Most people have had enough of lockdown. Many people have lost their jobs, livelihood, and a way to pay their bills. More still fear for the suspension of their civil liberties. It defies logic to think the economy simply restarts where it left off before politicians shut it down. But how many of us know what the range of expert opinions contains?
The present
New Hampshire and America are in a bad place, constitutionally, governmentally, economically and from the perspective of healthcare. Look, don’t take my word for it. Here are some sources and some non-main stream information. Check it out for yourself.
Stanford
Researchers at Stanford University suggest the lockdowns have been an overreaction. Coronavirus could be much more widespread and much less deadly than models originally predicted. Stanford set out to do the first random-sample antibody test for SARS-2 coronavirus In the United States. The study focused on areas most affected by the virus, so the worst-case scenarios.
The presence of antibodies suggests a person has had exposure to the virus, never was sick or recovers and is now immune. Scientists believe infection or reinfection is highly unlikely if antibodies are present. How soon Americans can return to our usual way of life depends on how widespread antibodies are currently. Stanford found that between 2.46% and 4.16% of people it randomly sampled had SARS-2 coronavirus antibodies.
Israel
From Israel, there is an analysis of coronavirus related international graphs and comparisons. It suggests stay-at-home orders and lockdowns do not have an effect on the life of COVID-19. The life of coronavirus is about eight weeks. Professor and Israel Space Agency chairman Isaac Ben-Israel explained a week ago.
In light of his findings, the highly-regarded Ph.D. urges Israel to start re-opening the economy immediately. He recommends being back to full capacity by the end of April. He is arguing that Israel “will pay with more human lives with our health system in the current state.” According to Ben-Israel, the nation is “already in the final stages of the coronavirus epidemic,” an Israeli National News report detailed last Monday.
From the report
“The incidence of patients was greater by the day… This was during the first four weeks after the epidemic was discovered in Israel. As of the sixth week, the increase in the number of patients has been moderate, peaking in the sixth week at 700 patients per day. Since then it has been declining, and today there are only 300 new patients. In two weeks it will reach zero and there will be no more new patients… This is how it is all over the world. Both in countries where they have taken closure steps like Italy and in countries that have not had closures like Taiwan or Singapore… In such and such countries there is an increase until the fourth to sixth week, and immediately thereafter moderation until during the eighth week it disappears.” According to Ben-Israel.
Ben-Israel has based his analysis off “various graphical studies to his colleagues, Prof. Ziegler of the Technion and Ronnie Yefarah, who helped him formulate his encouraging position,” Israeli National News noted. The data is “based entirely on past data without attempting to guess what will happen in the future,” according to the professor, the report said.
The professor said good hygiene practices should continue, as well as mask-wearing, and the banning of excessively large crowds, claiming such action is prudent and will minimally hurt the economy. “What bothers me is the damage to the economy,” he said. “We are paying NIS 100 billion a month because of this closure. This also has implications for health. We will pay with more human lives with our health system in the current state.”
Closer to home
Veteran scholar of epidemiology Dr. Knut Wittkowski, formerly the head of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at Rockefeller University in New York City, argued in an interview published earlier this month that shelter-in-place policies could actually result in more deaths in the long term.
The general argument made by Dr. Wittkowski is lockdown orders prolong efforts in developing so-called herd immunity. Herd immunity is our only weapon in “exterminating” the novel coronavirus outside of a vaccine. Finding, producing and delivering a vaccine could optimistically take longer than 18 months. Focusing on shielding the most vulnerable to the virus (our elderly and folks with comorbidities) while allowing the young and healthy to build up immunity would, in the end, save more lives, Wittkowski argues.
Here’s the quote:
“With all respiratory diseases, the only thing that stops the disease is herd immunity,” the epidemiologist said. “About 80% of the people need to have had contact with the virus, and the majority of them won’t even have recognized that they were infected, or they had very, very mild symptoms, especially if they are children.”
“So, it’s very important to keep the schools open and kids mingling to spread the virus to get herd immunity as fast as possible, and then the elderly people, who should be separated, and the nursing homes should be closed during that time, can come back and meet their children and grandchildren after about 4 weeks when the virus has been exterminated…” Herd immunity, Wittkowski argued, would stop a “second wave” headed for the United States in the fall.
“If we had herd immunity now, there couldn’t be a second wave in autumn,” he said. “Herd immunity lasts for a couple of years, typically, and that’s why the last SARS epidemic we had in 2003, it lasted 15 years for enough people to become susceptible again so that a new epidemic could spread of a related virus. Because typically, there is something that requires cross-immunity, so if you were exposed to one of the SARS viruses, you are less likely to fall ill with another SARS virus. So, if we had herd immunity, we wouldn’t have a second wave.”
“However, if we are preventing herd immunity from developing, it is almost guaranteed that we have a second wave as soon as either we stop the social distancing or the climate changes with winter coming or something like that,” added Wittkowski.
Here’s a portion of the “abstract” from his interview:
Containment of high-risk people, like the elderly, and reducing disease severity, either by vaccination or by early treatment of complications, is the best strategy against a respiratory virus disease. Social distancing or “lockdowns” can be effective during the month following the peak incidence in infections, when the exponential increase of cases ends. Earlier containment of low-risk people merely prolongs the time the virus needs to circulate until the incidence is high enough to initiate “herd immunity”. Later containment is not helpful, unless to prevent a rebound if containment started too early.
Dr. Katz
Dr. Wittkowski is not alone in his dissent against our nation’s tack in fighting COVID-19. Dr. David L. Katz, president of True Health Initiative and the founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, writing at The New York Times on March 20, suggested our “fight” against COVID-19 could be worse than the virus itself.
“The ‘unique’ nature of COVID-19 — that it results in only ‘mild’ symptoms in 99% of cases and that it appears to only pose a high risk to the elderly — Katz contends, makes it particularly suited for a more strategic containment effort, rather than our current unsustainable, society-wide approach that threatens to upend the economy,” The Daily Wire reported at the time.
“The clustering of complications and death from COVID-19 among the elderly and chronically ill, but not children (there have been only very rare deaths in children), suggests that we could achieve the crucial goals of social distancing — saving lives and not overwhelming our medical system — by preferentially protecting the medically frail and those over age 60, and in particular those over 70 and 80, from exposure,” Dr. Katz explained.
“I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near-total meltdown of normal life — schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned — will be long-lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself,” he adds.
Professor Ioannidis
Moreover, John P.A. Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine with focuses on medicine, epidemiology, population health, and biomedical data science, warned last month that we are working off incomplete data and potentially causing more harm in our response.
The Daily Wire reported: The woefully inadequate data we have so far, the meta-research specialist argues, indicates that the extreme measures taken by many countries are likely way out of line and may result in ultimately unnecessary and catastrophic consequences. Due to extremely limited testing, we are likely missing “the vast majority of infections” from COVID-19, he states, thus making reported fatality rates from the World Health Organization “meaningless.”
“Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes,” Ioannidis explains. With very limited testing in many health systems, he suggests, that “selection bias” may only get worse going forward.