âWith all respiratory diseases, the only thing that stops the disease is herd immunity. About 80% of the people need to have had contact with the virus. itâs very important to keep the schools open and kids mingling to spread the virus to get herd immunity as fast as possible, and then the elderly people, who should be separated, and the nursing homes should be closed during that time, can come back and meet their children and grandchildren after about 4 weeks when the virus has been exterminatedâŠ.If we had herd immunity now, there couldnât be a second wave in autumn.â
-Dr Knut M. Wittkowski Ph.D
Why lockdowns are the wrong policy
Professor Johan Giesecke, one of the worldâs most senior epidemiologists, adviser to the Swedish Government lays out with typically Swedish bluntness.
Summary
– UK policy on lockdown and other European countries are not evidence-based
– The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only
– This will eventually lead to herd immunity as a âby-productâ
– The initial UK response, before the â180 degree U-turnâ, was better
– The Imperial College paper was ânot very goodâ and he has never seen an unpublished paper have so much policy impact
– The paper was very much too pessimistic
– Any such models are a dubious basis for public policy anyway
– The flattening of the curve is due to the most vulnerable dying first as much as the lockdown
– The results will eventually be similar for all countries
– Covid-19 is a âmild diseaseâ and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people.
– The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%
– 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
Israeli Professor Shows Virus Follows Fixed Pattern
Coronavirus peaked and subsided in the exact same way, so says Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel of Tel Aviv University. The Wuhan Virus follows its own pattern, he told Mako, an Israeli news agency. It is a fixed pattern that is not dependent on freedom or quarantine. âThere is a decline in the number of infections even [in countries] without closures, and it is similar to the countries with closures,â he wrote in his paper.