“When I look at people of the Swedish perspective that life can go on, we’re actually aligned on a lot of things,” says Devi Sridhar, the American public health professor currently Chair of Global Public health at Edinburgh and a leading figurehead of the “ZeroCovid” movement. “We’re both against lockdown, we both want social lives to continue, we both want schools back, but we want it done safely.”
In order to achieve these goals, however, Prof Sridhar’s suggested strategy is the opposite of Sweden’s more laissez-faire approach. Instead of being more permissive, she is calling for governments to follow the Scottish lead and commit to a “ZeroCovid” strategy — ie that any level of Covid-19, no matter how low, is considered unacceptable, and that within national borders, governments should aim to eliminate the virus completely. Liberty, achieved through greater suppression, is the paradoxical idea.
If you want a preview of the next phase of the political debate around Covid-19, this is it. Nicola Sturgeon (who Professor Sridhar advises) is calling for England to join the other home nations in committing to a ZeroCovid strategy, the so-called “Independent Sage” group of scientists is in agreement, and the Liberal Democrat Layla Moran has begun to demand that Boris Johnson takes the pledge. The group has a distinctly Left-progressive-idealist flavour, perhaps unsurprising given that the policy is driven by a conviction that, with enough willpower, governments and collective action can remake the world.
The key argument is as follows. “Health versus the economy” was never the right framing — the countries that have fared best so far in this pandemic, whose economies and societies are returning to normal fastest, are the ones that acted to lock down decisively and early, drove the virus down to very low levels, and are employing massive testing and track and trace programmes to keep it there.
If you try to open up society while the disease is still in circulation it will firstly not work because people are still feeling afraid (Prof Sridhar points to the mostly empty cinemas and theatres since they reopened) and, what’s more, the virus will come back. She gives Spain as an example of a country that had driven the virus to low levels but, since opening to tourists and restarting the “night-time economy” of bars and clubs, has seen a large surge in case numbers. In her view, they should have controlled the border more aggressively, been more activist in testing, tracing and isolating, and kept things like nightclubs closed.
When I pressed her on what exactly would be different from today in a ZeroCovid-committed England, the impression is of “do more of the same, but do it better and try harder”. More testing (up to 1 million a day), replace 14-day quarantine with testing twice at the border, and improve the NHS Test and Trace programme. Partly, she feels that change would already come from making the commitment, as it would give citizens clarity as to the national strategy. One striking detail was the idea of making ZeroCovid zones within the country, ringfenced with limited movement in or out, that could link up until the whole country was rid of the disease. (I wouldn’t want to be the one to inform the inhabitants of a town that they couldn’t leave because it had become Covid-free!)
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SubscribeCan someone, anyone, point me in the direction of hard data that suggests this is a policy that needs to be implemented? As is mentioned above, despite an increase in new cases (some explained simply by more testing), hospital admissions and fatalities have not budged.
All the way through this debacle, the data has been abundantly clear as to who is and isn’t badly affected by this, so why the masochistic obsession to keep the general public terrified?
Absolutely right..
Brilliant M8. Spot on!!!
I find myself asking the same question. I am not taking conspiracy theories seriously and hope other sensible people are doing the same (most of what I’ve seen online is just an awful lot of crazy talk). It seems like it’s just more of the same herd mentality: the public has become so obsessed with this virus that no policy is too absurd not to be seriously considered.
Sadly, experts such as this one are pernicious. They are unelected, suffer from the tunnel vision syndrome, and are largely a boon to conspiracy theorists of all stripes and colours. They are actually undermining trust in authorities and experts.
I consider experts like this to be more dangerous than Covid itself because of their influence on govt.
And when the wheels fall off it’s a sort of *shrugs* ‘Well, Science is about competing theories and it needs some to fail,’ waffle….
What conspiracies theories are you concerned about? have you anaylised the difference between theories and facts. For instance do you consider that klause Schwarb’s statement that the Covid19 virus is sufficient evidence to initiate a Great Reset in the world and install a One World Government to tackle the “pandemic” and Climate change and bring in a novel economy an theory or fact?
True enough but…if we have healthy people running around all infected, spreading infection but not getting too sick, the rate of infection among those at risk will also be higher as more infected people WILL infect more people.
As to hard facts and data. Having worked in that field…. Life the universe and everything is more complex than any set of numbers you’ll ever read in a single document on any subject. Data nearly always tells the story of the storyteller. It’s essentially the truth of the data told but is always mising something. When accuracy is required your model gets more and more complex untill you start ignoring it because complexity never tells a convincing story one way or the other, so you’ve never got the whole picture. Asking for hard facts and data is asking for a dumbed down simplistic answer that will never be the whole truth
I beg your pardon but are you saying we should avoid hard facts and data in our deliberations?
Not if those at risk are properly protected.
We have known for many months that those at most risk are the over 70’s. Spend as much money as it takes shielding those and they won’t get infected.
It cannot be right that we blight the lives of kids and young adults in pursuit on this nonsensical suppression strategy. It just won’t work and it is harmful. Think of the deep well of anxiety that is being ingrained in young kids for something that does not affect them, Its monstrous.
Life must go on.
I heard this on a youtube video and thought it was very eloquently put:
“I relinquish any claim on the lives of the young. As an oldster who is presumed to be peculiarly susceptible to the ravages of covid 19, I will not ask anyone to sacrifice days, weeks or months of their time, love, life, and livelihood on my behalf. It is grotesque for the old to ask the young to sacrifice for them. Go live your lives, enjoy the beautiful spring weather, I have no claim on you for my welfare. Who among my fellow oldsters will release claims on the lives of young people?”
Absolutely! And the risk even to the oldest of becoming seriously ill or dying reflects their usual risk of dying over a 1 year period (badly quoting Sir David Spieglehalter, personal fan!), so they can act according to their appetite for risk.
Agreed. And thankfully different age groups don’t live in age ghettos- society and communities are interconnected.
The most interesting aspect of this whole interview was the question of flu and its current impact versus covid. Her zero covid logic, if you follow it through, is that we should be reacting even more strenuously to flu than covid but she repeatedly avoided being drawn on that question.
As she admits, she is risk averse. We should not have her irrational fears imposed on our lives. Her opinions are not evidence based – she takes a “better safe than sorry” position.
Her disavowals of lock-down are disingenuous. Her influence along with Ferguson drove us into lockdown responses when we were plowing a road similar to Sweden. She senses that in the washup to come, her reputation is at risk and much of this interview was an attempt to re-write her role in this mess.
Well observed…and as we have been locking down a bit, distancing a bit, hand washing etc how come Flu is going full on (and when did we ever hear about summer deaths from Flu and Pneumonia in the 1,000 a week?? )
Surely if we are seeing Covid19 fizzle out a bit then Flu should have fizzled out even more? Both being spread basically the same way.
Or is that just unscientific thinking?
The *we see young people have heart attacks after Covid, but not after Flu* but without any number of percentage is just not scientifically helpful. As you say it’s basically very old people often with other illnesses etc that mean they have months at best.
How many young people have had gheart attackes as a % of all survivors and survivors under 40…if it’s 30,000 wordwide that’s one thing if it’s 3 that’s another.
Other respiratory infections like Covid19 can cause damage to other organs and infections in them such as the heart. Covid19 is not unique in this. Flu can sometimes lead to Rheumatic Fever etc and one of the possible complications of this is infection of the heart valves and therefore possible heart attacks
Utterly away with the faeries, yet another person promoted way beyond her abilities by always saying the ‘right’ thing. Society and medicine fall way short of being able to eliminate these viruses.
Why should she give a flying f…. about the economic & social consequences of her “strategy”..she will continue to be paid on the dot every month (plus pension) courtesy of the taxpayer (English)-the more outrageous she is the more publicity she will get the more money she will make.
Well said indeed! You beat me to it.
She has a biology bachelors degree, but a masters and doctorate in philosophy. She seems to have majored on the ‘social’ aspects of public health since then.
The biology degree she has is from the University of Miami – and is essentially a crash 2 year degree to prepare people for a subsequent 4 years of medicine. She didn’t complete the medicine part and was the youngest person in the US to be awarded the Rhodes scholarship — where she went into philosophy.
Clearly bright it would seem – but seems to be quite far removed from the science part
Seriously? Those are her credentials? How the hell did she become Chair of Global Public Health?
Friends with Chelsea Clinton….
Friends with Chelsea Clinton
It is all about promoting the “under represented”.
Possibly friends with Nicola Sturgeon??? #JustThinking
She would have ‘thrown a hissy fit’, as we used to say.
Oxford not Cambridge has been the incubator here, it must in all fairness be said.
Perhaps would have been a bit aggressive and might scare off future interviewees. Though I agree with sentiment for sure!
Whilst I think the passive interviewing style is preferable to an aggressive one, I do think there could have been a shade more scrutiny
She may have only agreed to do the interview on condition that such issues weren’t raised ; as may have been the case when Freddie interviewed Neil Ferguson – it was noticeable that he didn’t challenge him on his appalling record .
Or maybe he’s just too nice.
Thank for doing that research. So to put it succinctly, she is a “bluffer”, as we used to say.
Interesting the concept of “virus elimination” strategy. So far to my knowledge we have been able to eliminate one virus: smallpox. Many other virus kill more and are more relevant than SARS-CoV 2 that kills predominantly the ones older than the expected mean longevity in any country (that means over 80 years). Flu is a good example and strikes all ages and kills also unusually on uncommon organs like cardiomyopathy. It seems that she is following “Animal Farm”, some are more important than others without any supportive reason. I suspect that with time she would love to kill any carrear of virus or put all them in a prison somewhere in a remote island. All this for a disease that in 99.5% of the infected people don’t kill anyone and is mostly asymptomatic. Democracy and freedom are in dangerous with this kind of “sages”.
And this is exactly what is going on in France where an entire city…..Toulouse has introduced the mandatory use of face masks…..outside.
In Marseilles, the government has sent a squad ( 100 ) of riot police to enforce the use of masks outside.
I love the fact that France is always prompt to lecture the world about its democratic values when in fact turning into a police state.
France has, and will always be a Police State, no matter who or what is in power.
Except that smallpox is held in repository in both (at least) the USA and Russia though some other European countries are doing recombinant research on a crispr combination of both an ancient nordic strain to synthesise it with the modern strain to come up with a new strain — as we speak.
I didn’t watch the video, the title of the article alerted me to it’s fallaciousness, so I didn’t bother.
Unherd…. disappointing.
It is quite literally called SARS COVID 2 – i.e. severe acute respiratory syndrome. To quote a lancet paper published last month: LINK
The lancet is not a gospel authority for sure, and nor is everything it publishes correct, certainly not on a new virus. But the onus is overwhelmingly upon Prof. Sridhar to back up her somewhat absurd claim and her casual dismissal of a basic fact.
I am all for Freddie’s style of allowing people to speak for themselves, but this needs challenging
Yes, I’m very disappointed with Freddie here after having watched many of his interviews during lockdown. In this interview, Sridhar has displayed the lowest level of expertise and competence of any of Freddie’s guests (in my opinion), with many self-contradictory statements or assumptions, a poor grasp of detail, and very general, sweeping claims. Most of Freddie’s other guests have been of a far higher calibre.
Sadly, I live in Scotland, where Sridhar seems to be having quite an impact on public policy. I fear for the future.
Flu kills a lot of people and so does covid. Does it matter if one is a respiratory disease and one is a multi system disease?? A death is a death. Both are from viruses that spread throughout the populations. Makes no logical sense to have total elimination for one but not the other based on the multi system nature of one. So….if covid was a respiratory disease and killed the same amount of people, we wouldn’t care??
No it doesn’t matter from a death perspective of course – but that’s not the point.
The nature of the virus really does matter however when it comes to talking about measures to prevent spread/cure etc.
So for a supposed expert to casually dismiss one of the defining characteristics of the virus without being questioned is very concerning. Especially when she is in a policy influencing role where decisions will affect millions.
Agreed, more challenge needed. There is no proper scrutiny of this narrative, journalistic balance is needed desperately
I don’t think he needed to challenge her any more than he did.
She failed dismally to be persuasive or to distance herself from the lockdown mess we have endured.
Its sometimes worth letting someone just talk ….
I think her views are being slightly retro-fitted at the moment (as indeed somebody said up the replies…probably you(!).
She has been slipping towards the political side of things, in backing Nicola Sturgeon’s (slightly) harder lockdown strategy to differentiate from England…and in that moment a week or two back, when Scottish infections had fallen, she joined in the dog whistling with Nicola Sturgeon about how the English were *streaming* over the border bringing the infection North.
Which was heard by the usual suspects at the crackers end of the Nationalist movement, who then lined up at the Border in PPE suits and masks etc with their *English F-Off* signs and the rest.
Of course Scottish infections are breaking out again and rising quite quickly….not in the usual spots, unless the English Tourists have given up the Trossachs for Stand up drinking bars in Aberdeen and the Oban and the Isles to tour food plants in Coupar Angus…..
Yep.
And she decries “wack-a-mole” then offers no real alternative except some mass surveillance state where we are all subject to constant testing and quarantine measures.
Amazingly Shridhar lives in Scotland but professes to take little interest in British politics.
This is a scientific advisor? I’m pretty well read on this topic, she says-
“Covid is nothing like the flu,” Prof Sridhar says. “Flu is a respiratory disease, whereas Covid is a multi-system disease. You have young people a few weeks after catching Covid having heart attacks, which does not happen with the flu, along with kidney failure, blood clots and pulmonary embolisms. There is something different about this virus ” it is nothing like the flu.”
Whilst dismissing the obvious current cases up, hospitals not, deaths not, as irrelevant.
Can someone point me to any evidence of her deaths in “young people” as she describes, I would be happy to see it.
If it doesn’t exist then her statement strikes me as criminality.
From what I understand most young people are asymptomatic. The data I’ve seen is that very few young people have died or suffered serious problems from this virus. Any that have are anomalies and outliers. The virus predominantly kills older people and those with underlying comorbidities. I’ve just checked with the office of National Statistics and deaths of any numbers from this virus start to increase after the age of about 60 years. Cases in younger people are negligible. Her statements are dangerously misleading.
Absolutely John.
NHS stats yesterday say only 4 people < 40 have died with C19 in hospitals in England for 2 months.
So does this woman suffer any censure or query? God this is scary.
Worse than that she is advising NS and making this a sort of pact you have to sign up for or else you are killing our children nonsense.
Yep and writing in the guardian too.
Ah, now makes perfect sense.
There’s no compare / contrast reports yet which allow any big claims of being worse than flu or not. We do know that ‘long’ & ‘multi-system’ exist in flu victims. Probably the only clear thing we can say is the newish virus spares the young.
How about this year to date seasonal flu deaths 320,000, covid deaths 820,000. Same time scale , same conditions
My daughter is a nurse and tells me that the people who died in the home were the ones they expected in January, but they lived on to Covid-19.
This year yes, but that’s because we didn’t have a particularly bad flu season.
Average deaths from the flu UK each year – 17,000
More likely to die from flu currently than coronavirus
A number of flu seasons have been comparable, or worse. Look up 1968/69, which killed over 80,000 in the UK alone. As recenlty as 00/01 we had a comparable number of deaths from flu, and we’ve had a host of new viruses, Ebola, SARs etc since. No lockdowns or restrictions.
No proof that lockdown or restrictions work. (Look at Belgium’s death rate compared to Sweden/Japan)
Big question mark over the way deaths are being recorded. In Italy a study showed that only 12% of deaths were actually from coronavirus. If that is true, then this virus is actually less dangerous than the average flu year.
I’m not sure you’ve proved your point
Science-wise, I can see Devi has a BSc in Biology. But then so does my brother, and I wouldn’t trust him to look after the fish in my pond.
The rest of her career seems to be in “Health Politics”, whatever that is.
She joined in Nicola Sturgeon’s divisive dog whistling about the *English* streaming North spredaing infections..that led to the nutters capering on the Border on the A1 with F-Off signs.
Shealso tweeted about ‘Pro-UK, Anti-Scottish people’ (Before deleting it) when talking about critics of Nicola Sturgeon..ie Conservatives… she is typical of many of the supposedly Scottish Govt advisors (i.e. impartial) around the SNP these days, over-politicised, over-rated, and over here.
Well the Spanish flu, which was the subject of the Imperial modelling data on Coronavirus (go figure!) had a peak morbidity age of 28, so really had to cause quite a few complications in healthy immune systems. Coronavirus, peak morbidity age 80+.
Yeah, damn right it can’t be compared to a flu, I’ve been saying that since the Imperial College paper came out. SO WHY WAS IT?
Maybe she could let that idiot Ferguson know?
The lock-down was to save the NHS noting more. The NHS made it worse by shipping out elderly patients with the virus to Nursing homes.
I only refer to the video https://www.youtube.com/wat…, in dutch, about which virusses were active among them the corona; also about fear and masks. It’s quite opposite to what she is proposing. It seems that behind her argument of only tolerating zero corona level, is the fear of getting ill by corona, and being unsatisfied how the world has developped last decades. Maybe she admires the idea of GreatReset of the world. Not to ask if corona can be reduced by measurements to sea-level apart from all kind of other questions. There is little understanding of economy in arguing about financial aspects. What about the financial disaster pushed by the almost zero economical activity, and those who are suffering from it, the debts and so on.
And even if one grants the premise that Flu is respiratory and Covid this other thing… (and Flu is killing far more people right now than Covid-19) they are both spread virtually identically, so why haven’t we ever lockeddown against the virulent summer flu catastrophe..which I have never heard mentioned , ever, in my whole life?
A 36-year old who has never left University her entire adult life yet knows a total shutting down of the real economy is the right thing to do.
I applaud Unherd for giving every opinion a hearing …. i’m no scientist and even I can see she is talking complete and utter claptrap….you aint getting a zero and your ruining all of our lives maintaining this ridiculous charade…..STOP IT!!!
Appalling. Deranged. Mad.
Sums it up I’m afraid
According to cancer research UK – Lung cancer deaths 100 per day, Breast cancer deaths – 30 per day. We know smoking causes lung cancer, alcohol is a major factor in breast cancer. These deaths are every year. Year in year out. If we wanted to stop premature death we could very simply ban tobacco and alcohol. Why on earth do we tolerate these toxins?
Oh yeah! freedom of choice, liberty, acknowledging the risk and getting on with it. I hate smoking but I wouldn’t dream of making it illegal even though the health benefits are obvious.
Slightly facetious I know its more complex than this, but where did this this risk averse nonsense come from?? In construction safety we talk about safety measures being reasonably practicable. It basically means that things must be done a safe way at a reasonable cost in terms of money and time against that risk. That’s because we know some things are impossible to remove risk from. We wont eliminate this virus in 50 years let alone before our economy dives so much that we are back in the dark ages!
Drinking and smoking you say? Two things that have definitely increased in usage over the last 5 months – I wonder if the death rate from these things might increase in the short, medium or longer term? Every life matters, but not these it seems …
This idea is a total bullshit. It takes 20 years to eradicate Smallpox on earth.
Nobody want to habe Lockdowns and masks for the next 20 years even if we have a vaccine.
Than you have the problem with the vaccine. Actually the overall mortality for covid-19 is around 0.05-0.1% of the population. This mean the vaccin must kill much less than this number. To be able to achieve this with never tested methods like mRNA or Adenovirus Chimeres you need several years of testing, otherwise we can have the same problem than with the Dengue vaccine.
Overall Covid-19 kill preferentially very old people. In Sweden the mean age of the poeple who die from covid-19 is over the mean life expectancy. Young poeple under 55 years are even less in danger than with influenza.
If you put all these numbers together its obvious that covid-19 at the end will as one of the saisonal respiratory virus were we have learned ti live with.
Actually death rate is more around 0,37 %……but you re right, a vaccine will have to outweigh the risks implied …….
Injecting older people won t do the trick since their immune system doesn’t react all that well……part of the reason that when it comes to flue, it’s the young children that one should vaccinate ……..same for covid……one needs to immunize the population more likely to unknowingly transmit the virus……and by that …..younger people will be cut some slack as they are ( in France anyway ) being turned into the perfect scapegoat……all the while having a hell a life start on the job market.
Sickening !!!
You make a false assumption, you must vaccine heathly persons. A vaccine is not a treatment. It means the number you have to work with is the mortality per 1 mio persons of covid-19 in a country and not the mortality of covid-19 infected.
Lunacy. : “
“Health versus the economy” was always the right framing/ It would be the right framing if this was the return of the Black Death. The “economy”is what produces the food & services keeps us alive. No economy & you’re as surely dead as of any virus. And currently countries are straying very close the edge of where economies start to collapse & we start losing the benefits of civilisation. Be unable to afford health care & hospitals. And the wages of tossers like her.
Brilliantly phrased.
Yes, she can come and visit us here in Africa to find out what happens to people’s lives when the economy has collapsed (and continues collapsing due to corruption).
It is clear, to me at least, that this professor is advocating a totalitarian approach based on disingenuous arguments. She blithely passes over the data and fails to give realistic appraisal of risk. For her, it’s all about transmission and infection rates and the long-haulers – no regard to hospitalisation/ICU/CFR in her policy decision. Question is – what percentage of covid patients are long-haulers and how long is their haul? I haven’t seen any statistics on that one.
My second question is – how do intelligent people come to such nonsensical conclusions? How do decent people become advocates of oppression?
Because fear …..is the killer….not covid…..it even kills democracy, voters even giving a helping hand at that !!!
Just diabolical…….and when they realize….it’s too late
Exactly. Kipling put it rather well: ‘In all things recall, it is fear not death that slays.’
I think they think they are doing the right thing, but this person seems too stupid for that ever to become a reality.
I think 2 words describe why she has risen to prominence, and that’s the concept of the ‘useful idiot’. In this case the idiot is being used by Sturgeon.
The Chinese are highly intelligent people and yet, millions (billioins?) died as a result of their (still) revered Chairman Mau’s five-year plans and agricultural policies (like killing all birds because they were eating the crops) etc.
Intelligence is no match for fear
Thought this was a poor interview from her – very little scientific rigour and a lot of opinions and unsubstantiated hypothesis. She also seems to be basing her ‘zerocovid’ policy on the ‘long haulers’ but nowhere is this quantified or properly described. Are we talking 10s, 100s, 1000s, 100000s……
Another interesting interview – thank you. I like hearing the alternative arguments to the position I take although, I have to admit, I have yet to be convinced by any of them. I also watched the interview on this channel with Neil Ferguson and Natalie Dean and, had I not heard any dissenting expert opinion, think I would reject their arguments anyway purely based on the contradictions of their own narrative.
Its also very telling that the interviewee uses air quotes around mention of herd immunity – as if such a thing is nonsense (rather than, you know, the reason humanity still exists). She also gets in an early dig at Trump and admits to being extremely risk adverse – in fact, openly advocating risk aversion. It doesn’t leave much scope for consensus. I think we should just accept that this is a political question now and ‘public health’ and ‘the science’ left the room ages ago (if they were ever there).
Zero covid seems to be the off-spring of pro-lockdown (despite the protestations of the professor in this interview); in that they are different variations on the theme of ‘covid as game changer for human society’narrative. The proponents of this point of view never give the impression of having properly thought through the implications for human health of this position. They also seem to be clueless as to its sustainability.
The final comments – that of covid as a catalyst for collectivism – is, frankly, just sinister. I am constantly amazed that those who consider themselves ‘progressive’ manage to be completely insensitive towards the negative historical implications of this.
Well-written comment. Thanks!
Let’s go all round the houses to relativise anything challenging so it fits our original standpoint. No risk of learning anything there.
I try not to engage in debate on these comment sections, but your comment confuses me – you seem to take exception to the fact I haven’t been persuaded by the interviewee’s argument and then gone on to explain why that is; however I do not know why you were so persuaded and so don’t know what you think I missed?
I did actually learn a lot from the interview – just as I learnt a lot from the two others I referenced. Its just that – like a jury hearing a very poor case – what I learnt was that the arguments are confused; unconvincing and largely devoid of an evidence base.
For a much more informed perspective, check out Dr Malcolm Kendrick’s latest blog post: COVID – What have we learned?
He concludes:
“So, what have we learned? We have learned that medical science is not a pure thing ““ not in the slightest. We have also learned that the world of research has not come together to conquer COVID, it has split apart.
Those wanting to make money, have distorted and damaged research for their own ends. Those who want to vaccinate the world, forever, have seen a door open to the promised land. Those who wanted lockdown, are inflating the numbers of those killed. Democrats in the US are using COVID as a stick to beat Donald Trump. It is all a bloody horrible mess.
It is said that the first casualty of war is the truth. Never has this been more certain that with COVID. In this case, first we killed the truth, then we killed science, then we beat inconvenient facts to death with a club. It is all extraordinarily depressing.”
Yes, this exactly. Every organization that stands to make money from the virus is parading their own solution. Those institutions that were set up to serve the public interest are working double-time to profit from us.
The result of this, is that people are going to go back to trusting their gut instincts while continuing to ignore the ‘experts’.
Exactly. Critical thought, logic and common sense all went out the window months ago. I can’t believe how downright anti-scientific so many ‘experts’ have been. It’s all about (often ideological) agendas and using the current circumstances to advance them.
What worries me more than anything else is how readily people in democracies threw away their rights and freedoms. It didn’t take much to scare the hell out of people and drive them to superstitious practices (face masks are essentially a talisman if you believe the scientific studies into their effectiveness for the public). I despair.
Cast your mind back Thomas to when this all started… In Australia it was portrayed as a full-bore global catastrophe, with a never-ending stream of vision of people in scary-looking hazmat suits on the telly and in the newspapers. Reports from Italy were of a humanitarian disaster, a medical system that couldn’t cope. It was full-on, and people were terrified. I wasn’t so much terrified by the virus as I had seen these sorts of beat-ups about infectious diseases before, eg meningococcal B and flu. But I was terrified by the political implications, particularly when restrictions were implemented which inhibited freedom of movement and freedom of association, and also the patronising attitude of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, treating us like children. The people were in shock, and believing the ‘voices of authority’ which were frightening them, it’s all been very sinister. Then we had the toilet paper shortages and other staples, all designed to rattle us. And didn’t the mainstream/corporate media love it, spouting forth with a non-stop torrent of alarm. Speaking of which, have you watched the Event 201 videos? Essential viewing I think to understand the current situation, eg check out Segment 4 re communications…
Exactly – been making this case since April.
Hi Elizabeth, Thanks for the pointer to Dr Malcolm Kendrick’s site. The first message I posted to this thread was detailed and had no URLs in it. It survived for a while, according to Disqus, was later removed as “spam”. So it is impossible to discuss actual biology here.
I hope you and others interested in biology – including especially vitamin D, immunity and COVID-19 – will look at the article by Karl Pfleger “Low Vitamin D Worsens COVID-19” and my pages “Vitamin D & other nutritional supplements to protect against severe COVID-19 symptoms”. Both link to and discuss many research articles of great interest.
Thanks Robin, will have a look.
Well, I’m super happy to see that the lockdown interviews have started back up – a small thing to look forward to during these otherwise gloomy months!
I must admit, I was not able to finish watching this particular interview. First of all, as hard as I tried (and as hard as Freddie tried), I was failing to understand what exactly it is that Prof. Sridhar is advocating. Zero covid cases/maximum suppression, but at the same time not “going crazy trying to track down a single infected person.” Anti-lockdown, yet in favor of no-travel zones popping up for indeterminate periods of time. And so forth – the whiplash from watching the first half of the interview was tremendous.
Secondly, as the interview went on it came to resemble a fantasy so entirely detached from reality that it no longer warranted the time I was spending watching it and trying to make sense of it. Massive expansion of testing (door-to-door!), supremely efficient contact-tracing, comprehensive screening of all travelers into the covid-free zone(s), strictly monitored quarantining, etc. Are we really to believe that these high standards are not being attained simply because of the lack of will? I propose that we go a bit further and demand that our nation’s leaders finally pull out their magic wands and eliminate the virus once and for all.
One final comment: I would love to see more pushback against the tendency to view the negative fallout from lockdowns and suppression strategies as being “economic.” It is far more than that. We are talking about the deteriorating mental and psychological health of people, the losses of livelihoods (not just the financial losses, but those things that provide us all with focus and satisfaction in our lives), the loss of joie de vivre.
Amen to that.
‘Saving lives’ has never been so easy, particularly for those that are undoubtedly most vulnerable and can an afford to ie those who are no longer part of the workforce, no longer have significant financial liabilities and are likely on mounting pensions that they are no longer spending as they would have in ‘normal times’.
Meanwhile, jobs and businesses are lost, kids’ futures are jeopardised, mental health and domestic and child abuse rates ‘quietly’ rocket and, as reported in today’s press, a 46 year old (with the possibility of half his life ahead of him) with apparently once operable bowel cancer has now been told it’s too late for him to have his operation.
The reason?
According to reports, the risk of him contracting Covid-19 and dying was deemed just too great.
Welcome to nuthouse people. Hope you enjoy your stay.
If the good doctor hasn’t seen the T-cell data on epitopes common to endemic CoVs & SARS-COV-2, she’s not been paying attention. There’s no other force than the herd immunity threshold that can account for the shape of these events in each heavily infected country. So the proposition that 65% need to be infected was wrong. It’s much more likely in the 15-25% range.
I don’t think there’s any hint of mutations of importance beyond the single substitution seen early on.
Of the so called 2nd waves all but Spain’s is an artefact of massed testing. I’m reserving judgement on Spain as the data is a bit flaky but I’m not ready to say 2nd wave. If it’s regional, it’s the rest of the 1st wave.
Nice to see you back Michael – given your background, how come someone like you is not advising Governments I wonder? Too experienced in epidemiology and possesses common sense I suppose.
Indeed the Diamond Princess cruise ship only got 20% of people infected.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wi…
Though going against the 20% number – care homes in Madrid were tested recently and showed 61% of residents had antibodies.
It took me less than a minute to find this info about flu:
“Other possible serious complications triggered by flu can include inflammation of the heart (myocarditis), brain (encephalitis) or muscle (myositis, rhabdomyolysis) tissues, and multi-organ failure (for example, respiratory and kidney failure). Flu virus infection of the respiratory tract can trigger an extreme inflammatory response in the body and can lead to sepsis, the body’s life-threatening response to infection. Flu also can make chronic medical problems worse. For example, people with asthma may experience asthma attacks while they have flu, and people with chronic heart disease may experience a worsening of this condition triggered by flu.”
Clearly there’s a difference in some effects of Covid-19 and flu, but it’s worrying that an expert who is advising govt mentions kidney failure as though that isn’t also a possible complication of flu. Besides, none of what she said about the difference is relevant to whether we should have a zero-Covid policy.
It’s experts like her that give experts a bad name!
Good post; I would want to know if such long term complications can be definitively linked to Covid – given the number of underlying health conditions present; or if they were exacerbated by poor treatments early on in the pandemic – such as patients being put on ventilators too early.
If all this is proven, then the question remains as to what extent the occurrence of these things is statistically significant compared to the complications experienced when recovering from a bad viral infection.
As you say, proving the worst case scenario for all of this would still be a long way from a justification for the zero covid case; more for better treatments and better aftercare.
Given that we have evolved with continual waves of coronaviruses and influenzas, logically, what do you think will happen to the strength of our immune systems if we successfully manage to prevent those waves for an extended period of time?
Exactly. And what a real expert, Prof. Gupta, said from the start.
Interesting to hear one of the progressive zealots talking in real life, a mixture of scientific rigour and completely unsubstantiated ideas. The crux for her seems to be that ‘ Covid 19 is nothing like flu’, claiming that Covid causes far more ongoing systemic, multi organ problems for those that have recovered. Does she have any data to justify this claim? As for 100’s of children having cardiac arrests in the New York outbreak, where did that one come from?? For a so called scientific expert to come out with stuff like that is alarming and utterly irresponsible.
I looked at her training & could find no evidence of specialty. It’s not clear she’s any more qualified to comment any more than our average GP. Like most of them, I’m convinced she couldn’t even have read the 100 most important papers in this fast moving field.
Yes I looked at her background too. She’s served on the World Economic Forum Council on the Health Industry among other things. I’m not looking towards her for expertise in viruses and immunology.
Crikey, there’s so many of these academics lolling around universities, exerting undue influence over our lives. I suspect we would be much better off without most of them…
Bachelors in Biology – followed by a masters and PhD in Philosophy
So significantly less qualified than your average GP.
I have degrees in philosophy and psychology and have managed health care services for in excess of 20 years, mainly mental health services. She had alarm bells ringing for me and nothing to do with covid. Delusional thinking of the order I have just witnessed is concerning and that politicians are listening to her and acting on this is even more so. Oh dear, as a psychiatrist friend of mine often says.
“You have young people a few weeks after catching Covid having heart attacks” …. Er, where is the data? More project fear, more emotion, no facts. Professors aren’t what they used to be.
A government adviser, on BBC radio this morning said that this was the worst virus we had seen for 100 years and she went completely unchallenged by the interviewer.
As people will know the 1968/69 flu killed over 80,000 in the UK alone, and there are many others (old and new viruses) both in terms of virility and death rate. Why are these throw away comments allowed to stand? Where is the scrutiny? Why are we being continually lied to? I am hopping mad.
Keep up the good work!
While Dr. Sridhar is undoubtedly super smart and brilliant – after all one doesn’t become a full professor at a major research university at age 30 for nothing – this interview illustrates the old adage of age before beauty. i.e. being super smart does NOT make one wise. brilliance is all that’s required in the hard sciences, bu in Public Health, wisdom is absolutely critical, and wisdom is generally only acquired with age – i.e. a lifetime of experiences.
Unfortunately Prof. Sridhar illustrates a degree of naivete that is bordering on dangerous, if not unhelpful. Only one viral disease has been completely eliminated and that’s smallpox. In the case of SARS-CoV2 there really is nothing that one can do to prevent the ultimate spread throughout the population and the acquisition of immunity (whether T or B cell based, and whether pre-existing or not). Why? Because people are people and there will always be flaws/cracks in anything that one chooses to implement, no matter how careful one might be at the population level.
Therefore, far smarter to use the Swedish approach and keep those at risk out of harms way. Of course, time will tell and it will take 2-3 years before we know the answer for sure. But I suspect, in the end, the outcome in all the major western countries will be rather comparable, no matter what actions they governments took or didn’t take. Ultimately the area under the curve remains the same whether the curve is flattened or not.
I might also add that Prof. Sridhar would have done well to complete med school at the University of Miami rather than drop out after her Bachelors to take a PhD at the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. I say this, because it should be obvious that working in public health would benefit immensely from significant medical knowledge, not just theoretical but practical. As an example, she states that the flu is not a multi-organ disease whereas SARS-CopV2 is. But all respiratory viral diseases have the potential to cause systemic effects through an inappropriate immune response. Many auto-immune diseases can be attributed to post-viral infection sequelae. This includes hypo (Hashimoto’s) and hyper (Graves) thyroid diseases, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, Bells palsy, etc. etc. etc..
Lastly she states that one of her goals is to get rid of inequalities. Given her history, you would have thought that she would realize that there are vast ranges of abilities in the population, and not surprisingly those with exceptional abilities are likely to do very well. She is a prime example of that. Let her think for one second of how many examples she knows of individuals becoming full professors at the young age of 30!
The most useful comment I’ve found so far – providing missing information. One can intuit the meaning of sequelae, but for clarity: A sequela is a pathological condition
resulting from a disease, injury, therapy, or other trauma. Typically, a
sequela is a chronic condition that is a complication which follows a
more acute condition. It is different from, but is a consequence of, the
first condition.
She’s advising Nicola Sturgeon? Explains a few things.
It’s scary that she is the advisor to Sturgeon though! No matter how high you get wrt your education, the blinkers remain. Maybe something is wrong w the education system not teaching enough reality .
Really, she is a political mouthpiece who is handily disguised as a scientist. As another poster has researched, she only has an undergrad degree in biology, the rest of her career being in ‘health politics’
Yet more proof that this debacle is political, not scientific.
It appears elderly people with comorbidities are the ones most at risk from the coronavirus – yet our entire society and economy in Australia is being turned upside down to deal with this threat.
Why aren’t the elderly leading in demanding a proportionate response to the coronavirus?
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 15.9% of the Australian population is aged 65 years and over. In a population of 25,522,169, that equates to 4,058,025 people. 515,700 people are aged 85 years and over. (317,600 females and 198,100 males, reflecting higher life expectancy for females.)
Do these millions of people all agree with the disproportionate response to the coronavirus that is occurring in their name? (525 deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the past seven months, mostly in people over 80 years. 438 of those deaths are in the state of Victoria.)
When this first started it was about ‘flattening the curve’, that’s what we were told…now this seems to have morphed into elimination. Where to from here?
We should of course think of the front line healthcare workers who face the consequences of the coronavirus in the hospitals, but isn’t this what health systems are for? Shouldn’t we have been better prepared?
Are we now going to go into rolling lockdowns for any virus that pops up? This is not sustainable for our society and economy.
It’s time for the elderly to speak up for the benefit of their children and grandchildren, and demand an effective, proportionate and targeted response to the coronavirus.
Australia – https://twitter.com/i/statu…
New Zealand – https://twitter.com/i/statu…
(incidentally, it has been rumoured that Bill and Melinda Gates are currently holed up in NZ)
Now, this has clearly got nothing to do with Public Health.
Only problem is Elizabeth – they may well be speaking up. Alas you need a vehicle to be heard, but we have the suppression of alternative views and strategies for dealing with covid. I know a number of elderly people, indeed have continued to support them throughout, and to quote one gentleman of 94, ‘Just let us get down the club, being locked up is not living. Gonna die of something and bet it won’t be this covid thing’.
Hi Olaf, a version of my comment above was published in the hard copy of The Australian newspaper today, and online, where I received some useful responses and was able to share more info.
You say “Alas you need a vehicle to be heard, but we have the suppression of alternative views and strategies for dealing with covid.” Absolutely right, we have the suppression of views in so many areas. In Australia we have very limited mainstream media, with Murdoch newspapers/media dominating, plus The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. These are better described as corporate media as their focus is on their corporate clients rather than ‘pure’ news. And seems to me ‘the news’ is shaped to suit the corporates.
My recent experience in having comments published on articles on the Murdoch The Australian has been very unusual, and probably because things are getting very touchy in Australia now re the handling of the virus and lockdowns and border closures, plus PM Scott Morrison’s ham-fisted announcement the vaccine would be mandated.
I also fought for my comments to be published, they didn’t automatically go up, and they’re behind the paywall, so not accessible to the general public.
It does bring home that ‘the people’ have little effective representation, with politicians not wanting to be bothered with us, and fobbing off people with rubbish form letters in response to our concerns, that’s often been my experience.
How can you be heard in a two party system which generally protects the status quo, and where we end up with the same old, same old, despite who gets in?
We need an effective public forum where serious issues raised by citizens can be heard.
This is my first ever post. I am nearing 70 and my husband is a few years older. We live in a mixed household with our daughter and grandchildren. Our view is that we would not want a single child to lose a day of school, a single person to lose their job, their business or home in a vain attempt to protect us from this virus. We are perfectly able to make our own decisions. We have so many friends who are what we would have described as young old people who, up until now, have lived an active and engaged life. That has now all gone and the emotional and psychological toll of lockdown on these people has been terrible. Did anyone ask their opinion. Of course not. But who listens to us?
Very professional Freddie – no chance I could have managed that in the face of so much drivel. She is very eloquent but if anybody actually listens to what she says it is a pretty incoherent argument. She contradicted herself more than once, presented statements as “facts” with no supporting evidence on so many occasions it was astounding, avoided answering your repeated question re. using the same method for the Flu and said so many times “I believe”, or “I’ve been told” or similar.
Astounding it was, for sure.
Surely, this is just nonsense. For it to have any meaning at all, we must have an objective of Zero-Virus, which is simple not possible. We have an immune system to deal with this and we are not immortal. We all die from something eventually. It is no surprise that the Scottish nutcase is involved in this.
Looking at the latest data from this week, it seems the countries with the lowest cases per 100,000 of population are the U.K. and Sweden. Why? Most likely explained by both countries have some substantial level of herd immunity.
At the end of the day it’s only going to be herd immunity that stops this virus and those countries that lock down hard will be continually locking down and keeping their borders shut forever if they wish to try to main ZeroCovid.
It’s time for the world to acknowledge Sweden got this right. And the U.K. , particularly England with its denser population, later and less severe lockdown , has already seen the worst of the virus and is emerging on the other side.
The comment about ‘replace 14-day quarantine with testing twice at the border’ is bizarre – you can test as many times as you like but it will be negative for the first week or so. Is she suggesting people stay at the border for a week?
Super interview. I now understand where the covid response and progressive politics merge. It’s not about data one way or another, it’s ideological.
Yes – government is the next best thing to God, and for some who don’t believe in a deity, Government is the all-powerful, endlessly wealthy, Mommy-Daddy-Force which can do anything, and should – must – do all sorts of things for the Greater Good. Only Government can make things Right.
They spend all day and night trying to figure out how They can get their hands on it – since no-one else but them knows what is Good for everyone else. Without Them in control, of course everything goes Wrong.
Nicely put, maybe even the word religious can be used
You got it one!
It’s been ideological since the beginning.
I expected more from her to be honest as she is the darling of the Zerocovid side and I expected there to be referral to more evidence rather than her off-the-cuff comments about ‘100s of young people having cardiac arrests’ and the reference to Kawasaki Syndrome that seems to not have been subsequently supported by much evidence. She has not retweeted Freddie’s tweet or referred to it in her own timeline which I find strange. I get the impression that she is being caught out a bit here due to overreach – she took a policy position which is difficult to enact and when challenged, even politely, she finds it difficult to articulate. This is a trait of very clever people sometimes – belief that their own opinions do not require the evidence demanded of lesser mortals. An expert opinion is possible bettered informed than most but is still only an opinion and often we can find another expert with another differing opinion. I find the CEBM and Carl Heneghan much better informed that she is
She finds it difficult to articulate….well that’s the least of her problems
That would seem to be unlikely, considering that at the time of the interview some 28 people under 45 had died of Covid in Scotland.
What about Covid 20, 21, 22ff or any other surely upcoming zoo- or man-made virus with their likely even higher IFRs than the low, and octogenarian+ focussed, one of Covid 19?
Zero virus policies forever?
After one more try and/or case of listening to and acting upon the advise of people like her or Ferguson, we are at the GDP level of Burkina Faso and will have some pretty different challenges and health problems to address- namely tubercolosis, cholera&co.
So, give me Tegnell and Sweden’s approach for grownups instead, ASAP, and at anytime.
But then, I said that in and since March.
I stopped reading anything written by Sridhar quite some time ago. She’s a Guardian rent-a-quote to hammer the UK government.
Giesecke, in his interview with Freddie Sayers, said that the problem with lockdowns is that they were being implemented with no exit strategy, that they would create panic in the population and people would not want to come back out – and here we have Sridhar advocated harsher restrictions and then saying that people are too scared to go to the cinema anyway. Well, obviously – if you tell them that they’ll die if they don’t observe lockdown, this is bound to be the result.
I think the winter will shake a lot of this rubbish out – if the furlough is not extended and mass unemployment hits the young, they’re not going to be listening to the likes of Sridhar telling them they have to stay at home, keep their distance. Pubs and restaurants will not be able to survive with no outdoor customers and a 3rd of their normal income etc. You need goodwill and a sense of fairness and rationality to make a lockdown succeed – the likes of Sridhar seems not to understand any of that.
This is the same scientist to said in an interview in The Times that CoVid 19 was here to stay and we have to live with it. Compared to something like smallpox (which I believe kills 30% of those infected) CoVid is for most a mild disease. The lock downs and so forth have been completely disproportionate with the dangers. I can’t quite work out what this scientists political agenda is but clearly there is one. The fact that she is advising Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP is certainly a woke red flag.
Really strange. ‘Coronavirus is nothing like ‘flu’ she says. Accepted, but In that case, why did the Imperial College modelling use the Spanish flu as it’s baseline? You know, the modelling that contributed to the utter disaster we’ve made for ourselves. It seems its ok to compare this to a flu when it suits …
People like this really annoy me. If this precedent is applied now, with it being 6 times more likely to die of flu than coronavirus currently, and god knows how many more likely to die to die of anything else; then look forward to a complete authoritarian state – these proposals will, and have always been, completely unsustainable, not proven to work, and are already causing more harm than good. This person is incredibly dangerous in my opinion and should not be given any more air time with these extreme authoritarian views.
“What worries me is the health impact ” not only on the deaths but the disability for younger people.”
That an advisor to the Scottish government is so ignorant of the facts is worrying. She does not define young, so assume under 20. The ONS figures show that between March and June 10 people under 20 years old died of Coronavirus (I don’t know how many of them had comorbidities.).
Imperial College research shows that 10 to 19 year olds required hospitalisation in 0.07% of cases.
Not like Flu? Well, yes, technically. However Flu is more likely to kill young people than Covid and can have serious long term effects. Flu can increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.
And this:
“A protein in influenza virus that helps it multiply also damages lung
epithelial cells, causing fluid buildup in the lungs, according to new
research. The researchers say the recent outbreak of H1N1 influenza and
the rapid spread of this strain across the world highlight both the need
to better understand how the virus damages the lungs and the urgency to
find new treatments. Influenza is a contagious disease leading to about
36,000 human deaths and 200,000 hospitalizations every year in the
United States alone.”
Zero Covid? According to Visit Britain there 40 million visits to the UK in 2019
Great journalism. Ps., she’s a delusional fantasist.
Conflation of Covid19 disease and infection with SARSCoV2 here. Which one are we to be free of? It is impossible to achieve a zero level of virus tests because, simply, the tests have a certain but unquantified false positives rate (and false negs) (no gold standard reference test to know). We can’t even tell which are true positives and which are true negatives therefore. Even if the virus vanishes, the test will STILL throw up positives. She should know that but clearly she doesn’t.
Define Covid19 as a syndrome or bundle of definitive symptoms? We STILL can’t. Ah it’s now a multi-system heffalump disorder rather than a respiratory disease; of course it would be. So we can’t define what Covid- free is. Do asymptomatics count? Bit fluey? Bit of a sniffle? Hospitalisation? Died of cancer but had a positive test while enduring hospital care? What does success look like.
Sequence the virus that we can definitively attribute as the cause of the disease that we can’t define and can’t reliably test for but have only partial historical evidence of? We STILL can’t and it’s morphed and split so we never will, definitively. We buried the bodies un-PM’d any way.
It’s curious that Professor Sridhar describes Covid as a “multi-system disease,” when the vast majority are either asymptomatic or experience only mild symptoms with no sequelae.
Where do we draw the line?
Human beings and other inhabitants of this world were not designed to live in sterile bubbles.
Zero cases? Really? Whatever happened to the “flattening the curve” narrative? How did we move from flattening the curve to zero cases? Do we have zero cases of anything? Syphilis? Tuberculosis? The flu (even with a vaccine)?
Sorry, but I don’t trust this latest guest of Freddie Sayers’s. Reminds me of our own “top doctor” in the city where I live. The lady in question is constantly touted as an “expert”, but when you read her biography on Wikipedia, you quickly realize that she’s just a functionary with a medical degree (among many others!) who’s spent most of her career shuffling through the halls of NGOs and such – basically, a creature of institutions.
No disrespect meant, but the sooner we get rid of these “experts”, the healthier we’ll be.
Fair play to Unherd for not submitting to confirmation bias. However, did not do much to re-establish my confidence in experts…
This woman is the same one who called unionists ” un-Scottish” and said that we are all wanting the virus to get worse. Given how stupid she can be in her comments, why should her medical comments be any saner?
She’s a rampant nationalist first and a ‘doctor’ second …
This lady begins by sounding reasonable but gradually reveals her true nature: that of a control freak unable to allow the gradually weakening virus to achieve herd immunity naturally. She admits the increased infections are due to younger people catching it but is unhappy about it because “some have suffered heart attacks, etc”, but she fails to quote percentages badly affected. Very poor response and a blatantly biased view on the Covid problem. She just can’t bear the thought that the people will cope with what comes next, unmasked and behaving normally. Those in vulnerable groups are unlikely to be walking among large crowds and socializing in crowded places.
These Leftist politicians, bureaucrats, and “experts” all have one theme in common and that is to ignore and obstruct the natural concept of herd immunity. The leftist mindset is all about authoritarian control with little to no implementation of science. In fact they use science as an all encompassing buzz word but most all their recommendations and actions are contrary to science and just the opposite of what is needed.
You can never have zero covid as testing will always show some false positives.
If this woman is a scientist she is lacking some basic knowledge.
She’s not a scientist, but that doesn’t excuse her ignorance.
Why do I feel the huge urge to utter profanities ????…..probably because I read the comments policy…….
Her voice reminded me why I never married an American…..chalk on a blackboard
And I cannot believe I made it to the end of the interview……probably because in my hammock enjoying an unlimited view on the sea on an island in the Stockholm archipelago.
As much as I find this woman utterly annoying……she has a point about herd immunity……the richer you are……the less vulnerable you are..BUT…..this applies to any other illness……from gastro to cancer……
Higher education also buys you health….’good income buys you health having the choice not to eat junk food…..etc
She really has no clue whatsoever of the so called ‘collateral’ damage being done by the corona-measures. Really totally unaware, like in a hypnosis. Furthermore she offers not a shred of evidence that measures taken can eradicate the virus. So many professors have already said that the virus is here to stay. I would give her a oneway ticket to la la land. I just can not believe she’s a scientist….Let’s pray that the next interview will be with Johan Giesecke, but I fear he already has given up on humanity.
Fair play to Sayers for interviewing Sridhar, because, frankly, she’s dreadful. I read a few of her article in the Guardian at the start of the pandemic, but it was obvious she – like the Guardian itself – was far more interested in destroying the government than actually presenting any kind of balanced and informative news about the virus.
By the way, I’m all for the press sticking it to politicians, but the Guardian has lost control of its editorial policy and is guilty of propagating misinformation about this crisis – Sridhar is one of the paper’s chief sources of politicised bad science.
Great posts Roger
Absolutely agree about the Guardian.
Since Rusbridger left the descent has been continual.
Sridhar likes to cite New Zealand as a model but does not explain the reality.
It starts as a “team of 5 million” making sacrifices to beat Covid for the common good. Unfortunately as the reality of the challenge becomes obvious, politicians are forced into more and more attacks on civil liberties in order to achieve the unachievable.
In NZ’s Bill of Rights we have enshrined the freedom to leave and return to the country. To access that right, we now have to pay $3100 for quarantine charges. The government is also artificially reducing passenger arrivals in incoming flights which has the effect to causing carriers to prioritize business class passengers. The upshot is that the proportion of people able to access their travel rights continues to reduce and is linked to wealth.
As the difficulties in controlling the spread of Covid undermine the team’s mission, more and more draconian measures become necessary. Enforceable, managed quarantine is now operational for anyone returning a positive Covid test in New Zealand.
That’s right, Covid jail has just been introduced without debate in parliament or an explicit law change. Just slipped in to a daily briefing and very little media coverage.
What’s the next logical evolution?
Routine, unannounced knocks on the door for testing by health bureaucrats? Jail if you refuse? Mandatory inoculation of a rushed vaccine if one becomes available? All international flights denied except for the elite jets? Suspension of the Bill of Rights – once you leave, you cant come back?
NZ becomes one big prison at the foot of the world for years? We’ll need to recruit a new Patrick McGoohan soon (for the youngsters: Google The Prisoner TV series from the 60’s).
If you think this is sensationalist, look at Australia. It is now necessary for Australian citizens to apply for an exemption permit to leave their own country (most of which are denied). Military like curfew in Melbourne – doors shut by 8pm. Victoria’s state premier seeking a 12 month extension of emergency powers….
This is all possible because the general populace has been coerced into a state of fear that is more akin to time of general conflict. Being manipulated into giving up your rights is standard political tactic when a fearful disposition has been achieved across the population.
The likes of Sridhar would see all this as just part of what is deemed necessary to get to Zero-Covid. Her position is extreme despite the presentation and we must resist this madness.
Yes, Joe, absolutely draconian in Australia. As you say, people can’t leave freely, might not be able to get back into the country within six months with the current arrangements, hugely expensive because of fewer seats available on planes. Hearing grim stories of people stuck overseas. Have to quarantine in a hotel for two weeks at own expense, not allowed to quarantine at home. And just how dangerous is this virus anyway…? Wow, how have these arrangements been made without any consultation with the people?
And people have been deliberately misled by politicians about the risk of the virus, to try and make everyone afraid. For example Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is behind an ad blitz that was “about drumming home the message that the coronavirus does not discriminate. “This is about trying to tell a story to as many Victorians as possible that this virus does not in any way discriminate between people based on age, based on their otherwise healthy status,”
So many people are afraid of the virus they’re willing to accept the constraints, which have been built on false pretences. Even if this virus was as lethal as it’s made out to be, would that justify the incredible upheaval that is not only occurring now, but who knows what lies ahead?
What is clear from this situation is that people have little or no say in our so-called liberal democracies. At the moment there is scant accountability from ‘our elected representatives’, and certainly nothing in that regard from the unelected medical officers who are currently running the show in this country.
You will not be surprised to learn that Professor Devi Sridhar is Common Purpose, hence her illogical, irrational and sometimes just factually incorrect view on the CV-19 issue.
She is the one propping up Wee Krankie’s gently fascist approach to CV in Jocko-Jocko land
It is safe to say that whatever utterances she may make ignoring them will be the better choice.
She gives the impression of someone who doesn’t want to waste a crises! In this case the idea of “universal state income” appears to be the objective. Keep us all locked down for a year to two and make the state pay us. Deal done!
Es ist für Ihre Sicherheit, alles für Ihre Sicherheit
As New Zealand shows, a zero Covid policy means no international travel. Not even if a close relative is dying in a foreign country. Does anyone in Scotland advocate this? And if they do are they prepared to tell the public?
NZ does have international travel. There is a quarantine requirement of 14 days in a 4-star hotel. This makes visiting dying relatives difficult. Just like things were forever before air travel.
Local tourism increase has filled much of the void left by international tourists. Partial lockdown to contain current cluster is set to lift. Skifield today had distancing in the chairlift queue.
And yet there are new cases of Covid-19 that are unexplained and presumably came from people who travelled abroad. My point was not about NZ, because NZ has failed to achieve zero Covid (as has every other country). My point concerned what would be necessary to achieve zero Covid.
I think you are referring to Australia which at the moment looks more like North Korea than a democratic state.
The other commenter is partially correct about international travel from NZ but here’s the point he did not disclose:
NZ has a Bill of Rights that enshrines the ability of its citizens to freely leave and return to the country. This right is now fundamentally undermined by enforced charges for quarantine at $3K per entry. The government is also throttling passenger arrival volumes which is leading carriers to a preference for business class occupancy. This increasingly means only those with sufficient wealth can access their enshrined right to travel.
It is only the Bill of Rights that is stopping us from following Australia down the plug hole where their citizens need a permit to leave.
I agree, her ideas are ridiculously idealistic and far fetched. local lockdowns of regions would severely damage those regions, we all rely on a supply chain across the country, the continent and the world. Border testing is all well and good but spending money hand over fist on a virus which has now receded and does less harm than flu will probably do this winter is not affordable. Cite some examples of countries who have fared best? South Korea – who are experienced in these things – are in recession, Germany, Italy and France all had more workers furloughed than us in June. We have all over reacted, we know how to deal with it and we must get back to a new normal, with precautions not lockdowns. Unless she fancies paying the bill?
Tracking and tracing is not compatible with a return to normal:-
The Princess and the Pea
By Hans Christian Andersen translated by Jean Hersholt
Once there was a Prince who wanted to marry a Princess. Only a real one would do. So he traveled through all the world to find her, and everywhere things went wrong. There were Princesses aplenty, but how was he to know whether they were real Princesses? There was something not quite right about them all. So he came home again and was unhappy, because he did so want to have a real Princess.
One evening a terrible storm blew up. It lightened and thundered and rained. It was really frightful! In the midst of it all came a knocking at the town gate. The old King went to open it.
Who should be standing outside but a Princess, and what a sight she was in all that rain and wind. Water streamed from her hair down her clothes into her shoes, and ran out at the heels. Yet she claimed to be a real Princess.
“We’ll soon find that out,” the old Queen thought to herself. Without saying a word about it she went to the bedchamber, stripped back the bedclothes, and put just one pea in the bottom of the bed. Then she took twenty mattresses and piled them on the pea. Then she took twenty eiderdown feather beds and piled them on the mattresses. Up on top of all these the Princess was to spend the night.
In the morning they asked her, “Did you sleep well?”
” Oh!” said the Princess. “No. I scarcely slept at all. Heaven knows what’s in that bed. I lay on something so hard that I’m black and blue all over. It was simply terrible.”
They could see she was a real Princess and no question about it, now that she had felt one pea all the way through twenty mattresses and twenty more feather beds. Nobody but a Princess could be so delicate. So the Prince made haste to marry her, because he knew he had found a real Princess.
As for the pea, they put it in the museum. There it’s still to be seen, unless somebody has taken it.
There, that’s a true story.
I suppose that has some connection with the subject matter in had though not obvious
She didn’t answer the question on chasing down flu. She diverted. Worrying!
The aim of ZeroCovid – “any level of Covid-19, no matter how low, is considered unacceptable” is at odds with her later statement that “you don’t want to destroy a society chasing down the last person who has the virus”. Is not chasing that last carrier an acceptable choice or not?
Note that there is a law of diminishing returns in effect here. The effort required to reduce Reff from say, 3 to 2, is less than the effort required to reduce it from 2 to 1. The effort to reduce it from 0.2 to 0.1 to 0 is much much greater since the intrusion and monitoring has to be much greater.
“concerted activism and short-term pain is a more responsible route back to life as normal”
Does she define what short-term means?
Excellent post, explaining why it’s as close to impossible as makes no difference & the effort involved utterly out of proportion to the gains. Already, and on a weekly basis, flu is associated with around 5x more deaths than is covid19. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we’ll have a light flu season. The two viruses kill the same typically elderly & ill people. It might be the case that the most vulnerable cohort has been depleted.
Too early for well informed bet, but if pressed, my gut is that it’ll be lighter than average provided there isn’t an untoward interaction of flu vaccine & respiratory illnesses.
Has someone got some more information on these 100s of kids having cardiac arrests in NYC – also, I have not heard very much recently about the Kawasaki Syndrome prevalence – it all has gone quiet on that front but surely we should have seen many more examples as the age profiles of cases gets younger?
The Kawasaki patient advocacy group were irked at some people misusing awareness of this rare / orphan disease, because there wasn’t an increase in incidence.
Most doctors and researchers are unaware of this 2015 Italian research “Severe vitamin D deficiency in patients with Kawasaki disease: a potential role in the risk to develop heart vascular abnormalities?” Stefano Stagi et al. Clinical Rheumatology volume 35. The article is behind a paywall, but if you enter this DOI “10.1007 slash s10067-015-2970-6” into the website you can find by looking up Sci-Hub on Wikipedia, then you can read the PDF.
Low vitamin D causes immune system disregulation and Kawasaki Disease is immune system dysregulation. Likewise a similar condition: “Paediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome”. Both are triggered by numerous infections, and COVID-19 – not necessarily with strong symptoms – is a strong trigger.
Please see my earlier comment for more information. BTW, I am not a doctor – don’t take my word for any of this. Please read the research articles yourself – I link to dozens from my page “Vitamin D & other nutritional supplements to protect against severe COVID-19 symptoms”.
Ha,ha, yes , Kawasaki being linked to Covid-19, that really was hilarious…(not the terrible Kawasaki disease itself ofcourse). Statistical absurdity at its very best.
A really interesting piece. I’ve never subscribed to the genocide version of invasion and conquest but I’m an optimist about human nature. Some years ago Michael Wood gave a fascinating insight on the origins of ” Englishness” in which he postulated that Englishness was more about one elite -the Anglo Saxon -replacing the indigenous leadership and the majority of the population assimilating.
I think this is compelling especially when I consider my home turf of The Wirral. There, place names of Viking, Welsh and Saxon origin can be found side by side and there’s even one part of the local population which has a strong Norwegian influenced DNA . This hardly attests to wholesale slaughter and cultural eradication.
Finally, a question. I’m intrigued by the swift demise of Roman settlements and cities in England. Is that perhaps because the Roman imprint was skin deep and barely penetrated the local population, apart from the elite?
Yes, Brendan, very interesting indeed. I remember reading Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Winning of the West”. He starts with an account of how the Germanic tribes simply replaced the Celtic population in England, and this paved the way a millennium later for mainly British people replacing the Indigenous population in what became the United States. He never used the word genocide of course but the process he described sounded genocidal in both cases. I took him at his word. It’s good to know that it really didn’t happen that way in England. Of course in the US some of the practices directed against Indigenous peoples were genocidal. To be fair to Roosevelt, although there was a certain whiff of Mein Kampf about the opening pages of “The Winning of the West” he was no Hitler. He did note that some of the finest families in the American West pointed with pride to Indigenous ancestors.
An interesting article about an important subject, the origins of English and Welsh identity. One thing I would question is the use of Gildas as a reliable description of what happened with the Anglo-Saxons, he wasn’t writing a history but a religious and political polemic. There have been many books on the subject of how Roman Britain became Anglo-Saxon England, one of the best is ‘The Ruin of Roman Britain’ by James Gerrard.
An economy can only thrive with a degree of certainty and predictability. Business decisions do not get made, people do not get employed and things do not get done when certain key factors are unknown.
By taking a fundamentalist “zero case” doctrine you are going to impose perpetual uncertainty and economic damage as you will never know when a new case pops up and lockdowns will once again be imposed.
It will be impossible to globally eradicate the disease until or unless a vaccine is created – even if, and that’s a bloody massive if, every nation simultaneously adopts a covid eradication policy.
That for a starter is why this is madness, without going into all the other flaws. Not least the fact that she dismisses a comparison to flu because of the disease having affected more than just the respiratory system on young people is exposing her – since only 4 people have died in the UK under 40 in the past two months – and none without any other underlying conditions.
Lockdowns, local or otherwise, do not work. See New Zealand (!), Australia, Peru, Hawaii, etc.
Every time you cross a road in a town, every time you get in a car or an aeroplane, every time you take an alcoholic drink, every time you eat a doughnut or drink a fizzy drink full of sugar you take a calculated risk.
A car or bus could knock you down, car accidents happen every single day killing and maiming, aeroplanes crash, alcohol has serious health risks as does obesity caused by eating too many of the ‘wrong’ foods.
You can not eliminate risk, and nor should we.
This woman is dangerous with her ideas.
On the question of pubs and spearding of the virus Prof Karl Hennigan was before a speical covid committe in the Irish parliament last week and he informed them that in England there are 47000 pubs and to date there has been less than 10 outbreaks in pubs since they opened . In Ireland there are still thousands of pubs unable to exit lockdown five months after they were closed by authorities and NPHET (National public health emergency team ) set up by the government were asked to show the evidence as to why they will not allow pubs to open and you would have expected some peer reviewed studies as evidence but in response they produced clippings from the Guardian , New York Times and the Irish Times with stories on outbreaks in pubs . Currently 25000 jobs are under threat because of these pubs remaining shut . When will this madness end ?
In the film Juristic Park Jeff Goldblum character says something along the lines of “life will always find a way”. What that means is no matter what we do, Covid 19 will find a way to survive. New Zealand have just proved this. A country that effectively cut itself off from the rest of the world was unable to stop Covid 19 entering the country. A “zerocovid” strategy is impossible, we need to learn to manage this disease, it is here for keeps.
whose economies and societies are returning to normal fastest, are the ones that acted to lock down decisively and early, drove the virus down to very low levels, and are employing massive testing and track and trace programmes to keep it there.
This is an evidence free claim.
Can you ask her for the statistical evidence of “long haulers”? What is a long hauler? A person with active infection? A person who tests positive on a PCR test weeks afterwards because the body has not rid itself of the dead virus particles?
I’ve been searching for data on “long haulers” and found little. I have found a few people interviewed that have described persistent illness over months after being tested positive for SARS-COVID-2. This could be a thing, however the phenomenon of persons with weak immune systems having persistent illness over months from ANY initial illness is evident and my cynical side flags the prevalence of hypochondriacs…
Does anyone know exactly how many young people were “a few weeks after catching Covid having heart attacks”. This bit, certainly the way in which the information was used sounded a little suspect to me. Severe heart attacks, fatal heart attacks, pre existing conditions? -it’s just not a good argument unless there is some properly solid data behind it.
New Zealand tried that, and despite having a huge advantage (i.e. it arrived far later than Europe), they still haven’t got rid of it. No chance of eliminating it in Europe.
She is just another person who will influence public opinion, but face absolutely no consequences for being wrong. A dangerous combination.
She cannot be anti-lockdown. Isolating areas is lockdown. The virus will still spread until herd immunity is reached, which is potentially quite close.
She is a very stupid woman whatever “qualifications” she claims and will just add to the obsene murder committed by the likes of her.
The scam moves on.
1. Flatten the curve. Protect the NHS. Kill people
2. It’s excess deaths that’s the real measure
3. Oh excess deaths less for 7 weeks
4. It’s now cases, cases, cases
5. Yeah, but deaths not increasing with rising cases (the public will see through that)
6. Long-term Covid related health (that’ll keep them scared for years)
7. New strategy ZeroCovid
‘the public will see through that’
Are you sure? If they have swallowed the rest of the BS then I’m sure they have room for more … Do you think the British media are going to stop? Surely not, when the prize is non less than the destruction of the populist right.
The narrative may change against the backdrop of a positive US election result … the problem is, in Britain anyway, they’ll be still be the Brexit front to fight.
Covid is all too handy for their aims, especially when they back it up with an anti-racism agenda …
These are good points and the danger is seen every day in the Guardian’s coverage.
I have been a long term reader of the Guardian for many years but there has been a progressive decline into “offense” sensationalism and now the Covid headlines that get through tend to be the negative ones.
It is truly dreadful when the Daily Mail is more truth seeking than the Guardian.
Gave up on reading the Guardian regularly years ago.
Shame, it used to be such a great newspaper.
More keen to pander to a baying, wilfully ignorant, pathologically ‘woke’ audience nowadays.
Agree re Guardian. Terrible what’s happening to that paper. There are now so many commenters on the staff that I just can’t be bothered to read (Owen Jones, Monbiot, Toynbee, Nesrine Malike, Afua Hirsch, Aditya Chakraborty, Frances Ryan, Zoe Williams, Dawn Foster, among others) that it’s hardly worth visiting the site. Suzanne Moore and Kenan Malik are ok, but Moore will soon be out on her ear for not following the woke wave, and Kenan is far too independent to last for long on the staff.
Here in Australia things are grim… Currently, we’re generally not allowed to leave the country. And if we could leave, probably couldn’t get back in! And we’re not free to travel round the country either, with various borders closed and policed.
Where I live, in South Australia, things are ok, just some minor restrictions. But this could change in a heartbeat if more ‘cases’ emerge.
The state of Victoria is a disaster, the penal colony returns. Victoria is in Stage 4 lockdown as this appears to be the ‘diseased state’. Premier Dan Andrews is now a full-on dictator, and is trying to get an extension to emergency powers for another 12 months to facilitate further lockdowns. In the Stage 4 lockdown, people are under curfew from 8pm until 5am, and can only leave home for work, medical care and caregiving during those hours. During the day people can only leave their homes for necessary goods and services, exercise, healthcare and caregiving, and work if they have a permit, but most people are expected to work from home. They must wear a face covering, unless they have a lawful reason for not doing so. They can generally only travel 5kms from home. Only one person per household can leave home to get necessary goods and services, just once a day. They can leave home to exercise, but not more than 5kms from home, and with only one other person, and only once a day, for no more than one hour.
The, unelected, Chief Health Officer is now in power over the population and can detain any person or group for as long as reasonably necessary to eliminate or reduce a serious risk to public health; restrict the movement of any person within Victoria; prevent any person or group from entering Victoria; and give any other direction reasonably necessary to protect public health; close any premises; direct a person or group to enter, not to enter, to remain at, or to leave, any particular premises; without a warrant, enter any premises and search for and seize any thing; request information, including names and addresses; inspect any premises; require the cleaning or disinfection of any premises; require the destruction or disposal of anything; or direct the owner or occupier of any premises, or any other person, to take particular actions.
It’s mind-boggling what’s happening in Australia in response to this virus, a massive shock that liberty and freedom of association can be trashed in an instant…
I’m glad you’re in SA and not in Victoria. I was supposed to be visiting a friend in Melbourne in early April, but this was cancelled due to the virus. Glad I didn’t get stuck there! I saw the horror stories about people trying to get (very expensive) flights back home.
I’ve been following the developments in the news and while I was well aware that Australians are not known for being civil libertarians, I was surprised to see the high levels of support for the Victoria state government’s draconian actions. Of course, I was also surprised to see so much support for the less draconian, yet still illiberal, actions here in the UK. I’m a lecturer in politics and had noticed some recent literature claiming that people (particularly younger people) were supporting liberal democracy less and less. Now we have – unfortunately, in my view – much more evidence that people don’t really value freedom, even when it’s taken away from them. It’s very disappointing, especially when there is so much evidence that the ‘threat’ that initially frightened people has, more or less, disappeared.
Hi Thomas, yes, I’m very glad not to be living in the police state of Victoria. I’ve been making comments on articles on (Murdoch) The Australian newspaper website the past few days (behind the paywall), and other comments from Victorians reflect they are very unhappy. It’s been quite an experience getting comments published on The Australian, as people like me have been shut down for years here – I’m investigating the over-use of vaccine products and conflicts of interest in vaccination policy, so of course get labelled an ‘anti-vaxxer’. However with the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Health Minister Greg Hunt recently indicating a coronavirus vaccine might be mandatory/coercive for the population, a few more people might start getting interested in this area. This whole exercise is so much about ‘the vaccine’…
Yes, Elizabeth, I’ve noticed that The Australian and Sky News (which is quite different to the UK version) have been the only major news outlets with any questioning of the ‘received wisdom’ there. Of course, it’s bad here as well, but there are are few dissenting voices in the Daily Telegraph (particularly the columnists) and a few other places, as well as online.
I think most governments have dug themselves into a hole (in so many ways) here, with the mythical vaccine seeming to be the only way out – though I’m sure you’ve noticed how many authority figures, both ‘experts’ and those in governments around the world, have been backpedalling on this for weeks now. I understand that it takes about 5-10 years for a safe and effective vaccine to be devleoped and nothing exists for any coronavirus now. Anything developed more quickly will face a lot of resistance for obvious reasons, and coercion will lead to even bigger problems. Government ineptitude has been staggering.
Yes, the Murdoch Australian and Sky News perspective has been interesting with the likes of Alan Jones very agitated about lockdowns. But it’s complicated… That doesn’t mean they’ve been against ‘the vaccine’, the opposite I would suggest…
The Murdoch media/News Corp Australia is conflicted because it’s a corporate partner with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, which is involved in vaccine research, including coronavirus vaccine research.
Feel for you Elizabeth – so very scary and me thinking the Australians to be a pragmatic and freedom respecting people.A flash back to 1930’s and the effect and power of misinformation and pernicious ideology. Truth becomes a lie and the lie a truth. Beyond madness and ugly totalitarianism happening in a supposed democracy. What I can relate is the anger I am sensing in my peers in UK and it’s increasing daily – a good friend of mine is off to London this weekend to protest, a person who would never have dreamed of taking such an action before this. Me next? Absolutely.
This is why we must resist.
Globally we are slipping into totalitarian responses that will be exceedingly difficult to reverse since it involves the transfer of power from individuals to politicians and the state.
We have ALWAYS had respiratory viral infections. They are there constantly, lower in the summer higher in the winter. Every few years one of them flares up.
Anyone who thinks you can implement measures to get the “cases” to zero is not just wrong but very dangerously wrong becasue they clearly have no idea about viral infections. They also have no idea about human immunity. Since any measures can never work we will be in lockdown forever. Oh and I am perfectly aware that Covid19 will mutate within the next 12 months or so (probably already has) BUT the PCR test is so flaky we will be testing positive for the 4 or 5 versions of human Coronavirus forever!
Best way of “unterrifying the public” TELL THE TRUTH!! Let everyone who isn’t terrified back to the life of no mask no distancing, lift all restrictions for 3 days a week! The other 4 keep measures in place. 100% guarantee the mask free pub,shop,restaurant days will be full of happy, virus free/asymptomatic (ie normal), people. The masked days will be soulless and miserable. The terrified will become unterrified pretty quickly.
The guy is certifiable
. You have young people a few weeks after catching Covid having heart attacks, which does not happen with the flu, along with kidney failure, blood clots and pulmonary embolisms.
How prevalent is this?
She has clearly made this up and should have been pressed for the evidence
Well done indeed Mr Sayers, a brilliant expose of this blatant hysterical Shrieker.
I think we should award you the title “Witchfinder General”. This has been a gravure performance and she has well and truly hoisted herself on her own petard.
To think, that this Rhodes Scholar is an advisor to Mrs Sturgeon is truly astonishingly and all paid for by us, the English taxpayer!
I wonder is she perhaps a Brahmin, like her compatriot Gopal of Cambridge notoriety?
Yet another doctor ignoring vitamins and minerals, and the radical idea of making people strong and healthy so no-one dies no matter what viruses are going around.
To her point regarding trade-offs: here’s the trade. In the US there are 50million kids in school. Keeping schools closed will result in material lifetime harm for a portion of these kids. My guess is that about 1/3rd of the middle 30 million are the ones who will experience a much worse education.
Therefore, the trade is whatever perceived benefit is at the cost of 10 million kids having much worse lives.
Keep in mind – Sweden has been right with their response. NY and MA massively increased their deaths through dictatorial policy of placing covid infected people in long term care facilities.
For some reason my comment, including Hans Andersen’s long out of copyright tale of the Princess and the Pea was taken down. This was a self-regarding performance, full of inconsistencies and impracticalities. This is not a recipe for zero Covid but for dismantling every aspect of social and economic life: it is somebody who doesn’t understand anything making unreasonable demands.
Yeah, you can also try to make Scotland wind proof. Built massive walls on the coastline and a huge dome which covers it all. Easy peasy.
She’s the type of authoritarian the SNP will listen to… All from the comfort of her professorial position.
“studied philosophy”. Not really. It’s the convention to award advanced degrees in “Philosophy” whatever the subject. My first degree was notionally in Arts and my second in Philosophy, although actually they were both in mathematics, as an example.
Prof. Sridhar has M.Phil and D.Phil degrees from Oxford, but both were in the Global Economic Governance Programme.
I’m confused. There were dozens of different comments on this thread 12 hrs ago when I first had a listen to this interview…and all were quite critical of the absence of logic backing up Dr. Sridhar’s recommendations and of her obvious inability to correctly analyze data. Where did all the comments go?
What is it about medical training that allows this type of thinking? I don’t mean to taint all Doctors with the same brush; I know there are many opposed to this point of view. But how does it get through? Is it just that many medicos are so ‘academic’ they are removed from the real world of risk? Some seem incapable of grasping the concept of ‘risk’. It’s been a real puzzle.
Well, it might surprise you that she’s not a medical doctor …..
We need herd immunity from the mainstream media.
I am afraid her ‘clear strategy’ is non-existent. In fact it’s bats!!! Tell them to stop crossing borders, OK???
This is dangerous nonsense. So is the currently accepted “wisdom” of lockdowns until boffins arrive with a vaccine for everyone. This virus would cause very little trouble if everyone’s immune system worked better, as it would if our vitamin D levels were like those of our ancestors.
The drop in UK daily new cases coincides with the summer rise in vitamin D – with a month or two delay from the 21 December UVB peak due to 25OHD (25 hydroxy-vitamin D) storage in the blood.
Mother Nature’s crossover study is now entering a deadly new phase for the UK and other countries far north of the equator as vitamin D levels drop towards their winter nadir and daily new cases rise, inexorably, despite lockdowns and a generally small proportion of previously infected people having some immunity.
To the best of our knowledge, our ancestors’ 25OHD levels were in the 40 to 60ng/ml range (100 to 150nmol/L). 25OHD is an essential input for the autocrine (inside the cell) signalling systems of many cell types, especially those of the immune system. Only people with weak and/or dysregulated (overly aggressive, hyper-inflammatory, self-destructive) immune systems develop severe COVID-19 symptoms. There are several reasons for such weakness and dysregulation, including especially obesity (itself partly caused by and causing low vitamin D levels). Low vitamin D is the most important, easily correctable, cause of this weakness and dysregulation.
Average 25OHD levels for whites in the UK are about 16ng/ml coming out of winter and 24ng/ml in August. For BAME people they are much lower, 11/ng/ml January and 14ng/ml in August. UK government policy is that 10ng/ml (25nmol/L) is replete, which is less than 1/4 of the 46ng/ml (115nmol/L) of Maasai pastoralists and Hadzabe hunter-gatherers.
There’s little D3 in food or multivitamins. High elevation sun exposure is not available to many people, and causes skin damage and cancer risk. Average weight people need 0.125mg (5,000IU) supplemental vitamin D3 a day to attain, on average, 50ng/ml. Obese people need two or three times this. Yet the UK government recommends 0.01mg (400IU) D3 a day for adults, and states that any intake above 0.1mg (4,000IU) a day is dangerous. This advice is way out of step with research in recent decades – and it is harming and killing UK people in numerous ways, since low vitamin D drives a host of chronic and acute illnesses. I can’t put URLs in this comment, so please search for a recent review which recommends 40 to 60ng/ml 25OHD for all people: “Immunologic Effects of Vitamin D on Human Health and Disease” Nipith Charoenngam, Michael F. Holick 2020-07-15.
If all adults in the UK took 0.125 to 0.3mg (for the obese) D3 a day (it can be taken weekly or fortnightly), with equivalent amounts according to bodyweight, for babies, children and adolescents, then general health would be vastly improved. (Kawasaki disease only happens to children with very low vitamin D.) Very few people who are infected with SARS-CoV-2 would have severe symptoms. Good, healthy, 40 to 60ng/ml levels will probably somewhat reduce the chance of being infected for any given viral insult.
However, the most dramatic impact of most people being vitamin D replete would be that if they are infected, they will have very mild or no symptoms and the number of viruses they shed will be dramatically reduced.
The summer lull in COVID-19 new cases and the rise in recent weeks and months can only be explained by a generally very much lower level of shedding by those who are infected, which dramatically reduces the number of people they infect.
URLs don’t work in these comments, so for links to the latest research on vitamin D, immunity and COVID-19 please search for Karl Pfleger’s excellent article “Low Vitamin D Worsens COVID-19” and my pages, with “The case for worldwide vitamin D supplementation”.
0.125mg is a gram every 22 years. Pharma grade D3 costs USD$2,500 a kilogram. So, for 0.125mg (5,000IU) a day, the ex-factory cost is 12 US cents a year = UKP0.09. It just needs to be packaged in 26 or 52 fortnightly or weekly capsules. There is no risk in this. There would be profound health benefits even if COVID-19 was not a consideration. Doctors have generally vastly overly-cautious ideas about toxicity, which may only be a problem with 25OHD levels above 150ng/ml (375nmol/L) which are only attainable over months with extremely high intakes, far beyond what is needed to get to 40 to 60ng/ml. With these levels, there would be almost no trouble with flu transmission or serious symptoms, and it wouldn’t matter if SARS-CoV2 mutates to evade the immunity elicited by a vaccine.
Ask her why this “coronavirus” hits rich countries worse than poor countries.
Weekly Covid deaths in England and Wales down for the 17th week (w/e 14th August) in a row to 139. Hospital admissions with Covid, way down too. Hopefully the worst is now over and we can get back to normal. Also the WHO has accepted that this will now be with us forever, but that we will adapt to it and it to us.
None of this matters I’m afraid because this was about public health for only a few short weeks. Now it is political. Only when Trump and Brexit are stopped/reversed (and I am no fan of either) might we have any opportunity to return to ‘normal’
Some ideas are so mad, only scientists can believe them! There is plenty of evidence that this whole “pandemic” is non-existent, death rates are slightly below the seasonal flu. Sweden without any lockdown had a death rate of 550 people per million compared to the UK with 650 people per million. Anybody needing proof of these facts let me know, I have plenty. Concerning symptoms- it might be worthwhile to check whether the epople that are really sick live in close vicinity to 5G towers. Magda Haves, PhD, maintains that Covid-19 cases are 95% higher and deaths are 126% higher per million in areas with 5G.
As far as I can read it the correlation between 5G and Covid-19 seems to be based on purely statistical assumptions. Even a PCR-test says more about covid than that. So I think more research is needed, to say the least.
Professor Sridhar isn’t just an adviser to the Scottish Govt. From what I have seen in interviews and on social media she’s become more of a mouthpiece for the Sturgeon government’s objective of appearing ‘different’ from England. This ‘zero covid’ strategy came out of nowhere a while back without debate. Suppression is what lockdown was for. Zero Covid isn’t happening anyway. How can it? Do we want to become North Korea, closing our borders and all of us electronically tagged? Obviously a balance has to be struck doesn’t it? Also, it’s very easy to slow down the opening up of your society/economy when somebody else is expected to pick up the tab (the Treasury.) As for testing, Scotland’s own capacity (aside from the UK system which operates up here) doesn’t seem to have been expanded to sufficient levels to cope with what I think is needed to keep the infection rate down and to minimise the economic/social disruption – regular mass testing of at least all our key workers. COVID is a massive challenge for any government. There are no easy answers. Just don’t be taken in by those who say things are any better and easier up here. They’re not. We really are all in this together.
I agree. Unfortunately, I live in Scotland and it’s become clear that the Scottish government’s ‘virus agenda’ has shifted from initially being quite cooperative with that of the UK government to one that seeks to make the most of the crisis for the Scottish independence and SNP cause. The virus seems to be exacerbating pre-existing conflicts in many places as politicians and others use it for their own benefit.
It’s important that you pointed out that the ‘Zero Covid’ strategy came out of nowhere a while back without debate. I noticed this, too, and am alarmed that there was no public or parliamentary debate about this strategy – which has far-reaching implications – and little, if any, media coverage. This is yet another way to weaken the union with the rest of the UK because it could lead to the pursuit of a hard border with England, as you can see in Australia, for example. I’m not sure if this would be tolerated by the UK government, but any delays on the border would cost Scottish consumers dearly, not to mention affect sectors like (what’s left of) tourism.
I was embarrassed for her. She interjected her feelings and opinion and then talks about wanting to see the science on T-cell immunity. Has she read any randomized study on any masking? Maybe the Vietnam 2015 would be a good suggested start for her.
Freddie, you should get her and Carl Heneghan on at the same time.
Incredible!
War Is Peace
Slavery Is Freedom
Ignorance Is Strength
It never ends ……
What are you trying to say?
Lockdowns and mask wearing have minimal or no impact whatsoever on the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID19. This woman’s advice is less than worthless.
My comments are going off to ‘spam’ again on this article. It’s ironic that discussion keeps getting deleted on UnHerd…
It just proves again and again that socialist people don’t care about the wellbeing of the people. ‘Enforcing people to be free’ is a socialist theme all the time. This woman and the zero covid strategy is really insane and she should be locked up or send to North Korea.
It ‘seems’ like an obvious fallacy to think we can outrun or contain Covid, like using a spoon to keep back the Niagra falls. I’d put my money, and even my life, on the conclusion, in years to come, being that expression of the virus is inevitable. You can delay it, but you can’t stop it. You can, however, put the frail in a bubble and prolong their existence. That said, if I were near the end of my life, I’d choose to be free for the last few months/years I have than be coddled in masks and sanitizer. I’d rather go out swinging.
Wouldn’t it have saved us all a lot of time and trouble if Freddie and Devi had just got a room instead?
Total elimination is almost certainly unachievable, and even if achieved, the finite false positive rate for testing means we would never measure zero.
Very few diseases have been eliminated totally. Smallpox is the closest we have come to it, and that is only because Smallpox is strangely immutable. Coronaviruses mutate readily. Unless a vaccine can be created that triggers on an immutable feature of Covid-19, the persuit of elimination is utterly hopeless.
Without a pie-in-the-sky 100% no-mutation vaccine, we are reduced to quarantining and lockdown strategies for elimination. That is like paying a blackmailer hush-money: the blackmailer always comes back for more!
A better strategy is to manage the consequence of allowing the virus into the community. just as you would not go into your grandmother’s care home with a streaming cold of a fever, so the same applies to Covid-19. Other than that, herd resistance always was the best approach to limiting the damage to society – let it spread amongst those least at risk. That is like managing the disclosure of the embarrassing information before the blackmailer does it.
So, opening up won’t work because people are scared?
Who hyped up the scare?
Should they not take responsibility and apologise?
Should they not be trying to undo the damage they did with the hype?
Danger should NEVER be hyped. Ever heard of “Cry Wolf”? What happens if we encounter another plague as bad as the Black Death that halved the population of Eurasia? A plague that bad might well justify some really extreme measures. Memory of the criminally irresponsible hype over Covid-19 will inhibit our response when we really need it.
Interesting, sad and very well written. Very strange that a nationalist and separatist government in Scotland has not taken a greater interest in such an historically town.
The effort to build fear beyond reason seems to be supported by a Gallup poll:
One quote: “The discrepancy with the actual mortality data is staggering: for people aged 18″“24, the share of those worried about serious health consequences is 400 times higher than the share of total COVID deaths”
https://wirepoints.org/igno…
She’s not a scientist, she’s a theorist, and one with a political agenda. We’ll never achieve zero Covid until there is a test with a zero false positive rate. Which means never.
In Australia, 572 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 over the past seven months. These deaths are mainly in people over 80 years. Australia’s population is 25.5 million.
485 of these deaths are in Victoria, which is in Stage 4 lockdown. Victoria’s population is 6.59 million.
Every day the deaths and ‘cases’ are gravely intoned..
For example, today’s figures:
“The state has recorded 113 new cases of coronavirus and 23 deaths overnight, 22 of which are linked to aged care settings.
The deaths include a man in his 60s, one woman and four men in their 70s, six women and three men in their 80s and five women and three men in their 90s.”
No information on comorbidities is provided.
See: Victoria coronavirus cases rise by 113 as state records 23 further COVID-19 deaths, ABC News
Yep, you can see this biased misinformation in main stream “liberal” media everywhere.
Just look to the Guardian for slanted coverage.
An interesting part of Sridhar’s defense of her position is that we should not only be concerned with deaths or hospitalizations because of an increasing prevalence of “long haul” outcomes. She offers no reliable evidence on this just anecdotal belief.
This is a description of a case cited in The Atlantic:
“She still has extreme fatigue, bulging veins, excessive bruising, an erratic heartbeat, short-term memory loss, gynecological problems, sensitivity to light and sounds, and brain fog”. Plus gastrointestinal problems and nausea. Also note that in the case cited, her doctor refused to have her tested for Covid initially because she didn’t have any Covid symptoms; this suggests she was seeking a Covid test when she was asymptomatic.
Because this patient subsequently tested positive for Covid, she is now a Covid long-hauler. The time between her initial doctor’s visit and her subsequent Covid positive test is not disclosed.
From a recent related paper in Neurology:
“Although there are no peer reviewed papers at the moment on these patients, many news articles have been written about this phenomenon and there are Facebook groups with several thousand patients describing these symptoms. Many of these patients are health care workers who had massive exposure to the virus early in the pandemic and describe having symptoms for “100+ days””
And:
“Some patients have had extensive testing by internists, infectious disease specialists, cardiologists and pulmonary medicine experts but nothing has been found to explain
the symptoms. These patients, some of whom are physicians themselves are concerned that they could be stigmatized as being “functional”. Many of these symptoms overlap with those of patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).“
My hypothesis:
I think there is decent chance that these long-haulers are experiencing trauma related, psychosomatic outcomes and/or ME related conditions.
The hysteria caused by the likes of Sridhar has generated an increased level of fear in those already predisposed to anxiety like conditions. On top of that we have a rising level of chronic conditions across the West that conventional medicine has great difficulty treating. Along comes Covid and it becomes a straw to grab since there’s a test that can “confirm” Covid is the cause of the problem. Every problematic group of symptoms then becomes attributable to Covid if the patient shows some evidence of Covid.
For those on the health front line for an extended period, it would be surprising if a proportion did not succumb to some form of trauma impact.
Its truly ironic that this risk averse, pretend scientist along with her ilk are likely contributors to the long-hauler problem that she insists is the main reason we should adopt Zero-Covid.
I disagree with many about a more assertive approach needed in this interview but it might have been good to ask for her scientific or medical credentials at the beginning. I (like many others I guess) assumed she was a medical doctor or someone with credible research experience.
Interesting that COVID-19 is the handy scapegoat..
Would be interesting to know if any of these cases were associated with vaccination?
I agree that’s the case for many people.
Here’s something else from that article in The Atlantic:
“Putrino told me that in his survey of 1,400 long-haulers, two-thirds of those who have had antibody tests got negative results, even though their symptoms were consistent with COVID-19.” (David Putrino is a neuroscientist and a rehabilitation specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital.)
Symptoms “consistent with COVID-19” – particularly a mild case – can cover, however, a host of symptoms that are consistent with a mild respiratory illness or allergies.
I can believe that some people are in fact still suffering physical after-effects of COVID several months after infection, particularly those who spent time hospitalized. Any illness that’s severe enough to put a person in the hospital for several days – or more – is severe enough that it may take time to feel back to 100%.
I agree with Joe, however, that the COVID “long-haulers” almost certainly include quite a few people who are suffering physical effects from anxiety and depression. The disruptive impact of the shutdowns and COVID hysteria has no doubt exacerbated or caused those problems in many people. Many of these symptoms – fatigue, brain fog, short-term memory loss – are highly suggestible, so I also think that news articles and Facebook groups have led people to latch onto this syndrome and literally “worry themselves sick”.
The most compelling thing for me is that there are no peer reviewed papers available (ie no reliable evidence of Covid driven long-haulers) yet Sridhar is willing to advise that we act as if there is such evidence.
She is doubling down with anecdotal justifications as the hard deaths and hospitalizations data undermine her position.
There is also the question of whether there is a quasi-religious aspect to the reporting of Covid cases. Perhaps the need to be part of a profound group experience leads people to feel or report things that makes them feel part of something bigger – a modern equivilant of the reporting of stigmata.
So much of the response to Covid, including the Black Lives Matter movement, seems to be a reaching out for some new kind of spiritual or religious meaning
The best analogy I think is a wartime one. This engenders a massive feeling of tribal belonging and group think whilst surrounded by perceived threat. Strangely enough it also generates meaning in people’s lives that entrenches the position further.
” as a result of the collapse of the neoliberal economic model”
Eh? When? I hadn’t noticed things had substantially changed since the last claim that this was the case! “Invented by Thatcher”? Please tell me you’re trying to be funny; that you’re not simply ill-informed.
This is not the only wishful thinking in the article. Detroit will not come to Britain for the simple reason that we do not have any cities totally reliant on a single industry. Taxi drivers are not queuing up to become farm labourers; many of them are escaping such work. It is a myth that 50 years ago the land was covered by “small mixed farms with light ecological footprints’.
It is also not the only false, or at least dubious, assumption. Imports of farm produce from USA are no more likely to be “substandard” than from anywhere else, including some organic farms I could name in this country. AI is not threatening to “wipe out” skilled labour; yes, skills may have to change, but this is little different to the reality that current skilled trades replaced their cottage-industry forerunners, which had in turn replaced the daily grind of total self-sufficiency.
Get a grip on reality!
I am frustrated that she still throws out the 60-90% herd immunity threshold. This assumes that the entire population is equally susceptible to the disease which we know for a fact is not true with covid. The HIT for covid could lie between 7-24% of the population as discussed in this neat article:
https://judithcurry.com/202…
This in of itself changes the game quite a bit when it comes to an absolute suppression strategy. It is not necessary, and the costs of it vastly outweigh the benefits.
People who used to be pert, but are no longer, experts? A more appropriate definition perhaps.
If anybody is annoyed by this interview, there is a ‘Unite for Freedom’ demo going on at 12 noon, Trafalgar Sq, this Saturday 29th. I’m going, and we need the numbers so that it is less likely this demo can be falsely painted by the MSM.
https://www.facebook.com/ev…
Good to hear a different perspective whether you agree with it on not. She made some valid points and only time will tell who had the least damaging approach to Covid. I hear people lament that nobody listens to experts any more but the truth is which expert do you want to listen to. Most people commenting here prefer Sweden approach and therefore rubbish this expert. I prefer to believe Sweden but don’t discount a different approach may be better. The main issue for Uk is that we have been shown up to be pretty incompetent and that is worrying.
It is not a new perspective, it is the same old failed, disastrous, perspective with a few curlicues. If people are fed up with all the contrary and inconsistent signals they have good reason.
I think I’d prefer to listen to a proper expert and epidemiologist for a start, not a political mouthpiece for Nicola Sturgeon. Someone of the eminence of Carl Henneghan perhaps?
I’d also like decision making and opinions to be made by a multi-faceted expert team with representation from a broad range of interests in society so we can fully evaluate the risks of the proposed policies. Otherwise, I will regard the views of this individual with a healthy dose of cynicism
Yet another Covid Nazi, who cannot think beyond her Bill Gates funded agenda. We cause severe mental anguish and suicide to millions of citizens, we trash a whole economy, we put millions of people on the dole, we commit genocide in our nursing homes, we lock down perfectly healthy people on flimsy, unscientific evidence, we refuse to administer prescriptive treatments to those who do get sick, and yet this clown wants to keep the world incarcerated until there is “zero” covid…..Really? So?…Shall we keep everyone locked up until there is zero Flu deaths? Zero car crash deaths? Zero Heart disease deaths? Zero everything. I know….let’s keep the whole world locked up until nobody dies….I mean like….forever. Lets keep everyone in covid prison until nobody dies anymore..
“I wouldn’t want to be the one to inform the inhabitants of a town that they couldn’t leave because it had become Covid-free!” Well said, Freddie. Not very practical advice. I’m surprised she is working in Scotland, and isn’t Joe Biden’s public health advisor.
I thought the invoice for the materials of execution included “ain barra to carry ain cripple witch” – vividly illustrating the dreadful circumstances of theses events.
In principle I agree with the idea that we should listen to all sides
and all the different opinions, but it is hard to keep listening to Prof
Sridhar and not wanting to refute almost any lines of thought she is
working out as unrealistic, I admit stopping halfway through the
interview.
What is maybe more worrisome is that she appears to be
working in the background advising decision makers, i.e. politicians,
who will then try to give a certain spin to the tale, so whatever is
imposed might become acceptable to the population.
This risk
probably varies quite a bit from country to country, I’m afraid to me it
seems quite a bit higher here in Spain, where I’m living, than let’s
say Germany, where I see a lot more activity against government decrees
in the present situation.
In the end what I’m driving at is that
so far all measures in this pandemic have been taken by decree, with
governments falling back onto one or the other kind of clause of ‘state
of emergency’, depending on the country, which allows the government to
impose on the population whatever decision-taking politicians deem
necessary.
An acceptable approach in the initial phase of a
pandemic, who knows if we might not have been faced with a new version
of the ‘Spanish Flu’ the world has seen at the beginning of the past
century.
But in the meantime we do know that this is not the case.
That
people continue to be scared is not surprising considering the approach
spokespeople at government level and in the associated main media in
all countries are taking to keep the fear alive.
This does, however, not justify a continued handling by decree!
Assuming
we live in democratic countries, the population has a right to become
part of the decision-taking process, as is the case for any other
important matter handled by our governments.
Should the
population after a proper debate and a vote still accept all impositions
that we are treated with by those who think it feasible to keep a virus
under control and consider the costs related to it acceptable, then I
throw in the towel.
Until then I balk at being treated by our
leaders like we were children without capacity to see and think for
ourselves, even if it is sold as being ‘in the best intention for the
population’.
Please, wake up!
Forever eliminating Covid-19?
That’s completely bats…. or bats completely….and possibly pangolins too!!
This lady sounds like she’s advising the Scottish government….
…oh, hang on.
An interesting part of Sridhar’s defense of her position is that we should not only be concerned with deaths or hospitalizations because of an increasing prevalence of “long haul” outcomes. She offers no reliable evidence on this just anecdotal belief.
This is a description of a case cited in The Atlantic:
“She still has extreme fatigue, bulging veins, excessive bruising, an erratic heartbeat, short-term memory loss, gynecological problems, sensitivity to light and sounds, and brain fog”. Plus gastrointestinal problems and nausea. Also note that in the case cited, her doctor refused to have her tested for Covid initially because she didn’t have any Covid symptoms.; this suggests she was seeking a Covid test when she was asymptomatic.
Because this patient subsequently tested positive for Covid, she is now a Covid long-hauler. The time between her initial doctor’s visit and her subsequent Covid positive test is not disclosed.
From a recent related paper in Neurology:
“Although there are no peer reviewed papers at the moment on these patients, many news articles have been written about this phenomenon and there are Facebook groups with several thousand patients describing these symptoms. Many of these patients are health care workers who had massive exposure to the virus early in the pandemic and describe having symptoms for “100+ days””
And:
“Some patients have had extensive testing by internists, infectious disease specialists, cardiologists and pulmonary medicine experts but nothing has been found to explain
the symptoms. These patients, some of whom are physicians themselves are concerned that they could be stigmatized as being “functional”. Many of these symptoms overlap with those of patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).
My hypothesis:
I think there is decent chance that these long-haulers are experiencing trauma related, psychosomatic outcomes and/or ME related conditions.
The hysteria caused by the likes of Sridhar has generated an increased level of fear in those already predisposed to anxiety like conditions. On top of that we have a rising level of chronic conditions across the West that conventional medicine has great difficulty treating. Along comes Covid and it becomes a straw to grab since there’s a test that can “confirm” Covid is the cause of the problem. Every problematic group of symptoms then becomes attributable to Covid if the patient shows some evidence of Covid.
For those on the health front line for an extended period, it would be surprising if a proportion did not succumb to some form of trauma impact.
Its truly ironic that this risk averse, pretend scientist along with her ilk are likely contributors to the long-hauler problem that she insists is the main reason we should adopt Zero-Covid.
I disagree with many about a more assertive approach needed in this interview but it might have been good to ask for her scientific or medical credentials at the beginning. I (like many others I guess) assumed she was a medical doctor or someone with credible research experience.
We are learning as time goes by more and more about this virus. And there is good news on the horizon with a highly effective saliva test that has been developed in the US with rapid results. We should also be looking at the proper “gold” standard of treatment for this disease…. Ivermectin + Zinc + Doxycycline. People who took this cosh all survived and left hospital after 7.62 days against Hydroxychloroquine 13 days +. This should give people some confidence which is woefully lacking at the moment.Stay alert but live your life without fear.
Great interview Freddy. The “disability ” topic was very light on facts. Great last question highlighting who may call the shots in government, depending which way they lean.
Excellent interview. The last question was the best in my view.
It may be useful to consider a situation that arose in England a few years ago in relation to vulnerable children in care, which could be seen as a microcosm of the current lockdown situation. A combination of vested interests, politicised academics and ill-defined harms led to kind of mini-totalitarian state.
The most effective way to resolve the issue seemed to be through empowering those directly affected, building effective alliances, not getting drawn into blind alleys and, above all, creating the most elegant, straightforward and profound narrative.
This case study can be seen at: https://invisibleengland2.w…
Excellent interview. The last question was the best in my view.
It may be useful to consider a situation that arose in England a few years ago in relation to vulnerable children in care, which could be seen as a microcosm of the current lockdown situation. A combination of vested interests, politicised academics and ill-defined harms led to kind of mini-totalitarian state.
The most effective way to resolve the issue seemed to be through empowering those directly affected, building effective alliances, not getting drawn into blind alleys and, above all, creating the most elegant, straightforward and profound narrative.
This case study can be seen at: https://invisibleengland2.w…
Excellent interview. The last question was the best in my view.
It may be useful to consider a situation that arose in England a few years ago in relation to vulnerable children in care, which could be seen as a microcosm of the current lockdown situation. A combination of vested interests, politicised academics and ill-defined harms led to kind of mini-totalitarian state.
The most effective way to resolve the issue seemed to be through empowering those directly affected, building effective alliances, not getting drawn into blind alleys and, above all, creating the most elegant, straightforward and profound narrative.
This case study can be seen at the invisibleengland2 blog
Depriving Covid-19 of routes of infection by keeping social distancing, washing hands, catching droplets in face masks etc. will not eradicate the virus. It will merely redirect its spread by other means and along other routes. It seems to me society needs to think in terms of eradicate it where it is or where we think it might be as we learn more and more about its habits.
It seems to be generally accepted within the scientific community that this will not be the last time mankind will be attacked by an hitherto unknown virus. I think therefore we need to arm our living space with devices that can eradicate all harmful viruses at least locally and temporarily. I think all public spaces such as cinemas, theatres, concert halls, sports stadia, waiting rooms at bus and train stations, sea- and airports etc. as a matter of legal requirement should be kitted out with devices – probably driven electrically – which could subject the space to uv radiation, extreme heating and/or extreme dryness. Not being a virologist myself I understand that these beings cannot live for long in such environments.
I think that the requirement should be written into building regulations such that the installation needs to be approved by an appropriate authority before the facility can be used and it should be subjected to periodic testing for efficiency in eradicate viruses and safety to the public. I envisage that the installation should be activated for a period in say a concert hall before the audience arrive and after it has left.
First and foremost it seems to me that the introduction of such requirements would make the draconian interference with people’s public and private lives superfluous and unnecessary. It should also make the use chemicals for disinfection unnecessary.
What does the reader think?
I read a great comment on this thread a few hours ago, which gave thoughtful analysis….and it’s disappeared! What’s going on at UnHerd, why do comments keep disappearing on these threads? I’ve seen others complaining about this too.
A virus obviously!
It’s creepy Olaf, a response I made to you recently disappeared too. How many others are going missing and why?
Seriously a question UnHerd does need to answer – is there an issue with the website and the way comments are managed, is it moderation, software issue, or something more sinister? Can speculate endlessly, so a response from UnHerd would be helpful. Over to you Freddie.
Yes, over to you Freddie. I’ve already written to you about the lack of transparency for the UnHerd website. And then there’s potential conflicts of interest, which are very pertinent in current times… I’d like an answer to my detailed email dated 11 August 2020.
My first message to this thread had no URLs and was longer than average. It survived for a day or less and then was gone. My disqus history, notifications or whatever noted that it had been classed as spam.
In case there is any doubt about governments using this to limit free speech, there’s a story today in Australian Broadcasting Corporation news, titled: “Police to crack down on ‘tinfoil hat-wearing brigade’. From the story:
Police have arrested a 76-year-old Windsor man for allegedly planning a protest against coronavirus restrictions in Melbourne’s CBD next weekend.
He was charged with inciting people to breach the Chief Health Officer’s directives and could face a $20,000 fine.
* “Covid is nothing like the flu,” Prof Sridhar says. “Flu is a respiratory disease, whereas Covid is a multi-system disease. You have young people a few weeks after catching Covid having heart attacks, which does not happen with the flu, along with kidney failure, blood clots and pulmonary embolisms.” *
I will certainly agree that COVID is on the whole more fatal than seasonal influenza, but much of this claim seems simply incorrect.
From the U.S. CDC: “Studies have shown that flu illness is associated with an increase of heart attacks and stroke. A 2018 study found that the risk of heart attack was 6 times higher within a week of confirmed flu infection. These findings were most pronounced for older adults and those experiencing their first heart attack.” https://www.cdc.gov/flu/hig…
Granted, there isn’t anything there specifically about heart attacks in “young people”. Looking at overall deaths by heart disease in the U.S., I note that the risk never drops to zero for any group, however. It is admittedly very low in children 5 to 14 years old (~0.5 per 100,000 population annually). https://www.statista.com/st…
Looking at stroke, risk increases quite a bit with age, doubling for each decade after 55. That said, strokes do occasionally occur in children: approximately 1 to 2.5 per 100,000 population per year. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.go…
Professor Sridhar is notably light on statistics about *how often* any of these impacts occur, which is somewhat understandable for an interview. The problem, however, is that she seems to be hyping very rare occurrences which have received media coverage precisely because (1) they’re unusual and (2) they allow the media to hype a false claim that “COVID is very dangerous for young people”.
A pre-print meta-analysis that was released earlier this week estimates that the infection fatality rate (IFR) from COVID-19 among people ages 0-34 is 0.01%. This meta-analysis reviews serology studies from 26 locations. For perspective, that risk – and remember that it’s the risk of death *if infected* with COVID – is similar to that age group’s annual risk (in the U.S.) of dying in a traffic accident. https://www.medrxiv.org/con…
The study doesn’t break down IFR within that age group, but the risk for children is much lower than that already low risk: in the U.S., ~80% of COVID deaths among people in that 0-34 age bracket have been among people ages 25-34. My estimate using that study’s IFR for ages 0-34 and proportions of death and population among subsidiary age groups is that the fatality risk of COVID is an order of magnitude lower – 0.001% – for children ages 5-14.
There are 41 million children in that age group in the U.S. (Plus, of course, many more in other countries.) A reasonable estimate is that perhaps 10% of the U.S. population has been infected with the coronavirus. With the likelihood of 4 million infections in that age group in the U.S. – plus many more in Western European countries where journalists and medical researchers are also on the lookout for examples of unusual conditions in children – it’s hardly a surprise that we see some outlier examples of heart disease or strokes in young people. I don’t see any reason that a handful of such examples should change our overall view that the risk of COVID to young people is relatively low. Specifically, the risk to younger people is in line with – or lower than – other risks that they routinely take with modest precautions, such as the risk of traffic accidents or other accidental deaths and injuries (e.g., drowning).
Interesting article.
While this is very interesting, for me it’s not eye-opening. It’s more of an addition of detail to what I (as a mainstream Briton) have always assumed
WE ARE ALL MUTTS!
https://newsvideo.su/video/…
As a Scot that has ignored Dunfermline l almost want to visit, the history the author uncovers is fascinating. I like the reference to cans and crisp packets for that is the reason l often fail to explore to avoid being confronted by a national shame that so few seem to care.
I am sick to death of hearing from tunnel visioned, zero common sense ‘scientists’ period. We have John Edmunds on Sunday insisting that children should be vaccinated; Graham Medley today suggesting masks will need to be worn for five years; and Sridhar popping up every day on media channels sprouting total nonsense on ‘zero-covid’ and similar aspects of lockdowns. These people, and many more in SAGE and Alternative SAGE, are a disgrace to science.
Think I have heard enough from academics. Risk elimination is not only impossible, but wrong as we should be looking to manage the risk. This is typical hysteria and lacks rigorous and neutral scientific process. The issue of covid-19 from a mathematical perspective is not the modelling (though poor) but the crass interpretation of the results. Lies, damned lies and statistics laced with a marxist (they all are nowadays) overtone to make the government look stupid.
Here is a five minute podcast called “Tails of the Unexpected” that explains how this is nonsense. https://anchor.fm/riskpearl…
Due to a technical fault as small cache of comments on this article seem to have got posted on a separate page and I am reposting my original comment on this one.
Tracking and tracing is not compatible with a return to normal:-
The Princess and the Pea
By Hans Christian Andersen translated by Jean Hersholt
Once there was a Prince who wanted to marry a Princess. Only a real one would do. So he traveled through all the world to find her, and everywhere things went wrong. There were Princesses aplenty, but how was he to know whether they were real Princesses? There was something not quite right about them all. So he came home again and was unhappy, because he did so want to have a real Princess.
One evening a terrible storm blew up. It lightened and thundered and rained. It was really frightful! In the midst of it all came a knocking at the town gate. The old King went to open it.
Who should be standing outside but a Princess, and what a sight she was in all that rain and wind. Water streamed from her hair down her clothes into her shoes, and ran out at the heels. Yet she claimed to be a real Princess.
“We’ll soon find that out,” the old Queen thought to herself. Without saying a word about it she went to the bedchamber, stripped back the bedclothes, and put just one pea in the bottom of the bed. Then she took twenty mattresses and piled them on the pea. Then she took twenty eiderdown feather beds and piled them on the mattresses. Up on top of all these the Princess was to spend the night.
In the morning they asked her, “Did you sleep well?”
” Oh!” said the Princess. “No. I scarcely slept at all. Heaven knows what’s in that bed. I lay on something so hard that I’m black and blue all over. It was simply terrible.”
They could see she was a real Princess and no question about it, now that she had felt one pea all the way through twenty mattresses and twenty more feather beds. Nobody but a Princess could be so delicate. So the Prince made haste to marry her, because he knew he had found a real Princess.
As for the pea, they put it in the museum. There it’s still to be seen, unless somebody has taken it.
There, that’s a true story.
Don’t get it. You’re not saying the virus is a pea, are you?? If so, we owe a lot to the Princess!
Yes, at the present stage it is in relation to all our other problems a pea – a complete distortion of policy – look at the CEBM data. You can create cases as an artefact of testing (particularly if the testing is not reliable), but hospitalisations and deaths are going through the floor. We are obsessed with the pea. Everything else has to go to hell. It doesn’t help if we have health officials who are so self-referential and screaming blue-murder when frankly it is all over.
Despite the sympathetic lead in, not a very good exposition of either Zero CoVid or Sridhar’s thinking as it’s developed. Rather invites the easy superficial responsessome comments here show.
The editorial objective when engaging with serious questions involving science should help people extend their understanding rather than reinforce their preconceptions. Unfortunately this is some way from Unherd’s usual business….
.