"Swiss Policy Research (SPR), founded in 2016, is an independent, nonpartisan and nonprofit research group investigating geopolitical propaganda in Swiss and international media." Their switch to epidemiology then is based on a presumption that the coronavirus scare is some geopolitical propaganda trick. "Facts about Covid-19 (2020) a comprehensive analysis of medical aspects" (compiled in April) is a compendium of arguments the virus poses little danger and that lockdown measures are the real threat. The url suggests the article was originally "a swiss doctor on covid 19," so the author will be called "the Swiss doctor," and we can say a possible expert was involved in the SPR's foray into critical epidemiology. But someone's unsound medical reasoning is summed up at the start: “The only means to fight the plague is honesty.” (Albert Camus, 1947). Of course that was some kind of metaphor, but the implication, in context, is that the real danger here is the lie that the virus is a danger.
This article is long with points that are wrong, a few that are right, some I'm not sure about. I don't have the time to review all of them. was suggested to back a claim of widespread prior immunity, so I'll start with that, and note a few other points that popped out along the way.
5. Up to 60% of all persons may already have a certain cellular background immunity to Covid-19 due to contact with previous coronaviruses (i.e. common cold viruses). The initial assumption that there was no immunity against Covid-19 was not correct.
They may be onto something here, or not. The linked study page explains how, in blood samples from a year and more before COVID19 existed, "pre-existing SARS-CoV-2-cross-reactive T cell responses were observed," suggesting "some potential for pre-existing immunity in the human population."
Importantly, we utilized the exact same series of experimental techniques with blood samples from healthy control donors (PBMCs collected in the 2015–2018 time frame), and substantial cross-reactive coronavirus T cell memory was observed.
Importantly, pre-existing SARS-CoV-2-cross-reactive T cell responses were observed in healthy
donors, indicating some potential for pre-existing immunity in the human population.
ORF mapping of T cell specificities revealed valuable targets for incorporation in candidate vaccine development and revealed distinct specificity patterns between COVID-19 cases and unexposed healthy controls.
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30610-3
The details go over my head - I don't know T-cells and such enough to know whether this should or does translate to any degree of actual immunity. But I know a person who knows a lot more about diseases and spread, whose position is somewhere between mine and the "covidiots" who deny the danger. I asked about this, and he says this other path to immunity is worth study and sees some clues it may be in play, but no one knows for sure either way just yet. Sounds like more study is needed before you could say for sure "The initial assumption that there was no immunity against Covid-19 was not correct."
I forgot to check where the "up to 60%" pat came from, but that doesn't seem to pan out. We'd be starting close to herd immunity, having the virus fade off almost as soon as it began. That doesn't happen except in China, where it was forced to happen by human actions. The stating immunity seems much closer to 0%, and may be just that. Whatever defense this prior T-cell immunity might be, it's not a magical solution to the problem we have. It'll be already in effect, making the problem just what is rather than a bit worse. It didn't stop us from getting past half a million dead, and it's not likely to do much for the next halves of millions to come (though if it is real and relevant, its effect might magnify in time).
Such immunity might have a best bet of applying in China, where previous SARS exposure is the highest. But it was petty bad until suppressed - basic CFR: 4,634 deaths out of 83,500 cases = 5.55%
China's reportedly high testing rate would suggest that's close to it - ~5% who got it died, mostly because they were hit by surprise (back in October?) with no one specially protected for some time. People were tracking it in and out of nursing homes and all that, completely unaware. As it turns out, something like 5% of cases that require hospitalization die almost everywhere, under the better-prepared conditions most nations enjoy (this basic CFR ranges to less than 1% to frequent rates like 8-10% and even higher sometimes). But ,,,
1. According to the latest immunological and serological studies, the overall lethality of Covid-19 (IFR) is about 0.1% and thus in the range of a strong seasonal influenza (flu).
...it's true that leaves out the likely huge number of milder unconfirmed cases most nations have, due to low testing. With decent efforts at shielding the vulnerable, actual death rates are... possibly as low as suggested, 1/10 of 1% but probably much higher - probably at least 0.5%, likely over 1%, maybe about 2% ... and it will be somewhat variable.
Something between core lethality and highly-contagious nature seems to make it far deadlier than a seasonal flu. Influenza yearly deaths: between 290,000 and 650,000 is commonly given, citing JHU.
That's without brakes (no special lockdown, just some people get shots, etc.). WITH strong brakes (global lockdown), the spread of COVID19 is much less than it would be, forced quite low and to effective zero in some places. But the global average is currently accelerating on many new fonts, likely to grow even faster now that it's got its foot in nearly every door on Earth - back in April it had barely begun to do this. We're now just past half a million dead, and the second half should come quicker, the next million ... harder to say. (see Coronavirus death rates over time, and the coming updates)
506,000 killed so far, 85% (431,000) of those came since April 7, in less than 3 months. 431,000 dead in 81 days = 5,320/day. This same rate takes us to 1 million in 93 days, by late September. Say it slows down then a bit so we're only at 1,410,000 by year's end, or about one year into the pandemic. That'll be 217% of a high-death year for flu, 486% of a mild one. And again, that's WITH the control measures SPR et al. complained were counterproductive. Say these rules are decreasingly followed for the next 6 months ... conservatively, we might see another 960k dead = 1,466,000 in about one year, including the slower take-off months: 225% of a bad flu year, 505% of a mild year.
If it had run naturally with no brakes like we do with the flu (a straighter comparison), it's hard to imagine it being any less than 3-4x as deadly as the flu in a bad year. Something like 6-8 times sounds closer to me. Imagine the situation in Wuhan or Lombardy, raging worldwide just for these last few months, and still going. It's a nightmare. We would already have at least one million killed, probably two or three millions, with more coming fast.
"2. In countries like the US, the UK, and also Sweden (without a lockdown), overall mortality since the beginning of the year is in the range of a strong influenza season..."Perhaps, as of writing in April, which was faaaar too early to make such a call. It's this bad now and was that bad then with extra measures, even in Sweden, and with the other two reflecting the same lockdown measures they oppose. Is it really fair to include the effects you deny in the low numbers you cite to deny the effect? No. And it'll keep getting worse in all three places, even with those measures, and will keep doing that for some time. It would be far worse and worsening far faster if national and local governments had failed to rein the virus in. The Swiss doctor must know this, but consciously works around the point, continuing ...
"... in countries like Germany, Austria and Switzerland, overall mortality is in the range of a mild influenza season."
Sources I checked, latest numbers as displayed when I checked a couple hours ago:
https://www.bing.com/covid?vert=graph
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Why not compare China? They still have well under 5,000 deaths for over 1 billion people, with very few new cases on average, and about one death per MONTH, not per day. Because everyone knows COVID19 was eradicated there with stern lockdown measures we'd never tolerate, besides contact tracing and every other tool available. That plus the good rates in Germany, Austria, Switzerland who copied the Chinese better than most, with US and UK trailing, might show that lockdown is a big part of this low-fatalities argument AGAINST lockdown. The portion is probably high but could be debated, and clearly it shouldn't be ignored.
No mention is made of Italy, Spain, Belgium, Iran, Wuhan, Queens (New York), King County (Washington) any other country, region, or city hit early on with something deadlier than a full flu season crammed into just a few weeks before they got transmission suppressed. All of them did this with stay-at-home lockdown orders. Obviously, the better option of early containment couldn't or didn't work there, so "lockdown" is nearly everyone's plan B.
There couldn't be any mention by the Swiss doctor (except maybe via an update - it's said these have been made into June) of how Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Armenia, South Africa, Guatemala, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and other nations are now experiencing drastic case growth and sharply rising deaths as well (many others started looking bad, then stopped reporting, so note the current death toll is low). Iraq and El Salvador at least have more than doubled their prior, non-trivial death toll in less than 2 weeks time, since June 18. (I will be showing this in a few days as the second of two updates to this project - note a span of slowest growth was shown there as the latest thing, but the next 2 2-week spans have each shown inceasingly wider and faster growth.) Regions and cities within these nations are seeing even more drastic growth in both areas, despite containment efforts (but to map them over time as I do is harder in most cases, so I only track a few like Mexico City and Santiago, Chile.).
3. Even in global “hotspots”, the risk of death for the general population of school and working age is typically in the range of a daily car ride to work. The risk was initially overestimated because many people with only mild or no symptoms were not taken into account."Example, using a current hotspot, not one in play then: since mid-May, about 200/day are dying from/with COVID19 in Rio De Janeiro, a city of 6.5 million (Brazil has various local lockdown measures, but no nation-wide one). Even if the testing rate is quite low, do they really have anything like 200 traffic deaths per day there?
Just a few other points:
"The Californian physician Dr. Dan Erickson ..." is a hack with financial motives supported with bad reasoning.
http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2020/05/accelerated-nonsense-on-covid19.html
"In Nigeria, according to official figures, more people have so far been killed by the police enforcing corona curfews than by the corona virus itself." BBC cited reports claiming "enforcers have killed 18 people in Nigeria since lockdowns began on 30 March," while "Coronavirus has killed 12 people, according to health ministry data." As of April 16 it was in fact 50% more people.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52317196
Now it's
that would be a very troubling detail, but complicating factors aren't mentioned and in fact it's not clear the killing were even related to lockdown or just happened in that time, or if that's unusually high.
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