, I had underestimated the effects of loneliness and unemployment on public health. It turns out that loneliness and unemployment are known to be among the strongest risk factors for early mortality, reduced lifespan, and chronic diseases. Third, in making policy decisions there are trade-offs to consider, costs and benefits, and we have to choose between options that each have tragic outcomes in order to advocate for the least people to die as possible. In the cost-benefit analysis I consider the benefits of lockdowns in preventing deaths from COVID-19, and the costs of lockdowns in terms of the effects of the recession, loneliness, and unemployment on population wellbeing and mortality. I did not consider all of the other so-called ‘collateral damage’ of lockdowns mentioned above. It turned out that the costs of lockdowns are at least 10 times higher than the benefits. That is, lockdowns cause far more harm to population wellbeing than COVID-19 can. It is important to note that I support a focused protection approach, where we aim to protect those truly at high-risk of COVID-19 mortality, including older people, especially those with severe co-morbidities and those in nursing homes and hospitals.
You studied the role modelling played in shaping public opinion. Can you break that down for us? I think that the initial modelling and forecasting were inaccurate. This led to a contagion of fear and policies across the world. Popular media focused on absolute numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths independent of context. There has been a sheer one-sided focus on preventing infection numbers. The economist Paul Frijters wrote that it was “all about seeming to reduce risks of infection and deaths from this one particular disease, to the exclusion of all other health risks or other life concerns.” Fear and anxiety spread, and we elevated
COVID- 19 above everything else that could possibly matter. Our cognitive biases prevented us from making optimal policy: we ignored hidden ‘statistical deaths’ reported at the population level, we preferred immediate benefits to even larger benefits in the future, we disregarded evidence that disproved our favorite theory, and escalated our commitment in the set course of action. I found out that in Canada in 2018 there were over 23,000 deaths per month and over 775 deaths per day. In the world in 2019 there were over 58 million deaths and about 160,000 deaths per day. This means that on November 21 this year, COVID-19 accounted for 5.23% of deaths in Canada (2.42% in Alberta), and 3.06% of global deaths. Each day in non-pandemic years over 21,000 people die from tobacco use, 3,600 from pneumonia and diarrhea in children under 5-years-old, and 4,110 from Tuberculosis. We need to consider the tragic COVID-19 numbers in context. I believe that we need to take an “effortful pause” and reconsider the information available to us. We need to calibrate our response to the true risk, make rational cost-benefit analyses of the trade-offs, and end the lockdown groupthink.
Canada has already been going down the lockdown path for many months. What should be done now? How do we change course? As above, I believe that we need to take an “effortful pause” and reconsider the information available to us. We need to calibrate our response to the true risk, make rational cost-benefit analyses of the trade-offs, and end the lockdown groupthink. Some considerations I have suggested elsewhere include the following: We need to better educate ourselves on the risks and trade-offs involved, and alleviate unreasonable fear with accurate information. We need to focus on cost-benefit analysis – repeated or prolonged lockdowns cannot be based on COVID-19 numbers alone. We should focus on protecting people at high risk: people hospitalized or in nursing homes (e.g., universal masking in hospitals reduced transmission markedly), in crowded conditions (e.g., homeless shelters, prisons, large gatherings), and 70 years and older (especially with severe comorbidities) – don’t lock down everyone, regardless of their individual risk. We need to keep schools open because children have very low morbidity and mortality from COVID-19, and (especially those 10 years and younger) are less likely to be infected by, and have a low likelihood to be the source of transmission of, SARS-CoV-2. We should increase healthcare surge capacity if forecasting, accurately calibrated repeatedly to real-time data (up to now, forecasting, even short-term, has repeatedly failed), suggests it is needed. With universal masking in hospitals, asymptomatic health care workers should be allowed to continue to work, even if infected, thus preserving the healthcare workforce.
The take-away Dr. Jofee leaves us with, sounds strikingly like the Great Barrington Declaration…the solution to the Draconian world many people find themselves living in.
THE alternative approach to lockdowns – A COVID-19 exit plan and a model for the future…Revisit the Great Barrington Declaration on pages 9 & 10.
Additional reference links on harms of lockdowns from Ivor Cummins website https://thefatemperor.com/
1. MILLION DOLLAR SOCIAL DISTANCING
2. COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF LOCKDOWN
3. BMJ IOANNIDIS DEBATE
4. NIH NEGATIVE IMPACTS OF LOCKDOWN
5. BMJ: HERD IMMUNITY POLICY COULD SAVE LIVES
6. IMPACT OF LOCKDOWN DISORDERS
7. BMJ DELAYED ACCESS TO CARE
8. CAMBRIDGE: LIVING WITH COVID – BALANCING
9. PSYCHIATRY RESEARCH – LIVING WITH COVID
10. JAMA HOSPITALIZATIONS FOR CHRONIC DISEASE
11. IRISH CANCER SOCIETY SUBMISSION
12. ECLINICAL DEATHS OF DESPAIR
13. ONS EXCESS DEATH MESS
14. DEATH BY LOCKDOWN
15. LOCKDOWN – A FOCUS ON THE POOR AND CHILDREN
16. MENTAL HEALTH AND LOCKDOWN
17. PROJECTED DEATHS OF DESPAIR FROM LOCKDOWN
18. THE PRICE OF PANIC
Infant deaths decline during lockdown- Is there a vaccine connection?
In an astounding bit of data collection and reporting, Amy Becker and Mark Blaxill released a report on June 18, 2020 titled, Lessons from the Lockdown- Why are so many fewer children dying? , a White Paper from Health Choice. It looked at mortality rates from all around the country and broken down by age demographics. It compared areas where Draconian measures were implemented and where measures taken were more common sense.
Most fascinating from a vaccine perspective, was the precipitous decrease in doses of vaccines over the lockdown and the resulting decrease in infant mortality! Correlation or causation? That is the question. They attempt to factor for other co-variants and determine that there is a very strong signal and should be investigated further.
This chart shows the decrease in influenza and MMR doses during the lockdown
This graph shows the number of deaths per week in children under 18 years of age (2014-2020)
*Note the week the deaths began to drop and then go back to the graph on the previous page and compare to when the vaccination rates began to decline. Both correlate to week 10.
From the report: After careful analysis, the authors made some astounding observations…“Compared to expectations, the lives of over 200 infants per week were saved during the month of May. Combining the number of lives saved in infants and children aged 1-4, demonstrates a smaller but comparably large and beneficial effect: roughly 145,000 life-years saved among children under 5.”
“6. Net effect in life-years. Every untimely death is tragic. But if one considers life-years lost, the premature death of an infant carries more weight than the premature death of someone whose life expectancy is 5 years or less. And whereas the median age at death of, say, a Minnesotan dying of Covid19 is 83, the typical life expectancy of that senior citizen absent Covid19 might be just 2-3 more years. By comparison, when an infant in lockdown avoids a death, the potential impact in life years saved can rise to 80 years or more. When one measures the net effect of life years either lost or gained during the pandemic and associated lockdowns, the net result across age groups is unexpectedly mixed. (5)”
These charts show the average life expectancy contrasted with the Quality-Adjusted Life- Years (QALY) by age group during the pandemic
The numbers in parentheses are life-years lost. The numbers without are life-years saved.
*Arrow added by me. Look at the percentage of overall childhood Life-Years GAINED in the infant group! “Noting the surprising effect of the lockdown on infants and children under 5 does nothing to negate the tragic effect of the pandemic on the elderly. It does, however, raise a question: why are so many fewer children dying?”
The report goes on to show that Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), is the greatest cause of death in children 1 month to 1 year of age at approximately 1 per 3,000 live births in the U.S. (tied with congenital malformations). There is much more to explore in their white paper. I highly recommend reading it. It can be found here… https://healthchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Lessons-from-the-Lockdown-vF-6-16-20.pdf For much more on the miserable infant mortality rates in the U.S. as compared to other countries, and stratified to the number of vaccine doses, as well as the vaccine & SIDS connection, see pages 412-430 in my free eBook, 1200 Studies- Truth Will Prevail. Download it at www.1200studies.com
PCR testing drove a false narrative used to justify lockdowns
The many problems with PCR testing:
Labs performing PCR testing are running too many cycles resulting in false positives and a better way to do things
For context in this discussion, it is important to remember that there is a distinct difference between infection and disease. Infection is the replication of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the body. Infection may or may not cause symptoms (disease) in the body. A large percentage of people contracting SARS-CoV-2, never develop symptoms (COVID- 19).
COVID-19 (the disease) is when the infection causes symptoms. The symptoms can range from barely noticeable, to life threatening ones.
In an interview with Michael Mina MD, PhD from the Centers for Communicable Diseases at Harvard University and a proponent of at-home rapid testing that will tell if a person is infectious with COVID-19, he presented these graphs showing the exponential increase in viral titers, quickly followed by a rapid decline as the immune system does its job. Many people remain sick (with symptoms) after the virus is disabled because of the immune system and inflammatory chain of events the virus has set in motion in the body.
Dr. Mina is a very credible expert and has a very impressive bio. He is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and a core member of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics (CCDD). He is additionally an Assistant Professor in Immunology and Infectious Diseases at HSPH and Associate Medical Director in Clinical Microbiology (molecular diagnostics) in the Department of Pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Mina stated that 70% of the COVID-19 PCR positive tests are in people that are no longer infectious. As you can see from the graph below, the Ct (Cycle Threshold) scale reflects the highest viral load associated with the
lowest Ct numbers. Let me explain. When the lab runs the test, it runs these “cycles” to see if genetic material from the SARS-CoV-2 virus is present. With each cycle run there is amplification applied to see if the next cycle can catch any of the specific genetic code. If large amounts of virus are present, it requires fewer cycles to identify it. The more cycles run before finding evidence of the virus, the lower the viral load in the sample and less likely the person can infect others. The problem arises when cycles above 30 are run. It may pick up fragments of genetic material from SARS-CoV-2, but none of those pieces would be able to infect another person. Yet, the test comes up positive! And labs are instructed to run up to 40 cycles with these sample which gives an erroneous FALSE positive. Hence Dr. Mina’s assertion that up to 70% of “positives” are people unable to transmit to others. And they are told to quarantine unnecessarily. Fortunately, Dr. Mina has a great solution that I’ll discuss below.
Dr. Mina has explained in other interviews, that the people who are transmitting the disease have Ct Values that are less than 30, with the vast majority of transmitters are less than 25 on the scale. Remember, the lower the number, the higher and the more contagious the infection.
A visual representation of the viral explosion and decline
• According to Dr. Mina, the vast majority of people capable of transmitting the virus to others are above the purple line. • There are a small percentage of people that are between the green and purple lines that can be transmitting, but this is the exception and not the rule. • People with levels below the green line cannot transmit the virus to others.
A visual look at the timeline of viral increase and decrease in the body
As you can see, the viral levels increase rapidly from about day 3 until day 5. The immune system (if working properly) gains the upper hand, and the viral levels then drop precipitously.
The bottom line is people that are infected and never develop symptoms are not infecting others. Looking at the graph above, these are most likely people that if tested have viral loads below the green line. They have such strong innate immune response (natural killer cells, etc.), that their immune system prevents the exponential growth of the virus. Children are great examples. They have very robust innate immune response capabilities. That innate immune response can be optimized with a preventative strategy. That’s not to say that everyone that does this will avoid symptoms. But, in doing so they stand a much better chance of experiencing a milder case. Check out the strategy I have posted on my web site for an example of such an approach HERE.
Another view of the concept of viral load looking at blood cultures of cases
The percentage of the culture that is positive is represented on the vertical “Y” axis. The Ct values are on the horizontal “X” axis. I’ve added the red bar to show where the cutoff point Dr. Mina would propose to be. Anything to the right of that line would most likely represent a non-contagious case.
Many people are being quarantined for no reason- If someone gets a PCR test on day 6, has to wait 3-4 days to get the results and is at day 10 post infection, they are no longer able to infect others. But what is the protocol being used? They are told to quarantine for 14 days when there is NO reason for them to do that, since the only reason to quarantine an infected person is to prevent the spread to others. The same thing is true for the majority of people that test positive (and not a false positive, but that’s a whole other issue that happens quite often). Again, according to Dr Mina 70% of people that test positive are not able to transmit the infection to others.
The test that Dr. Mina has been working tirelessly to promote could be revolutionary in the whole COVID narrative.
“Paper tests”, is the term used for simplicity for this new type of test. This is paper coated with monoclonal antibodies that can detect antigens. They are not detecting RNA like the PCR Test, but just antigens.
This test has several benefits:
• It is a home test • It only costs about $1 per test • The results return in about a minute • It identifies if you are contagious
So, the whole point is that people will be positive on the RT-PCR Test, because it is so sensitive, that it can detect fragments of virus which can turn the test positive, even when the person is no longer at risk for transmitting the disease. Therefore, with our current approach, we have no idea when a person tests positive for COVID-19 with the RT-PCR Test, if they are capable of infecting others. Whereas this paper test for antigens will. This could be revolutionary, because we could now know whether a person can go back to work of school after testing positive for COVID-19. This approach is how we can safely get society fully open!
A family could purchase a box of the test strips and test each family member twice a week. If negative, go about your business. If positive, stay home and treat accordingly. Then continue to test twice weekly until you return a negative test. That may only take 4-8 days. At that point you could return to work, school, the gym and social activities, knowing full well that you are not going to put anyone else at risk.
Unfortunately, these paper tests have been hung up in bureaucratic red tape. An incredible amount of investment and effort has gone into the PCR development and distribution.
Here is a video that explains PCR testing, Cycle Thresholds (Ct) and explains the deficiencies of this testing paradigm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_1Z8cSXI-Q
PCR testing has had flaws from the start
A November 6th report from NPR.org titled, CDC Report: Officials Knew Coronavirus Test Was Flawed But Released It Anyway, reveals that the test was released when it was shown that it would fail a third of the time.
Highlights from the article: The FDA had required a particular protocol be followed when designing the test, and the lab didn't seem to be using the correct one, it said. "The first round of [quality control] for final kit release used an 'incorrect' testing procedure," it said. "Later in the timeline, detection of a 33 percent kit failure" using the correct quality control protocols "did not result in a kit recall or a performance alert."
The FDA had required a particular protocol be followed when designing the test, and the lab didn't seem to be using the correct one, it said. "The first round of [quality control] for final kit release used an 'incorrect' testing procedure," it said. "Later in the timeline, detection of a 33 percent kit failure" using the correct quality control protocols "did not result in a kit recall or a performance alert."
HHS officials said there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the test Lindstrom's lab built but had Lindstrom been at the infectious disease lab longer, he might have pulled a MERS test out of the freezer and used that as the template for a coronavirus test instead because it had more in common with a respiratory virus than influenza did.
Because the respiratory disease lab had fewer entrenched systems than Lindstrom's previous lab, the review also found that basic mistakes were made. "The absence or failure of document control to ensure the use of a single verified correct test quality control procedure matching [Emergency Use Authorization] procedure," the review said, "resulted in deficiencies." Wroblewski agreed. "The thing that hangs me up most is probably the 33% and not recalling or not immediately going to remanufacture or something at that point," she said, "because 33% is clearly a lot."
Compounding the problem, officials said, was the fact that the CDC had not established specific benchmarks for the test. There was not, for example, an agency directive that said the test needed to be correct some specific percentage of the time before it could be released. Because there was no benchmark set for acceptance, it became Lindstrom's call. He appears to have decided either that the last quality control test was wrong or that the 33% failure rate was acceptable, officials said.
Posts by former Pfizer science executive criticize PCR test false positive rate inaccuracies
Dr. Yeadon has a very impressive bio.
Dr. Yeadon is an Allergy & Respiratory Therapeutic Area expert, developed out of deep knowledge of biology & therapeutics and is an innovative drug discoverer with 23y in the pharmaceutical industry. He trained as a biochemist and pharmacologist, obtaining his PhD from the University of Surrey (UK) in 1988 on the CNS and peripheral pharmacology of opioids on respiration. Dr Yeadon then worked at the Wellcome Research Labs with Salvador Moncada with a research focus on airway hyper-responsiveness and effects of pollutants including ozone and working in drug discovery of 5-LO, COX, PAF, NO and lung inflammation. With colleagues, he was the first to detect exhaled NO in animals and later to induce NOS in lung via allergic triggers. Joining Pfizer in 1995, he was responsible for the growth and portfolio delivery of the Allergy & Respiratory pipeline within the company. During his tenure at Pfizer, Dr Yeadon was responsible for target selection and the progress into humans of new molecules, leading teams of up to 200 staff across all disciplines and won an Achievement Award for productivity in 2008. Under his leadership the research unit invented oral and inhaled NCEs which delivered multiple positive clinical proofs of concept in asthma, allergic rhinitis and COPD. He led productive collaborations such as with Rigel Pharmaceuticals (SYK inhibitors) and was involved in the licensing of Spiriva® and acquisition of the Meridica (inhaler device) company. Dr Yeadon has published over 40 original research articles and now consults and partners with a number of biotechnology companies. Before working with Apellis, Dr Yeadon was VP and Chief Scientific Officer (Allergy & Respiratory Research) with Pfizer.
Dr. Yeadon is on record saying that the current “epidemic” of positive cases is much overblown and inaccurate. He believes that under controlled laboratory conditions, the PCR accuracy is much better. But in the commercialization and supply chain of mass testing, such as the world has never seen, the false positive rates are amplifying the numbers significantly.
He is also an outspoken critic of the rushed experimental vaccine being promoted to the public as safe and anything but experimental. This is a scathing series of Tweets, Dr. Yeadon directed at Matt Hancock, the U.K. Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.
Dear Mr. Hancock,
I have a degree in biochemistry and toxicology and a research based PhD in pharmacology. I had spent 32 years working in pharmaceutical R&D, mostly in new medicines for disorders of lung and skin. I was a VP at Pfizer and CEO of a biotech I founded Ziarco – acquired by Novartis). I'm knowledgeable about new medicine R&D.
I have read the consultation document. I've rarely been as shocked and upset.
All vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus are by definition novel. No candidate vaccine has been in development for more than a few months.
If any such vaccine is approved for use under any circumstances that are not EXPLICITLY experimental, I believe that recipients are being misled to a criminal extent.
This is because there are precisely zero human volunteers for whom there could possibly be more than a few months past-dose safety information.
My concern does not arise because I have negative views about vaccines (I don't).
Instead, it's the very principle that politicians seem ready to waive that new medical interventions at this, incomplete state of development- should not be made available to subjects on anything other than an explicitly experimental basis. That is my concern.
And the reason for that concern is that it is not known what the safety profile will be, six months or a year or longer after dosing.
You have literally no data on this & neither does anyone else.
It isn't that I'm saying that unacceptable adverse effects will emerge after longer intervals after dosing. No: it is that you have no idea what will happen yet, despite this, you'll be creating the impression that you do.
Several of the vaccine candidates utilized novel technology which has not previously been used to create vaccines. There is therefore no long-term safety data which can be pointed to in support of the notion that it's reasonable to expedite development and to waive absent safety information on this occasion.
I am suspicious of the motives of those proposing expedited use in the wider human population. We now understand who is at particularly elevated risk of morbidity and mortality from acquiring this virus. Volunteers from these groups only should be provided detailed information about risk / benefit, including the sole point I make here. Only if informed consent is given should any EXPERIMENTAL vaccine be used.
I don't trust you. You have not been straightforward and have behaved appallingly throughout this crisis. You're still doing it now, misleading about infection risk from young children. Why should I believe you in relation to experimental vaccines?
Dr. Michael Yeadon
WOW! This section should be copied and pasted into emails and social media posts and sent to everyone you know. Here is a long-time pharma scientist, former Chief Scientific Officer with Pfizer ripping a top U.K. health official and laying out the risks of the coming vaccines, plain and simple.
An article titled, COVID-19: Do We Have a Coronavirus Pandemic, or a PCR Test Pandemic? echoes Dr. Yeadon’s concerns.
From the article: Will the huge rollout of COVID tests help end the pandemic—or assure that it will never end? We have had pseudo-epidemics before. In 2006, much of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center was shut down, and 1,000 employees were furloughed or quarantined, because whooping cough was thought to be spreading like wildfire based on 142 positive PCR tests. The employees also had cultures taken, and a couple weeks later not a single one had a positive culture for the slow-growing bacteria, Bordetella pertussis. There had simply been an outbreak of some other ordinary respiratory disease, not the dreaded whooping cough. Gina Kolata wrote in The New York Times: “Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn’t.” It is not so easy to culture a virus, and cultures of SARS-CoV-2 are not routinely done. Unlike in previous epidemics (SARS-CoV-1, H1N1 influenza, Ebola, or Zika), World Health Organization (WHO) guidance has no requirement or recommendation for a confirmatory test in COVID-19. (isn’t that strange?) Having great-sounding numbers, say a specificity of 99 percent, is not enough. For all tests, the predictive value of a positive test depends on the prevalence of disease. If most of the persons tested are free of disease, a positive test may be more likely to be a false than a true positive. This could at least partially explain the reports of large numbers of asymptomatic carriers of SARS-CoV-2. Failure to recognize the problem of false positives has consequences—such as possible quarantining of uninfected with infected individuals. The CDC limits the primers and probes that may be used for PCR testing. For the viral sequences that may be used for viral surveillance and research, the CDC posts this disclaimer on its website, cdc.gov: “Every effort has been made to assure the accuracy of the sequences, but CDC cannot provide any warranty regarding their accuracy.” End of excerpts https://aapsonline.org/covid-19-do-we-have-a-coronavirus-pandemic-or-a-pcr-test-pandemic/
Many of these issues have been known by the FDA for months. Yet the media and those pushing the agenda of raging out-of-control disease are once again M.I.A. from doing their job.
Here are a couple examples of the fraught with problems PCR testing.
From the FDA: Risk of Inaccurate Results with Thermo Fisher Scientific TaqPath COVID-19 Combo Kit - Letter to Clinical Laboratory Staff and Health Care Providers. https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/letters-health-care-providers/risk-inaccurate-results-thermo-fisher- scientific-taqpath-covid-19-combo-kit-letter-clinical?
And this: False Positive Results with BD SARS-CoV-2 Reagents for the BD Max System - Letter to Clinical Laboratory Staff and Health Care Providers
https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/letters-health-care-providers/false-positive-results-bd-sars-cov-2- reagents-bd-max-system-letter-clinical-laboratory-staff-and
And a solution to the problem with PCR accuracy… a paper by Dr. Sin Hang Lee M.D.
CDC Coronavirus Test Kits Generate 30% False Positive and 20% False Negative Results - Connecticut Pathologist’s Newly Published Findings Confirm https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200717005397/en/CDC-Coronavirus-Test-Kits-Generate-30- False
It looks to me that the title of that article would indicate that the PCR test results are wrong 50% of the time! Yet we are making crushing policy decisions based on highly inaccurate data.
You can access his paper here: http://www.int-soc-clin-geriat.com/info/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Dr.- Lees-paper-on-testing-for-SARS-CoV-2.pdf
Some takeaways from the abstract: Currently, molecular tests for SARS-CoV-2 infection are primarily based on reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) on cell-free fluid samples of respiratory tract specimens. These tests measure the rate of fluorescent signal accumulation as a surrogate for direct DNA sequence determination and are known to generate false-negative and false-positive results. The author has developed a routine protocol to test the cellular components of respiratory tract specimens instead of cell-free fluids only and to use conventional nested RT-PCR to amplify the target nucleic acid for high detection sensitivity. A 398-bp heminested PCR amplicon is used as the template for direct DNA sequencing to ensure no false-positive test results.
Using this protocol to re-test 20 reference samples prepared by the Connecticut State Department of Public Health, the author found 2 positives among 10 samples classified as negative by RT-qPCR assays. One of these two positive samples contained a mutant with a novel single nucleotide insertion in the N gene and a wild- type parental SARS-CoV-2. Of the 10 samples classified as positive by RT-qPCR assays, only 7 (7/10) were confirmed to contain SARS-CoV-2 by heminested PCR and DNA sequencing of a 398-bp amplicon of the N gene.
Routine sequencing of a 398-bp PCR amplicon can categorize any isolate into one of 6 clades of SARS-CoV-2 strains known to circulate in the United States. The author proposes that extremely accurate routine laboratory tests for SARS-CoV-2 be implemented as businesses attempt to return to normal operation in order to avoid raising false alarms of a re-emerging outbreak. False-positive laboratory test reports can easily create unnecessary panic resulting in negative impacts on local economies. End of excerpts
At the end of the day, I believe that the paper home tests promoted by Dr. Michael Mina are the real answer. They are fast, inexpensive, can be administered at home and give real time results about whether a person is contagious or not. We need to have a better alternative to the testing and the lockdowns that have had such a devastating impact on the world. Unfortunately, the FDA was so invested in the PCR paradigm, that they refused to act on and implement this simple and effective technology.
To learn much more about the PCR farce, check out my eBook found HERE.
More resources
Want to learn more about the many other facets of the failed COVID-19 responses?
Check out all my other downloadable eBooks at https://www.wellnessdoc.com/ebooks-and-publications/ More are being added regularly. So, if you don’t see what you’re looking for, check back later.
Want to learn more about the controversial subject of vaccines?
Check out my downloadable eBook 1200 Studies- Truth will Prevail. It is the most comprehensive expose ever on the subject. It is now at 737 pages, with excerpts and summaries from over 1,400 published studies authored by thousands of scientists and researchers, that contradict what the public is being told about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. It has easy search and navigation features with links directly to the article abstracts on PubMed, or the source journal. These features make it an invaluable research and reference tool. It can be downloaded at https://1200studies.com
Want to learn information about all things COVID-19 that you’ll never hear from the mainstream media?
Consider subscribing to my Monthly 1200 Studies COVID-19 newsletter. It will provide you with the stories, the research, the data and what the top experts from all over the world are saying about the virus, the lockdowns, the vaccines and the real numbers. You will learn information that doesn’t fit the mainstream media’s narrative and the information that certain factions do not want you to know. Now with all things COVID-19, as the 24/7 media drives hysteria and fear mongering, a new push for public compliance or even mandated vaccines is on. If you don’t have time to do all that homework yourself, let me do it for you. Subscribe at https://www.wellnessdoc.com/science-and-news-monthly-newsletter/