First, thanks for a very good and informative and well conducted and civilised interview in which nobody interrupted one another, so that people could calmly think rather than merely emote, including viewers of the video.

My conclusion having watched and listened to the interview very carefully is there’s actually a very powerful reason to end the lockdown almost immediately, both fully and permanently (to the extent individuals want to, people should still be left to self-isolate, wear masks etc, if they wish to), which is probably the only point of disagreement I have with Professor Giesecke, who admittedly has to “cover himself” as a public figure.

And that reason is the current NHS state of preparedness (given they get more protective equipment that is).

That is to say, right now, the NHS has oriented itself almost entirely to dealing with COVID-19, and these measures cannot be sustained.

Millions are waiting for tests and operations and care for countless other ailments and diseases, and for example, when the death toll from those who are not now being tested and treated for various other diseases, which if not detected or treated soon enough we are almost 100% sure are going to kill them, it will likely far exceed even the total deaths from covid-19 whenever that is finally counted.

So if we are going to see a further spike in patients needing ICU treatment due to covid-19 infection, the sooner the better.

And while the population has for the moment bought the mantra “we must protect lives, forget the economy” as soon as they wake up to a world in a few weeks time in which millions (who don’t yet know it) may not have jobs to go back to, unless it can be proven somehow that these measures really did save huge numbers of lives, which I doubt it ever can be, and the Swedish “experiment” suggests to not be the case, the wisdom of these measures that have been taken are going to be regarded by the public as very seriously in doubt.

And then the same public which has (allegedly, I’m not wholly convinced) been baying for lockdowns, will then be “baying for blood” if they see their lives resemble some post-apocalypse scene, economically speaking.

Yes, it would be nice to live in a totally safe sanitised world in which none of us ever caught infectious diseases, and by the way, it is not at all a new phenomenon that humans (especially in families) blame one another for giving them an infectious disease.

But beyond measures like hand washing and avoiding touching your face (thereby allowing the virus to enter your nose or mouth) if you haven’t washed your hands first after possible contact, nobody is in the long term going to be willing to adopt these restrictive measures.

Or are we willing to all wear face masks permanently?

Is that a reasonable expectation for everyone to wear face masks for the rest of their lives in any public place?

Because no doubt that would reduce the spread of infections.

But even then would it actually stop us getting anything in the long term or only delay it?

Is it actually ever realistic we can stop the spread of any one of these numerous infections very long?

Because for example, as it is clear that breathing in close proximity and touching another person is more or less a guaranteed way to spread an infection, that would mean that not only should there be a total ban on handshaking, but also upon hugging, kissing and above all sexual activity between unmarried persons, or those not committed to a long term relationship.

I am not in the least joking, because those really are the lengths we would have to go to in order to stop the spread of a virus successfully.

So in fact, the people who are the most likely to spread infections of any kind are those who are even hugging or kissing people they are not in a steady relationship with, let alone having sex with them.

The evidence of that for example is that (according to the WHO) currently about 37 million are HIV positive, and up to a million a year are still dying of HIV induced AIDS, and no vaccine has been developed since HIV first appeared around 1981, so that’s nearly 40 years of science failing to achieve that.

So unless we never reopen bars, club or even secondary school, colleges, universities, and even workplaces – all of which places hugging and kissing goes on, often followed by sex acts somewhere – there is no chance whatsoever of stopping any virus of this kind.

And it is made far worse by the fact most people will not even know they have it.

And even if they test negative for this particular virus, what about one that appears next year, or for all we know there is even one or several other viruses currently going round (as would be normal annually) that are not on the government or medical radar because they’ve been obsessively focusing on covid-19 to the exclusion of everything else.

In people’s already extremely complicated and difficult lives, this has now thrown up a multitude of new problems they didn’t have before, to which there seem to be no obvious solution.

But there is one – it’s very simple – we just get on with life as we did before.

And those who are scared of the virus can if they please carry on social distancing and wearing face masks and Hazmat suits and hiding in their homes in fear, etc, etc. (bear in mind a lot of people, the “hypochondriacs” were already approximately doing this long before covid-19) but don’t expect everybody else to.

So of course in practice, the government cannot do exactly what I suggest, as it can’t admit it has made a catastrophic error, by basically giving in to a panic knee-jerk response reaction that spread like a disease of a different sort from one government to the next, so we’ve just had government by hysteria and not reason.

In fact, Professor Giesecke points out that the Imperial College study that justified the panic and measures in this country, was little better sourced than the “dodgier dossier” alleging we were all “45 minutes away from death from Saddam’s WMDs” which Tony Blair used to justify the Iraq war.

But note how this time there was not even a debate or vote in parliament, which in fact makes it much worse in terms of government unaccountability.

So the real truth is the government and the media could have reported and responded to the average seasonal flu on any previous occasion in exactly the same way as they have reported and responded to this, and caused exactly the same panic.

And if we don’t face up to that and get a grip, they may next year be trying to do the same again.

But I doubt that, when people see the economic havoc likely caused by this, as well as quite possibly a lot of social unrest that will result if that damage turns out to be as had as some experts fear.

i.e. when compared, the thing that most people fear (unless they are in the seriously at risk group, i.e. over 70s, 80s ,or with impaired immune systems) is loss of financial security and crime and not a respiratory infection virus.

And one of the unintended consequences of this is likely to be a surge in crime.

Because while the “I’m alright jack” people who currently think and are right in thinking they still have a job to go back to may not be too greatly affected (though may see salary cuts and tax rises), the millions who may have lost jobs and businesses are going to see no other way but some kind of crime to try to maintain their former lifestyle.

And we may also be seeing the numbers of beggars on the streets swelling from hundreds to thousands in any large area like a city centre, and they may well be more aggressive than before in their desperation.

I don’t really blame Boris Johnson in the sense I doubt any other of our current politicians would have done any better.

But in reality, he didn’t lead the mob as a true leader should, a genuine Churchill, he let himself be led by the mob, and gave in to their hysterical demands (personally I am not sure it was the demands of the public, but rather the media and opposition parties).

Demands that he protect them from what we could not ultimately protect them from (i.e. the spread of any virus that is so contagious and easily spread), and did not in the way that Churchill also would have done confront them with the terrible cost that would have to be paid if he gave into their hysterical panic driven demands.

And in time, I think President Trump will see the same, that though it may well have cost him his presidency if he had not complied with the panicking public demand, it may cost it him anyway in the aftermath, as may happen with Boris Johnson also.

Mr Johnson needs to “reopen Britain” within 2 or 3 weeks and fully so, and stop pretending we can control a virus that according to the professor has likely infected half the population already and so is already totally beyond control.

He should open the schools this Thursday, making it a short first school week back; and then the business and shops the week after that; and then finally the pubs, restaurants and churches, concert hall and sports stadiums; perhaps keeping attendance at the latter mass events to say 33% of capacity, to enable people to still social distance for say a month, and then within a month everything should be back to “normal.”

And the media should be given a stern warning not to cause any more panic, and not to policitise this matter further.

But instead the focus should be on getting everybody back to work or reopening their businesses to get the economy working, which no doubt now will take probably at least several months to a year to fully do, and sadly in numerous cases may not ever be possible.

But if taxes have to rise a lot – which I am certain they will have to – on those still working or in business, then that will require a certain amount of probably much needed austerity in any case (I mean austerity on the wealthier people mostly, not on those already suffering unduly from it).

We need to face the reality we either spend hundreds of billions annually on things we don’t need – e.g. 20 or 50 pairs of shoes, when we only need 5 or 10 – or an Iphone 29 million, when an Iphone 4 or 5 still does 95% of what the later ones do, and so on – or instead we have properly funded public services like the NHS, and the ones that collect our rubbish and keep our roads in repair and our water pure and drains clear (so we don’t get flooded so easily) and so on.

So if we use this catastrophe rightly, we can (though it may take some time) come out at the end with a better world, a saner world, and indeed a more tolerant one, in which we currently fear to hug even a friend that they might give us a deadly disease (extremely unlikely).

For I think everybody is agreed, that apart from hanging on to life itself, the thing we want most of all is to be socially accepted, to be loved and to be able to express love.

And that is going to be very hard or impossible if we allow ourselves to be so afraid of our fellow man and woman as a possible disease carrier, that we now see them as an enemy on sight unless we check on our phone app and see that they are safe, maybe from covid-19, but impossible to know if they are not carrying a thousand other viruses that we can’t possible test everyone for.

So it appears to me everyone has a choice – either don your Hazmat suit for the rest of your life, or let’s go back to normal life and loving our neighbour instead of fearing him or her.

There’s logic to what Dr Giesecke said, but also logical inconsistencies right through what he says. His view behind it all is anchored in the ‘lockdown = lot of rubbish, doesn’t work anyway’ camp, so he omits or begrudges the partial benefits from the measures taken.

Every country missed the start, and therefore had runaway disease figures, which threatened hospital capacity.

No country had skills one would associate with practised isolation.

Casual voluntary isolation will axiomatically be partial in participation. And because it does require some knowledge, self-awareness and skill to be effective, it will be slack or sloppy amongst those that did try. (It is reasonable to interpret all that has “hardly any isolation benefit at all”.)

How to buy time to expand systems and build skills?

You end up where we are.

Therefore, some isolation policy was needed, which he says is what they have done to the Swedish tolerance level. (But, “isolation measures do not work”.)

I think there was an unchallenged generalisation in that conversation that all isolation policies equal an autocratic lockdown equals a political grab for power with long-term effects. It’s a risk, some places, sure.

He’s also saying that in democracies people won’t be able to tolerate it. The fact is that we can tolerate it *for long enough* to provision extra hospital capacity, and upgrade isolation behaviours and schemes.

E.g. Look at what’s happened in supermarkets”¦ They now have guided physical spacing, customer density ceilings, and isolation panels at the checkouts. When we unwind the restrictions, that should continue.

All the upskilled behaviours and arrangements can continue (they only need to cut transmission mechanisms, not obstruct the entire transaction system itself.)

As ‘the people’ start going stir-crazy, then it will de facto be backed off, and then officially down-regulated. In which case the people will be unable to blame the government. Politicians can use polls to demonstrate that.

He also says the numbers of deaths would/will turn out to be the same, in the end, and at most double what a regular influenza epidemic would cause.

His contention stems from the notion that around 50% of the population will already have had it, but didn’t know it, and so current Case Fatality Rates are being massively exaggerated but not counting them in.

That may be or may not be true in Europe. We can’t tell unless immunity testing is population-wide or in a large properly randomised cohort.
But ~> I’m in Australia and
that assumption (50% already infected) is very hard to accept here “¦
You can see from our testing in Australia, where we have tested *all around known cases through tracing*, 400,000 tests but only 6600 +ve cases. Where are these asymptomatic infected people hiding? Should be well over > 100,000 +ves in those who have had a real chance of exposure, if he were right.

He says the numbers of deaths per million will turn out to be at most double what a regular influenza epidemic would cause = 0.1%.

I think that it will be *minimum 1%* CFR, which is 10x what he said.

And, people should count up the surplus collateral deaths from ‘normal’ potential mortal Non-Covid cases caused *if* the hospital capacities got maxed out (à la Lombardy.) That is not counted in the numbers. (A parallel argument for going hard with restrictions early on.)

Weirdly, he feels that unwinding the Restrictions (most places just have restrictions, and are not welding people into their houses) poses a significant problem.

Unwinding restrictions in the stop/start manner is effectively extending isolation in a tolerable way”¦ And every little spike, being small and anticipated, is maximally traceable so that only those people and their at-risk contacts have to go into full self- isolation for two weeks.

My view of the Unwinding is that people under 50 can be freed up first to work, including all students, and this can be managed by allowing them free run Monday to Friday, and then staying home on the weekends.
But they would have to stay away from the 60+ group.

Friday night you disinfect everywhere and everything they were around, reset the environmental contamination to zero.

Then I would give the weekends to the 60+ portion of the population to do shopping and acquire services. Still observing physical spacing, and all the hygiene techniques.

Really interesting and makes a lot of sense. He does seem to contradict himself a little thoug when asked if the Uk should end the lockdown- he quickly said no re would be a huge spike in deaths, but if you really believe what he says, then if we are already past the peak then we should have already had most of the deaths we will get.

I have noticed that our updates on mortality rates always say “died with (not of) Coronavirus”. They do not say died of COVID19. Our mortality rate this year is no higher than the average over the last 5. As the immunologists tell us that most of us carry some Corona viruses most of the time, it means that death rates are being distorted. There seems to be an agenda to ramp up the fear.

This is an excellent interview.
It is good to hear from someone who has the courage to back his views.
I believe Professor Giesecke will be proved right in 12 months time. I hope the population of Sweden and their politicians can hold their nerve.

The strongest argument made here is that the denominator in all of our statistics is wrong and because of this, rash decisions have been made from misinformation.

The notion that the death rate is MUCH lower than our data reflects makes a great deal of sense. His suggestion to have this conversation a year from now will most likely reflect this reality.

Another good point is that those who are going to die from this virus, are most likely to die from any illness should they become infected. There is no vaccine to protect you against ANY human coronaviruses and there are no specific treatments for illnesses caused by human coronaviruses.

I am ONLY persuaded that the quarantine orders and restrictions may have bought us a little time to discover a remedy, but these very measures may result in more human suffering on the whole than the virus itself.

I’d love to head a task force to capture the data to verify my unfortunate prediction, but no one out there seems to be willing to face this embarrassing oversight resulting from these unprecedented shutdowns.

I for one am growing extremely weary of the people who dismiss comparisons of COVID-19 with the flu. They fail to understand what is being compared. We’re comparing cause for alarm.

If the flu doesn’t merit shutdowns to contain its spread and thus thousands of lives, then why would COVID-19 be a special case? Because it is new? Isn’t it more damning that we don’t take these measures to protect people from dying when we DO know the loss of life which will result from our inaction?

The point is, we don’t advocate these measures because they put our freedoms in jeopardy. They are unsustainable. And as Mr. Giesecke pointed out, we’ve gotten ourselves into a HUGE mess that sets a precedent for awful people to do awful things in the name of “public health”. Not to mention, there is no useful, scientific way to go back to “normal” without undoing the supposed benefits of these shutdowns.

What I get from the whole experience, seeing/reading multiple opinions and “facts” (at this point, who really knows what the facts are), is that the focus on this virus blew up the world economically. Yes, it’s a new strain, but we have never reacted with such extreme over the annual flu (which also kills thousands every year). We didn’t even see lockdown in the 80s with AIDS, or Ebola.
I also see this as a global reset. While we will have extreme economic results, ultimately it should hopefully prove to be a good lesson. To return to quality time with family, more activities outdoors (less technology), to be more conscious of our hygiene and others. Let’s pray the end result is positive. We do get what we focus on.

Professor Johan Giesecke is brilliant. And brave. He absolutely has the correct approach. He is the leader we have all been seeking. (Sad that a very unscholarly paper written in the U.K. has had such unfortunate influence.) I live in Arizona, USA.

If you look at the Worldometers data for Sweden, it is following virtually the same trajectory in rise and fall in numbers of cases as the countries that have locked down. The most interesting part was how do we unlock since every step will bring new cases and deaths and the temptation by pols will be to extend the lockdown. My children are fortunate enough to be able to work from home but their children are at home too and the concern is that jobs will reopen before schools. That will be nearly impossible for parents to manage.

I wish he had addressed Farr’s Law which has been cited by many of the critics of the models and the current policies.

Great interview. Needs saying. The blind lockdown approach isn’t a cure, it isn’t even a rational response. It’s a frightened one.
I maintain the government initial strategy was the correct one and if the MSM hadn’t had their usual feeding frenzy, the numbers would most probably be pretty similar to those we are sadly seeing but we would not have flushed our entire economy down the toilet.

I just came here to applaud Freddie Sayers for being such a great listener and conducting this interview in such a calm, civilized way. Great questions and follow-on questions! This interview was fascinating.

Nice and civilized interview. However, I have not been capable of discerning any evidence-based facts in support of the professor’s opinion. Anedoctal experience based on his impressive CV, yes… evidence-based statements on which to base such crucial decisions… not really. I still am very perplexed.

The best reason for the current lock-down, is to protect the mental health of the workers in the NHS, and these workers would have been severely affected if the tidal wave Dr Gieseke referred to had not been suppressed. So managed herd immunity should be the policy. The lock-down will be released in stages, and maybe re-introduced until herd immunity is achieved.

I have to call BS on this. Sweden has a population of 10.23 million, with 15,300 confirmed cases and 1,765 total deaths.

That’s an infection rate or 0.15% for the entire population and a mortality rate of 11.5% of those infected. Extending this to the US, would mean 492,000 infections and 57,000 dead. However, even with mitigation policies in place, as of April 20, the US has 793,000 cases, with 43,000 deaths.

On a per million population basis, the US is at 128 Covid19 deaths per million residents, compared to Sweden’s 175 Covid19 deaths per million.

While the US has higher infection rate than Sweden, it has a much lower mortality rate.

Keeping the country open only works if there is widespread and easily available testing and tracing regimen in place.

Just a final word on US mortality. Apparently the US excludes retirement homes and senior residences deaths from their statistics. Reuters did a survey of US retirement homes and estimated an addition 6,500 to 7,000 possible Covid19 deaths.

Even if you add the Reuters numbers to the official US numbers, US total per million mortality rate remains less than that of Swedens. Also based on the Italian experience, it was clear that staying open was not really an option. Well not unless you want your hospitals over run, and the need to call in army trucks to carry away the dead.

The 2 examples of successfully tackling the virus come from China (total lockdown of the affected regions!) and South Korea (massive testing). Neither of these were (or still are) possible in the US.

I compared US and Swedish numbers to Canada, where they have a Federally managed and coordinated response. All provinces (even those with no infections) are basically shut down, and the Federal govt is managing distribution of equipment and supplies based on regional needs.

Canada has a higher testing rate per million population than the US or Sweden, they also have the lowest mortality rates at 45 per million population and lowest number of cases per million at 976. According to the official Canadian Health Department site, these mortality rates include retirement homes. The US is at 2,395 per million, and Sweden at 1,517 per million.

Swedish citizen here also, Johan and Anders Tegnell are not telling the truth, they are trained bureaucrats/politicians, far, far away from the day to day practice in the field, there are 2500 MD´s Epidemiologists and researchers in award-winning institutions that disagree with this approach, A.-The strategy has been based on available data and not much data available, ( not true data was there from January, the Chinese Healthcare Ministry distributed a handbook on their practices findings and recommendations and distributed to all health ministries worldwide in many languages.
B.- Lockdowns did work, Finland, Norway, Singapore, Taiwan, prove it works, also not for six months as he mentions.
C.- Children are contagious, confirmed by published reports by various academic institutions, WHO, and CDC. D.-The numbers of death rate in Sweden is estimated at nearly 5600 or more, the elderly left to die with End of life care, and given sedatives, on-site, the elderly are not qualifying for ICU care and are not counted nor tested postmortem, the same goes for those who die at home, they are airbrushing the figures for political gain.
E.-The health authority continues to refuse a healthy debate with the trained field Epidemiologists who are critical of the practice.
D.- The reason the situation is not worse, mind you Sweden has more deaths per million than many other countries, is that about 60% of the population have voluntarily lockdown, however, because of the vague guidelines and confusing messages, many people are out in nightclubs, pubs, and restaurants, people are having parties and families even if they have one parent at home with symptoms they send the children to school because their keep hearing the virus is just like the flu and children are not contagious, many people traveled within Sweden during Easter creating infection pockets in villages that did not have single case.
E.- There are many cases of young people without pre-existing conditions passing away, as young as 30, we are also killing and putting our healthcare workers at significant risk.
D.- No cleaning recommendations have been made, Anders Tegnelll stated cleaning buses, subways, spraying trees to rid of pollen and dust particles which can transport the virus into our lungs, was not needed.
A pollen particle especially birch are large about 100 microns, you can fit 833 viral particles which are 120 Nm, in a pollen particle and about 83 in a dust particle of 10 microns.
E-. They continuously stated masks are not needed, they stated ” the peak is here” at 20 infected, at 100 infected. they stated, we have enough ventilators, we have enough PPE, we have enough ICU rooms.
F.- Not true the Norwegian nursing homes are smaller, the same goes for Finland.
G.-Not trues no one could predict the outbreak in Italy, Björn Olsson a Professor in Uppsala University rang the warning bell early on and stated that Italy would be a hot zone, and potential spread, he stated many Swedes will go skiing during the brack to Cervinia and other places, he called for the government suggests a stop from traveling and also recommended over and over that schools should be closed as many came back from Italy with the virus. He also mentioned the high number of Chinese seasonal textile workers in Lombardi.
H.- Sweden is a giant petri dish and despited the objective to protect the economy, the economy is in trouble many people have lost their jobs and many others will, sad that these ill-prepared lying bureaucrats keep theirs, whilst being indirectly responsible for thousands of deaths.
So no the approach is not working and we don´t know if the virus will mutate and affect the bulk of the population

UK policy on lockdown and other European countries are not evidence-based –> of course not, if evidence based you have to wait for an epidemics to be over in order to understand how to control it. Btw, swedish policy is miles away for being evidenced based either. At least fergusson’s policy is model based !

The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only —> This is the actual policy of most countries, and it works, at least compared to sweden

This will eventually lead to herd immunity as a “by-product” –> herd-immunity may be reached as high as 80% of pop. + this is contradictory with previous statement

The Imperial College paper was “not very good” and he has never seen an unpublished paper have so much policy impact.–> at least policy is paper based, not “some clinician has a gut feeling” based

Any such models are a dubious basis for public policy anyway –> authority argument = useless

The flattening of the curve is due to the most vulnerable dying first as much as the lockdown –> I infer from this statement that the average human is 10 times frailer in Sweden than in Norway…This would explain a lot of the ski results !

The results will eventually be similar for all countries –> as in south korea for instance ? or HK ?

Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people –> wrong provocative statement… not one study shows data even remotely suggesting that

The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1% –> Completely contradictory with previous statement !

At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available –> prophecies are not arguments.

The strongest argument made here is that the denominator in all of our statistics is wrong and because of this, rash decisions have been made from misinformation.

The notion that the death rate is MUCH lower than our data reflects makes a great deal of sense. His suggestion to have this conversation a year from now will most likely reflect this reality.

Another good point is that those who are going to die from this virus, are most likely to die from any illness should they become infected. There is no vaccine to protect you against ANY human coronaviruses and there are no specific treatments for illnesses caused by human coronaviruses.

I am ONLY persuaded that the quarantine orders and restrictions may have bought us a little time to discover a remedy, but these very measures may result in more human suffering on the whole than the virus itself.

I’d love to head a task force to capture the data to verify my unfortunate prediction, but no one out there seems to be willing to face this embarrassing oversight resulting from these unprecedented shutdowns.

I for one am growing extremely weary of the people who dismiss comparisons of COVID-19 with the flu. They fail to understand what is being compared. We’re comparing cause for alarm.

If the flu doesn’t merit shutdowns to contain its spread and thus thousands of lives, then why would COVID-19 be a special case? Because it is new? Isn’t it more damning that we don’t take these measures to protect people from dying when we DO know the loss of life which will result from our inaction?

The point is, we don’t advocate these measures because they put our freedoms in jeopardy. They are unsustainable. And as Mr. Giesecke pointed out, we’ve gotten ourselves into a HUGE mess that sets a precedent for awful people to do awful things in the name of “public health”. Not to mention, there is no useful, scientific way to go back to “normal” without undoing the supposed benefits of these shutdowns.

I really want to move to Sweden, seems like the only sane country. Why have most other countries in the world blindly followed the simplistic Imperial College model, which spread around the world like a virus. There were other equally valid models put forward by equally qualified scientists that predicted very different outcomes very similar to what Sweden is experiencing now in fact. After this is all over Sweden will probably have the lowest excess mortality because they will have the same % of people die from covid-19 but they will not have had all the extra deaths caused by shutting down whole countries for months.