Thoughts on coronavirus...

[Canuckster]

Lol,

[Megaterio Llamas]

[Megaterio Llamas]

Will COVID-19 Retire the World’s Policeman?

April 17, 2020 by Patrick J. Buchanan

https://buchanan.org/blog/will-covid-19 ... man-138446

[Masato]

Yes let's dive into Bill Gates:



His father, William H Gates II:
- Co-founded Preston Gates & Ellis, a lawfirm with clients and associates like Rockefeller, Soros, ted Turner etc

- Sat on the Board of Eugenicist Margaret Singer's Planned Parenthood
- 2nd Wife is fluent in Chinese, former director of 'Asian Art' at the Yale University Art Gallery (Yale = Skull & Bones, ties to CCP)

- Bill Gates' Mom was Chairwoman of United Way
- Bill Gates' Mom's grandfather was President of National City Bank, and Director of the Seattle Reserve of the FEDERAL RESERVE BANK

- Bill Gates created the first computer VIRUS, then profited off providing the CURE

- Bill's Wife Melinda Gates (French) - daughter of Texas Aerospace Engineer

- Bill Gates is one of the most powerful people in the MEDICAL/HEALTH/PHARMACEUTICAL/VACCINE industry, yet never went to any sort of medical school whatsoever

- Bill Gates has been documented to have flown on Jeffrey Epstein's Lolita Express


- 2014, a man was arrested at Bill Gates estate for possessing over 60,000 photos of CHILD PORN

- Predicted a CoronaVirus Global Pandemic in 2015, and claimed he would be the saviour

- 2019 Hosted 'Event 201' at the World Economic Forum - a simulated drill of a global virus outbreak, modelling tens of millions of deaths, and citing world government and major industry cooperation as the solution

- Gave money to Wuhan Virus Lab, which was developing a virus that almost perfectly matches COVID-19

- March 18 2020 does an AMA on Reddit, and discloses his vision of everyone having 'digital certificates to show who has received or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it"


- Is advocating, in development along with DAVID ROCKEFELLER (before he died), the 'ID 2020 Project' - a DIGITAL ID MICROCHIP to be implanted under the skin

- Currently working with Johnson&Johnson on a COVID vaccine

- Has openly called to reduce world population by up to 15%

- His own Windows Operating system still rampant with viruses he has been unable to stop

- When Bill Gates tried to get into Education, he forced 'Common Core' on the US population (failed)

- When Bill Gates tried to get into 'Climate Change' solutions, he unleashed a reckless and destructive 'Cloud-Whitening' weather-control agenda

- Featured Satanic 'Spirit Cooking' MARINA ABROMAVIC (friend to Podesta bros & among the leaked Clinton/Podesta Child Sex trafficking emails) in Microsoft MARKETING ADVERTISEMENTS


- Has a HORRIFIC record of failures in his many vaccine programs, testing on live population with disastrous results, thousands of deaths and illness from side effects, likely even being responsible for the recent Polio epidemic, as accused by Robert F Kennedy Jr HERE:

"In 2017, the World Health Organization reluctantly admitted that the global polio explosion is predominantly vaccine strain, meaning it is coming from Gates’ Vaccine Program. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, the Philippines, and Afghanistan are all linked to Gates’ vaccines. By 2018, ¾ of global polio cases were from Gates’ vaccines."
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=6558

[Masato]

On the other hand... even my 12 year old son is speculating why this Gates-Wuhan-vaccine-COVID connection seems so obvious and easy to find.

Its all there in plain sight, we didn't have to dig very far to connect these dots, looks like it wasn't even attempted to be hidden

Beware, keep your critical thinking caps on!

[Masato]

Essential viewing:



Death Count numbers have been GROSSLY inflated WAY up.
Total # of people possibly infected (the denominator in the fatality rate) have been Grossly diminished WAY down.

Italy:



Germany:


Northern Ireland:



UK:




China:

[Masato]

[Masato]

CBC Radio cuts off expert when he questions Covid19 narrative

https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/17/listen-cbc-radio-cuts-off-expert-when-he-questions-covid19-narrative/

phone interview with a respected physician appears to have been cut short by CBC Radio when the Doctor went off-script

Dr Joel Kettner phoned into the March 15th episode of CBC’s Cross Country Checkup podcast to discuss the Canadian (and international) reaction to the Covid19 pandemic. He was in the middle of making a point about statistics when the host abruptly cut him off.

While the two invited guests were very much taking the governmental line on the threat of Covid19, Dr Kettner was striking a different tone

To be clear, Dr Kettner is not a fringe or controversial character. He is professor of Community Health Sciences and Surgery at Manitoba University, former Chief Public Health Officer for Manitoba province and Medical Director of the International Centre for Infectious Diseases.

[spoiler]

CBC Radio – Cross Country Checkup, March 15 2020

Duncan McCue (DM, Host): Dr Joel Kettner is on the line from Manitoba. Hi, Dr Kettner welcome to Checkup. You teach at the University of Manitoba and are former Chief Medical Officer of Manitoba, I understand. So what do you think of how we are coping right now?

Dr Joel Kettner (JK): Well I don’t know what to think, frankly, but I’ll tell you what I do think. First, I wanna say that in 30 years of public health medicine I have never seen anything like this, anything anywhere near like this. I’m not talking about the pandemic, because I’ve seen 30 of them, one every year. It is called influenza. And other respiratory illness viruses, we don’t always know what they are. But I’ve never seen this reaction, and I’m trying to understand why. I have to say that I really feel for my colleagues that are in public health practice. it is easy for me to sit in the armchair of my office and look at this and observe it, and be critical and have ideas. But I really feel for them for three reasons.

One is that the data they are getting is incomplete to really make sense of the size of the threat. We are getting very crude numbers of cases and deaths, very little information about testing rates, contagious analysis, severity rates, who is being hospitalised, who is in intensive care, who is dying, what are the definitions to decide if someone died of the coronavirus or just died with the coronavirus.

There is so much important data that is very hard to get to guide the decisions on how serious a threat this is.

The other part is we actually do not have that much good evidence for the social distancing methods. It was just a couple of review in the CDC emerging infectious disease journal, which showed that although some of them might work, we really don’t know to what degree and the evidence is pretty weak.

The third part is the pressure that is being put on public health doctors and public health leaders. And that pressure is coming from various places. The first place it came from was the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) when he said “This is a grave threat and a public enemy number one”, I have never heard a Director-General of WHO use terms like that.

Then when he announced the pandemic he said he was doing it “because of a grave alarming quick spread of the disease and an alarming amount of inaction around the world” that puts a huge pressure on public health doctors and leaders and advisors and huge pressure on governments and then you get this what seems like a cascade of decision making that really puts pressure on the countries and governments – provincial, state – to sort of…to keep up with this action that Dr Hoffman [an earlier guest on the programme] said that we are trying to avoid, or should avoid, which is an overreaction. I don’t know what is an appropriate reaction, but I do know that I am having trouble trying to figure this out and I…

[INTERRUPTED BY HOST]

DM: …So I’m sure that your medical colleagues across the country are probably nodding their heads when you say they don’t have enough data, that they lack data. I suspect health professionals around the world wish they had more data, whether it is testing rates, severity rates, all that kind of thing. So it’s probably a valid concern. But you mentioned that you are not confident with some of the literature with regard to social distancing and its effectiveness […] What is the basis of your concern then? If social distancing is debatable in your mind, what do you worry about then?

JK: I worry about the consequences of social distancing. I worry about people who are losing their jobs. I worry about interruptions with the healthcare system itself. There are many doctors in Manitoba in quarantine right now, because they have returned from other countries. I worry about the message to the public, about the fear of coming into contact with people, being in the same space as people, shaking their hands, having meetings with people. I worry about many, many consequences related to that.

If you look at the data for what we are actually dealing with, I want to give this example. In Hubei, in the province of Hubei, where there has been the most cases and deaths by far, the actual number of cases reported is 1 per 1000 people and the actual rate of deaths reported is 1 per 20,000. So maybe that would help to put things into perspective, as to the actual rate and risks of this condition, because it is a lot lower in any other part of the world, including Italy, and certainly in Canada and the United States…

[INTERRUPTED BY HOST AGAIN, INTERVIEW OVER]

[Masato]

12 Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic

https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/24/12- ... rus-panic/

[spoiler]

Dr Sucharit Bhakdi is a specialist in microbiology. He was a professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and head of the Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene and one of the most cited research scientists in German history.

What he says:

We are afraid that 1 million infections with the new virus will lead to 30 deaths per day over the next 100 days. But we do not realise that 20, 30, 40 or 100 patients positive for normal coronaviruses are already dying every day.

[The government’s anti-COVID19 measures] are grotesque, absurd and very dangerous […] The life expectancy of millions is being shortened. The horrifying impact on the world economy threatens the existence of countless people. The consequences on medical care are profound. Already services to patients in need are reduced, operations cancelled, practices empty, hospital personnel dwindling. All this will impact profoundly on our whole society.

All these measures are leading to self-destruction and collective suicide based on nothing but a spook.


*

Dr Wolfgang Wodarg is a German physician specialising in Pulmonology, politician and former chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In 2009 he called for an inquiry into alleged conflicts of interest surrounding the EU response to the Swine Flu pandemic.

What he says:

Politicians are being courted by scientists…scientists who want to be important to get money for their institutions. Scientists who just swim along in the mainstream and want their part of it […] And what is missing right now is a rational way of looking at things.

We should be asking questions like “How did you find out this virus was dangerous?”, “How was it before?”, “Didn’t we have the same thing last year?”, “Is it even something new?”

That’s missing.


*

Dr Joel Kettner s professor of Community Health Sciences and Surgery at Manitoba University, former Chief Public Health Officer for Manitoba province and Medical Director of the International Centre for Infectious Diseases.

What he says:

I have never seen anything like this, anything anywhere near like this. I’m not talking about the pandemic, because I’ve seen 30 of them, one every year. It is called influenza. And other respiratory illness viruses, we don’t always know what they are. But I’ve never seen this reaction, and I’m trying to understand why.

[…]

I worry about the message to the public, about the fear of coming into contact with people, being in the same space as people, shaking their hands, having meetings with people. I worry about many, many consequences related to that.

[…]

In Hubei, in the province of Hubei, where there has been the most cases and deaths by far, the actual number of cases reported is 1 per 1000 people and the actual rate of deaths reported is 1 per 20,000. So maybe that would help to put things into perspective.

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Dr John Ioannidis Professor of Medicine, of Health Research and Policy and of Biomedical Data Science, at Stanford University School of Medicine and a Professor of Statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences. He is director of the Stanford Prevention Research Center, and co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS).

He is also the editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Clinical Investigation. He was chairman at the Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, University of Ioannina School of Medicine as well as adjunct professor at Tufts University School of Medicine.

As a physician, scientist and author he has made contributions to evidence-based medicine, epidemiology, data science and clinical research. In addition, he pioneered the field of meta-research. He has shown that much of the published research does not meet good scientific standards of evidence.

What he says:

Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes. As most health systems have limited testing capacity, selection bias may even worsen in the near future.

The one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine passengers. The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher.

[…]

Could the Covid-19 case fatality rate be that low? 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.

[…]

If we had not known about a new virus out there, and had not checked individuals with PCR tests, the number of total deaths due to “influenza-like illness” would not seem unusual this year. At most, we might have casually noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average.

– “A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data”, Stat News, 17th March 2020

*

Dr Yoram Lass is an Israeli physician, politician and former Director General of the Health Ministry. He also worked as Associate Dean of the Tel Aviv University Medical School and during the 1980s presented the science-based television show Tatzpit.

What he says:

Italy is known for its enormous morbidity in respiratory problems, more than three times any other European country. In the US about 40,000 people die in a regular flu season and so far 40-50 people have died of the coronavirus, most of them in a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington.

[…]

In every country, more people die from regular flu compared with those who die from the coronavirus.

[…]

…there is a very good example that we all forget: the swine flu in 2009. That was a virus that reached the world from Mexico and until today there is no vaccination against it. But what? At that time there was no Facebook or there maybe was but it was still in its infancy. The coronavirus, in contrast, is a virus with public relations.

Whoever thinks that governments end viruses is wrong.

– Interview in Globes, March 22nd 2020

*

Dr Pietro Vernazza is a Swiss physician specialising Infectious Diseases at the Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen and Professor of Health Policy.

What he says:

We have reliable figures from Italy and a work by epidemiologists, which has been published in the renowned science journal ‹Science›, which examined the spread in China. This makes it clear that around 85 percent of all infections have occurred without anyone noticing the infection. 90 percent of the deceased patients are verifiably over 70 years old, 50 percent over 80 years.

[…]

In Italy, one in ten people diagnosed die, according to the findings of the Science publication, that is statistically one of every 1,000 people infected. Each individual case is tragic, but often – similar to the flu season – it affects people who are at the end of their lives.

[…]

If we close the schools, we will prevent the children from quickly becoming immune.

[…]

We should better integrate the scientific facts into the political decisions.

– Interview in St. Galler Tagblatt, 22nd March 2020

*

Frank Ulrich Montgomery is German radiologist, former President of the German Medical Association and Deputy Chairman of the World Medical Association.

What he says:

I’m not a fan of lockdown. Anyone who imposes something like this must also say when and how to pick it up again. Since we have to assume that the virus will be with us for a long time, I wonder when we will return to normal? You can’t keep schools and daycare centers closed until the end of the year. Because it will take at least that long until we have a vaccine. Italy has imposed a lockdown and has the opposite effect. They quickly reached their capacity limits, but did not slow down the virus spread within the lockdown.

– Interview in General Anzeiger, 18th March 2020

*

Prof. Hendrik Streeck is a German HIV researcher, epidemiologist and clinical trialist. He is professor of virology, and the director of the Institute of Virology and HIV Research, at Bonn University.

What he says:

The new pathogen is not that dangerous, it is even less dangerous than Sars-1. The special thing is that Sars-CoV-2 replicates in the upper throat area and is therefore much more infectious because the virus jumps from throat to throat, so to speak. But that is also an advantage: Because Sars-1 replicates in the deep lungs, it is not so infectious, but it definitely gets on the lungs, which makes it more dangerous.

[…]

You also have to take into account that the Sars-CoV-2 deaths in Germany were exclusively old people. In Heinsberg, for example, a 78-year-old man with previous illnesses died of heart failure, and that without Sars-2 lung involvement. Since he was infected, he naturally appears in the Covid 19 statistics. But the question is whether he would not have died anyway, even without Sars-2.

– Interview in Frankfurter Allgemeine, 16th March 2020

*

Dr Yanis Roussel et. al. – A team of researchers from the Institut Hospitalo-universitaire Méditerranée Infection, Marseille and the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Marseille, conducting a peer-reviewed study on Coronavirus mortality for the government of France under the ‘Investments for the Future’ programme.

What they say:

The problem of SARS-CoV-2 is probably overestimated, as 2.6 million people die of respiratory infections each year compared with less than 4000 deaths for SARS-CoV-2 at the time of writing.

[…]

This study compared the mortality rate of SARS-CoV-2 in OECD countries (1.3%) with the mortality rate of common coronaviruses identified in AP-HM patients (0.8%) from 1 January 2013 to 2 March 2020. Chi-squared test was performed, and the P-value was 0.11 (not significant).

[…]

…it should be noted that systematic studies of other coronaviruses (but not yet for SARS-CoV-2) have found that the percentage of asymptomatic carriers is equal to or even higher than the percentage of symptomatic patients. The same data for SARS-CoV-2 may soon be available, which will further reduce the relative risk associated with this specific pathology.

– “SARS-CoV-2: fear versus data”, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, 19th March 2020

*

Dr. David Katz is an American physician and founding director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center

What he says:

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. The stock market will bounce back in time, but many businesses never will. The unemployment, impoverishment and despair likely to result will be public health scourges of the first order.

– “Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?”, New York Times 20th March 2020

*

Michael T. Osterholm is regents professor and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

What he says:

Consider the effect of shutting down offices, schools, transportation systems, restaurants, hotels, stores, theaters, concert halls, sporting events and other venues indefinitely and leaving all of their workers unemployed and on the public dole. The likely result would be not just a depression but a complete economic breakdown, with countless permanently lost jobs, long before a vaccine is ready or natural immunity takes hold.

[…]

[T]he best alternative will probably entail letting those at low risk for serious disease continue to work, keep business and manufacturing operating, and “run” society, while at the same time advising higher-risk individuals to protect themselves through physical distancing and ramping up our health-care capacity as aggressively as possible. With this battle plan, we could gradually build up immunity without destroying the financial structure on which our lives are based.

– “Facing covid-19 reality: A national lockdown is no cure”, Washington Post 21st March 2020

*

Dr Peter Goetzsche is Professor of Clinical Research Design and Analysis at the University of Copenhagen and founder of the Cochrane Medical Collaboration. He has written several books on corruption in the field of medicine and the power of big pharmaceutical companies.

What he says:

Our main problem is that no one will ever get in trouble for measures that are too draconian. They will only get in trouble if they do too little. So, our politicians and those working with public health do much more than they should do.

No such draconian measures were applied during the 2009 influenza pandemic, and they obviously cannot be applied every winter, which is all year round, as it is always winter somewhere. We cannot close down the whole world permanently.

Should it turn out that the epidemic wanes before long, there will be a queue of people wanting to take credit for this. And we can be damned sure draconian measures will be applied again next time. But remember the joke about tigers. “Why do you blow the horn?” “To keep the tigers away.” “But there are no tigers here.” “There you see!”

– “Corona: an epidemic of mass panic”, blog post on Deadly Medicines 21st March 2020

[Masato]

10 MORE Experts Criticising the Coronavirus Panic

https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/28/10- ... rus-panic/

[spoiler]

Following on from our previous list, here are ten more expert voices, drowned out or disregarded by the mainstream narrative, offering their take on the coronavirus outbreak.
* * *

Dr. Sunetra Gupta et al. are an Oxford-based research team constructing an epidemiological model for the coronavirus outbreak, their paper has yet to be peer-reviewed, but the abstract is available online.

Dr Gupta is a Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford with an interest in infectious disease agents that are responsible for malaria, HIV, influenza and bacterial meningitis. She is a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Scientific Medal by the Zoological Society of London and the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award for her scientific research.

What they say:

Importantly, the results we present here suggest the ongoing epidemics in the UK and Italy started at least a month before the first reported death and have already led to the accumulation of significant levels of herd immunity in both countries. There is an inverse relationship between the proportion currently immune and the fraction of the population vulnerable to severe disease.

– Fundamental principles of epidemic spread highlight the immediate need for large-scale serological surveys to assess the stage of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic, 24th March 2020

– – –

The research presents a very different view of the epidemic to the modelling at Imperial College London […] “I’m surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model”, Dr Gupta said.

[…]

The Oxford results would mean the country had already acquired substantial her immunity through the unrecognised spread of covid19 over more than two months.

Although some experts have shed doubt on the strength and length of the human immune response to the virus, Prof Gupta said the emerging evidence made her confident that humanity would build up herd immunity against Covid19

– “Coronavirus may have infected halt the population”, Financial Times, 24th March 2020

*

Dr Karin Mölling is a German virologist whose research focused on retroviruses, particularly human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). She was a full professor and director of the Institute of Medical Virology at the University of Zurich from 1993 until her retirement in 2008 and received multiple honours and awards for her work.

What she says:

You are now told every morning how many SARS-Corona 2 deaths there are. But they don’t tell you how many people already are infected with influenza this winter and how many deaths it has caused.

This winter, the flu is not severe, but around 80,000 are infected. You don’t get these numbers at all. Something similar occurred two years ago. This is not put into the right context.

[…]

Every week a person dies in Berlin from multi-resistant germs. That adds up to 35,000 a year in Germany. This is not mentioned at all. I believe that we have had situations like this several times and that the measures are now being taken too far.

I am of the opinion that maybe one should not do so much against young people having parties together and infecting each other. We have to build immunity somehow. How can that be possible without contacts? The younger ones handle the infection much better. But we have to protect the elderly, and protect them in a way that can be scrutinized; is it reasonable what we are doing now, to stretch out the epidemic in a way that almost paralyzes the entire world economy?

[…]

The Robert Koch Institute provides the figures. Then you sit there as a listener or spectator: 20 dead again, how terrible! Do you know when I would start to panic? If there are 20,000. Then we get close to what went on completely quietly two years ago.

The 2018 influenza epidemic, with 25,000 deaths, never disconcerted the press. The clinics had to deal with an additional 60,000 patients, which was no problem in the clinics either!

[…]

That is the main fear: the disease is presented as a terrible disease. The disease per se is like the flu in a normal winter. It is even weaker in the first week.

– Interview on Anti-Empire.com, 23rd March 2020

*

Dr Anders Tegnell is a Swedish physician and civil servant who has been State Epidemiologist of the Public Health Agency of Sweden since 2013. Dr Tegnell graduated from medical school in 1985, specialising in infectious disease. He later obtained a PhD in Medical Science from Linköping University in 2003 and an MSc in 2004.

What he says:

“All measures that we take must be feasible over a longer period of time.” Otherwise, the population will lose acceptance of the entire corona strategy.

Older people or people with previous health problems should be isolated as much as possible. So no visits to children or grandchildren, no journeys by public transport, if possible no shopping. That is the one rule. The other is: Anyone with symptoms should stay at home immediately, even with the slightest cough.

“If you follow these two rules, you don’t need any further measures, the effect of which is only very marginal anyway,”

– “The World Stands Still…Except for Sweden”, Zeit.de, 24th March 2020

*

Dr Pablo Goldschmidt is an Argentine-French virologist specializing in tropical diseases, and Professor of Molecular Pharmacology at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. He is a graduate of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry of the University of Buenos Aires and Faculty of Medicine of the Hospital Center of Pitié-Salpetrière, Paris.

He currently resides in France, where he has worked for almost 40 years as a researcher in clinical laboratories developing diagnostic technology.

What he says:

The ill-founded opinions expressed by international experts, replicated by the media and social networks repeat the unnecessary panic that we have previously experienced. The coronavirus identified in China in 2019 caused nothing less than a strong cold or flu, with no difference so far with cold or flu as we know , ”

[…]

Respiratory viral conditions are numerous and are caused by several viral families and species, among which the respiratory syncytial virus (especially in infants), influenza (influenza), human metapneumoviruses, adenoviruses, rhinoviruses, and various coronaviruses, already described years ago. It is striking that earlier this year global health alerts have been triggered as a result of infections by a coronavirus detected in China, COVID-19, knowing that each year there are 3 million newborns who die in the world of pneumonia and 50,000 adults in the United States for the same cause, without alarms being issued.

[…]

Our planet is the victim of a new sociological phenomenon, scientific-media harassment , triggered by experts only on the basis of laboratory molecular diagnostic analysis results. Communiqués issued from China and Geneva were replicated, without being confronted from a critical point of view and, above all, without stressing that coronaviruses have always infected humans and always caused diarrhoea and what people call a banal cold or common cold. Absurd forecasts were extrapolated, as in 2009 with the H1N1 influenza virus.

[…]

There is no evidence to show that the 2019 coronavirus is more lethal than respiratory adenoviruses, influenza viruses, coronaviruses from previous years, or rhinoviruses responsible for the common cold.

– Interview on Clarin.com, 9th March 2020

*

Dr Eran Bendavid and Dr Jay Bhattacharya are professors of medicine and public health at Stanford University.

What they say:

[P]rojections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high […] The true fatality rate is the portion of those infected who die, not the deaths from identified positive cases.

The latter rate is misleading because of selection bias in testing. The degree of bias is uncertain because available data are limited. But it could make the difference between an epidemic that kills 20,000 and one that kills two million.

[…]

A universal quarantine may not be worth the costs it imposes on the economy, community and individual mental and physical health. We should undertake immediate steps to evaluate the empirical basis of the current lockdowns.

“Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?”, Wall Street Journal, 24th March 2020

*

Dr Tom Jefferson is a British epidemiologist, based in Rome. He works for the Cochrane Collaboration, where he is an author and editor of the Cochrane Collaboration’s acute respiratory infections group, as well as part of four other Cochrane groups. He is also an advisor to the Italian National Agency for Regional Health Services.

What he says:

So I cannot answer my nagging doubts, there does not seem to be anything special about this particular epidemic of influenza-like illness.

There are, however, two consequences of this situation that bother me.

The first is the lack of institutional credibility as perceived by my friends. They range from firefighters, policemen, and even a GP — not the kind of people you would want to alienate in an emergency. A restaurant owner told me he would never report himself to the health authority as that would mean at least two weeks of closure and his business would go to the wall.

The second is that once the limelight has moved on, will there be a serious and concentrated international effort to understand the causes and origins of influenza-like illnesses and the life cycle of its agents?

Past form tells me not, and we will go back to pushing influenza as a universal plague under the roof of the hot house of commercial interest. Note the difference: Influenza (caused by influenza A and B viruses, for which we have licensed vaccines and drugs), not influenza-like illnesses against which we should wash our hands all the year round, not just now.

Meanwhile, I still cannot answer Mario’s question: what’s different this time?

– “Covid 19—many questions, no clear answers”, British Medical Journal, 2nd March 2020

*

Dr Michael Levitt is Professor of biochemistry at Stanford University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), a member of the National Academy of Sciences and received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.

In February this year, he correctly modelled that the China outbreak was coming to an end, predicting around 80,000 cases and 3250 deaths.

What he says:

I don’t believe the numbers in Israel, not because they’re made up, but because the definition of a case in Israel keeps changing and it’s hard to evaluate the numbers that way…

There is a lot of unjustified panic in Israel. I don’t believe the numbers here, everything is politics, not math. I will be surprised if number of deaths in Israel surpasses ten, and even five now with the restrictions.

[…]

To put things in proportion, the number of deaths of coronavirus in Italy is 10% of the number of deaths of influenza in the country between 2016-2017.

Even in China it’s hard to look at the number of patients because the definition of “patient” varies, so I look at number of deaths. In Israel there are none, so that’s why it’s not even on the world map for the disease.”

– “Nobel laureate: surprised if Israel has more than 10 coronavirus deaths”, Jerusalem Post, 20th March 2020

– – –

[Levitt] analyzed data from 78 countries that reported more than 50 new cases of COVID-19 every day and sees “signs of recovery” in many of them. He’s not focusing on the total number of cases in a country, but on the number of new cases identified every day — and, especially, on the change in that number from one day to the next.

“Numbers are still noisy, but there are clear signs of slowed growth.”

“What we need is to control the panic,” he said. In the grand scheme, “we’re going to be fine.”

– “Why this Nobel laureate predicts a quicker coronavirus recovery: ‘We’re going to be fine'”, Los Angeles Times, 22nd March 2020

*

German Network for Evidence-Based Medicine is an association of German scientists, researchers and medical professionals.

The network was founded in 2000 to disseminate and further develop concepts and methods of evidence-based and patient-oriented medicine in practice, teaching and research, and today has around 1000 members.

What they say:

In the majority of cases, COVID-19 takes the form of a mild cold or is even symptom-free. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that all cases of infection are recorded, in contrast with deaths which are almost completely recorded. This leads to an overestimation of the CFR.

According to a study of 565 Japanese people evacuated from Wuhan, all of whom were tested (regardless of symptoms), only 9.2% of infected people were detected with currently used symptom-oriented COVID-19 monitoring [5]. This would mean that the number of infected people is likely to be about 10 times greater than the number of registered cases. The CFR would then only be about one tenth of that currently measured. Others assume an even higher number of unreported cases, which would further reduce the CFR.

The widespread availability of SARS-CoV-2 tests is limited. In the USA, for example, an adequate, state-funded testing facility for all suspected cases has only been available since 11.3.2020 [6]. In Germany as well, there were occasional bottlenecks which contribute to an overestimation of the CFR.

As the disease spreads, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify a suspected source of infection. As a result, common colds in people who unknowingly had contact with a COVID-19 patient are not necessarily associated with COVID-19 and those affected do not go to the doctor at all.

An overestimation of the CFR also occurs when a deceased person is found to have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, but this was not the cause of death.

[…]

[T]he CFR of 0.2% currently measured for Germany is below the Robert Koch-Institute’s (RKI) calculated influenza CFRs of 0.5% in 2017/18 and 0.4% in 2018/19, but above the widely accepted figure of 0.1% for which there is no reliable evidence.

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Beyond the (rather questionable) conclusions drawn from the historical example, there is little evidence that NPIs for COVID-19 actually lead to a reduction in overall mortality. A Cochrane Review from 2011 found no robust evidence for the effectiveness of border control screenings or social distancing.

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A systematic review from 2015 found moderate evidence that school closures delay the spread of an influenza epidemic, but at high cost. Isolation at home slows down the spread of influenza but leads to increased infection of family members. It is questionable whether these findings can be transferred from influenza to COVID-19.

It is completely unclear how long the NPIs must be maintained and what effects could be achieved depending on their duration and intensity. The number of deaths might only be postponed to a later point in time, without any change in the total number.

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Many questions remain unanswered. On the one hand, the media confronts us daily with alarming reports of an exponentially increasing number of ill and dead people worldwide. On the other hand, the media coverage in no way considers our required criteria for evidence-based risk communication.

The media is currently communicating raw data, for example, there have been “X” infected persons and “Y” deaths to date. However, this presentation fails to distinguish between diagnoses and infections.

– “Covid19: Where is the evidence?”, statement on their website, March 20th 2020

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Dr Richard Schabas is the former Chief Medical Officer of Ontario, Medical Officer of Hastings and Prince Edward Public Health and Chief of Staff at York Central Hospital.

What he says:

[F]ar more cases are out there than are being reported. This is because many cases have no symptoms and testing capacity has been limited. There have been about 100,000 cases reported to date, but, if we extrapolate from the number of reported deaths and a presumed case-fatality rate of 0.5 per cent, the real number is probably closer to two million – the vast majority mild or asymptomatic.

Likewise, the actual rate of new cases is probably at least 10,000 a day. If these numbers sound large, though, remember that the world is a very big place. From a global perspective, these numbers are very small.

Second, the Hubei outbreak – by far the largest, and a kind of worst-case scenario – appears to be winding down. How bad was it? Well, the number of deaths was comparable to an average influenza season. That’s not nothing, but it’s not catastrophic, either, and it isn’t likely to overwhelm a competent health-care system. Not even close.

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I am not preaching complacency. This disease is not going away any time soon; we should expect more cases and more local outbreaks. And COVID-19 still has the potential to become a major global health problem, with an overall burden comparable to that of influenza. We need to be vigilant in our surveillance.

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But we also need to be sensible. Quarantine belongs back in the Middle Ages. Save your masks for robbing banks. Stay calm and carry on. Let’s not make our attempted cures worse than the disease.

– “Strictly by the numbers, the coronavirus does not register as a dire global crisis”, Globe and Mail, 11th March 2020