Originally Posted by
Sherwood
There is so much BS on the Internet about Covid 19, much of it produced by conspiracy theorists with a political axe to grind or by unqualified commentators without the appropriate technical skills and training. The Youtube video posted earlier was authored by a chemical engineer not by a public health specialist or epidemiologist. It amounts to no more than a crude curve-fitting exercise rather than a disease modelling exercise and as such has no explanatory or predictive power. It is already undermined by the fact that infection rates have started to rise alarmingly in many countries in recent weeks. I place my confidence in the work of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and its director Chris Murray. Chris is a world-renowned expert in disease modelling and played a key role in the global burden of disease work when he was at WHO. The IHME projections for the coming months are frightening.
A few governments briefly flirted with the idea of a strategy based on herd immunity principles but quickly abandoned this when the huge mortality implications were calculated. Herd immunity not the only game in town it is not even an effective approach. It is naive in the extreme to believe that we can regulate the rate of new infections en route to the development of herd immunity such that we do not overwhelm health services in the interim period. Without any mitigation actions, the reproduction rate for Covid appears to be about 3. Clearly, clearly some countries have been more effective than others in reducing this rate, with some achieving rates well below unity (1).
As public health experts have repeatedly reaffirmed, there are effective strategies already available pending the development of a safe and effective vaccine. The key elements of this strategy are: mask wearing, social distancing, avoidance of mass congregating, widespread testing with rapid turnaround of results, contact tracing, and early isolation of infected parties. Johns Hopkins projections suggest that in the absence of the above mitigation efforts, this winter will see health services worldwide overwhelmed by Covid cases.
This will be my last post on this subject. As someone who has worked in international health in around 30 different countries over 35 years my comments are based upon evidence and science. I take no pleasure in predicting that without a strengthening of mitigation measures, we will see the NHS under extreme pressure of collapse in the coming winter. I hope I am wrong but the science and (credible) models suggest otherwise.
My comments are also based on evidence and science and, unlike you, I've posted my reference for scrutiny. My guess is you have not even watched it.
Cases have gone up because there has been a massive increase in testing. Really not rocket science. If mask wearing and social distancing has any effect why have influenza cases not gone down? Influenza is a less communicable disease than C19 so cases should have dropped like a stone. Explain that.
Current Lash Up:
TEAC VRDS 701T > Sony TAE1000ESD > Krell KSA50S > JM Labs Focal Electra 926.