Professor Johan Giesecke, one of the world’s most senior epidemiologists, advisor to the Swedish Government (he hired Anders Tegnell who is currently directing Swedish strategy), the first Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and an advisor to the director general of the WHO, lays out with typically Swedish bluntness why he thinks:
- UK policy on lockdown and other European countries are not evidence-based
- The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only
- This will eventually lead to herd immunity as a “by-product”
- The initial UK response, before the “180 degree U-turn”, was better
- The Imperial College paper was “not very good” and he has never seen an unpublished paper have so much policy impact
- The paper was very much too pessimistic
- Any such models are a dubious basis for public policy anyway
- The flattening of the curve is due to the most vulnerable dying first as much as the lockdown
- The results will eventually be similar for all countries
- Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people.
- The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%
- At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available
UnHerd host Freddy Sayers speaks with Professor Johan Giesecke in what they describe as one of the most extraordinary interviews they have done… Watch:
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I stopped reading at “why lockdown doesn’t really work”. It works perfectly when the objective is
“Industrial Grade Culling” of the mid to small business economy. Anyone allowed to continue will do so as a franchise with the privilege of absorbing the losses but few of the gains.
don’t think so? How many hardware stores still exist that aren’t named Tru-Value or Ace.
Giesecke thinks that the virus will roll across the world, that it can’t be stopped and that lockdowns have minimal effect. The best that slowing the rate of infection can do is allow time for some treatments to be decided upon and to allow the most stressed components of the healthcare system to ready themselves. I agree. That’s very similar to Michael Osterholm in the podcast I’d recommended. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/episode-4
The difference is that Giesecke believes that half of Sweden and the UK have already been infected and therefore the infection fatality rate is very low. He’s provided no evidence – and we’ve seen no credible evidence – that the virus has spread that widely. The only RANDOM blood tests for antibodies that have appeared in the US so far have been the Chelsea MA test that revealed a 32% infection rate (vs 2% diagnosed rate) and the NYC test of ~ 200 pregnant women about to deliver, which revealed a 15% infection rate (as of April 4) which was – at most – 15 times the then-officially-diagnosed rate. The Santa Clara County and LA surveys done by Jay Bhattacharya and friends were fatally flawed and agenda-driven.
Dividing the deaths by the likely total infections (diagnosed X 16) that had happened AT THE TIME the dead patients had been infected continues to yield an infection fatality rate of about 1% or higher. It takes at least two weeks for most of the doomed to perish and for some it takes much longer. Of the 740 infected on the Diamond Princess, 7 died within a couple of weeks, but it’s now up to 14 and I believe that other cases remain unresolved. 21 of the 662 infectees on the Ruby Princess have died …so far. That’s a 3% death rate – a long way from the .1% death rate that Giesecke is pulling out of his ass.
If for no other reason than to get an understanding of the limitations of testing – particularly antibody testing at this early stage – folks should give that Osterholm podcast a listen.
Guess you have not been paying attention much lately the last several days as there have been multiple random test conducted and each one continues to show that the infection rate was much higher than anticipated resulting in an even lower “death rate”.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/random-sampling-test-shows-coronavirus-more-widespread-and-less-deadly-than-previously-thought-study
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-20/coronavirus-serology-testing-la-county
There have been others as well. And so far they are all coming to the same conclusion. It is much more widespread and even some are concluding this has been widespread since at least December of 2019.
Guess you have not been paying attention to the fact that both of those studies are total bullshit put together by the same group of bullshit artists. I just saw that Chris Martenson did a patient and thorough 40 minute take-down of the first one. The second one probably has the same defects, but since they haven’t released their raw data it hasn’t yet gotten the full bitch-slapping mockery that it undoubtedly deserves.
200 pregnant women about to deliver = random
Dont know if that was sarcasm or not. They are random. They were not recruited by an offer of a free and otherwise unavailable covid test. They just showed up to have their baby and their blood was tested for covid antibodies.
There is no herd immunity for covid-19 this is not the flu, it is an engineered bio-weapon, when will you morons realize that.
The Chinese plot to use engineered bioweapons (with strands of HIV to really be mean!) against their own people reminds me of the multiple times that Bashar Assad, according to our government, used chemical weapons against his own people, even though there was absolutely no military or political reason to do so. In fact, acts like that would obviously have the opposite effect.
So, following this line of reasoning, the Chinese want Trump to launch a cruise missile attack against them? I’m no 4D chess player, so I’m just not getting the point here.
No one said this was done on purpose Einstein, that does not change the fact that it was bio-engineered, and that there is no immunity to it.
there is no immunity to it.
evidence? proof? anything?
When you provide evicence for the claim.
Why does nobody talk about the HIV component of this thing? You think you can just shake that off? Israelis will get a cure while the rest of us have to buy our monthly prescription.
TC.
The HIV part was spliced in because the virus was too smooth to attach itself to the lung tissue long enough to get a start. The part of the HIV dna spliced in acts as a sticking agent or grappling hood, allowing the virus to stay attached as long as neccessary. http://www.hagmannreportlive.com/20200217cottrell//
Dr. Paul Cottrell on Feb. 17 Haggman report.
because the “component” that research paper found… is literally the shortest genetic sequence that can even be called “a component” and it is also… not unique to HIV. that research paper has since been withdrawn by it’s authors and no other sources have duplicated the findings.
I think what makes most “estimates” in fact “guesstimates” is that we don’t know 4 things about the covid19:
1) The true R-0 number. That is, what the infectivity rate person to person really is. We may get a better handle on that with mass testing (but see #3 below). We also know that the virus may persist on surfaces for a long time but it is unclear if that is enough to infect somebody. We don’t know the viral load that is necessary for infection.
2) Whether being “infected” (you have the virus) is the same as being “infectious” (you can transmit to others). We have no idea if that is the case for covid19, none. As a result, people with a positive test (for a given value of test) may NOT be infectious and thus are being quarantined for no good reason.
3) Whether the PCR based (for virus particles) or antibody based (for evidence of immune response to exposure) are sensitive (identifying covid19) or specific (identifying normals). Coronoviruses are very heterogenous, cause 30% of common colds and there are likely common RNA sequences between covid19 and its more benign cousins. Are the PCR tests targeting the unique covid19 sequences? Will that be known since most of the tests are proprietary? RNA assays are very prone to inactivation of the virus in processing. The human body is rife with RNAases, enzymes to inactivate RNA. Do we know how many samples are thus false negatives via the transport process?
Antibody testing is an entirely different kettle of fish. Early immune responses are IgM, which usually starts within 1 week of exposure and peaks then declines to zero 2-3 weeks later. It is not usually associated with long term immunity. Later, and more lasting immunity, is though IgG, which takes up to 1 month post exposure to occur but usually is life long. Which one is the test measuring? Then there is the nature of the IgG and IgM antibodies to covid19 itself. What epitopes of the virus are they specific against? Is a response to one epitope more indicative of immunity than another? What about people that take drugs to down regulate lymphocytes, like many cancer and rheumatology patients? Will they develop protective antibodies at all (assuming we know what antibodies are protective) and if not, are they more infectious since they cannot clear antibody?
4) Mutational rate and significance of same. Covid19 is an RNA virus. RNA viruses are very prone to mutational change, usually mutating to a much less virulent state as more virulent strains kill too many hosts and thus die out. Spanish flu of 1918 was several waves, with the 2nd wave much more lethal than the first one. Currently this data is being gathered and will have to be correlated with CFR and R-0. The infomatics for this kind of analysis is ginormous. And correlation is not necessarily causation!
And lastly, I don’t know how much intrusion on privacy and liberty the average American is going to tolerate for control of covid. The natives are quite restless after 6 weeks of this. The economic effects are already devastating, the effects on the food chain are just now being felt in terms of shortages, albeit locally for now, and price inflation. The interwebs are full of people losing their freaking minds, even accounting for the background Drama Queen nature of social media.
Aesop makes a compelling case for a prolonged lockdown and he may be correct. The CMO for the UK’s NHS just stated that he believes the lockdown should continue throughout 2020. Will Briton’s stand for that? Would you? But will that lead to even more deaths and social disorder from the expected downstream effects on the economy, food supply and social fabric?
I certainly don’t know other than to say everybody should be really thinking about how to survive with the 2nd, 3rd and 4th order effects of either a prolonged lockdown or resurgence of a more virulent strain.