Immunity denial at the WHO

The World Health Organization Oversold the Vaccine and Deprecated Natural Immunity | Brownstone Institute - Jeffrey A. Tucker:

August 29, 2021 - ""Herd immunity is a fascinating observation that you can trace to biological reality or statistical probability theory, whichever you prefer. It is certainly not a 'strategy' so ignore any media source that describes it that way. When you get such a virus and fight it off, your immune system encodes that information in a way that builds immunity to it. When it happens to enough people ... the virus loses its pandemic quality and becomes endemic, which is to say predictable and manageable. Each new generation incorporates that information through more exposure. 

"This is what one would call virology/immunology 101. It’s what you read in every textbook. It’s been taught in 9th-grade cell biology for probably 80 years.... And the discovery of this fascinating dynamic in cell biology is a major reason why public health became so smart in the 20th century. We kept calm. We managed viruses with medical professionals: doctor/patient relationships. We avoided the Medieval tendency to run around with hair on fire but rather used rationality and intelligence. 

"One day, this strange institution called the World Health Organization [WHO] – once glorious because it was mainly responsible for the eradication of smallpox – suddenly decided to delete everything I just wrote from cell biology basics. It has literally changed the science in a Soviet-like way. It has removed with the delete key any mention of natural immunities from its website. It has taken the additional step of actually mischaracterizing the structure and functioning of vaccines. 

"Here is the website from June 9, 2020. You can see it here on Archive.org. You have to move down the page and click on the question about herd immunity. You see the following. 

"That’s accurate overall.... However, in a screenshot dated November 13, 2020, we read the following note that somehow pretends as if human beings do not have immune systems at all....

"[T]his note at the World Health Organization ... ignored and even wiped out 100 years of medical advances in virology, immunology, and epidemiology. What’s even more strange is the claim that a vaccine protects people from a virus rather than exposing them to it. A traditional vaccine works precisely by firing up the immune system through exposure. This has been known for centuries. There is simply no way for medical science completely to replace the human immune system.... By ruling out exposure, the WHO seems even to be rejecting the methods of J&J in favor of Moderna and Pfizer, which use mRNA strategies. Talk about picking winners and losers in technology! 

"Finally on January 4, 2021: WHO has changed it[s] definition yet again, to incorporate the obvious reality of natural immunity. 

"This claim that vaccines for the population rather than exposure is overall better is stated here as a matter of dogma when in reality this is an empirical question. If the vaccine does not deliver immunity in a way that is long lasting and broad – and cannot do so in a way that assures the population of its safety – the dogma pushed by WHO is potentially false. 

"For a year and a half, the media has been telling us that 'science' requires that we comply with their dictates that run contrary to every tenet of liberalism, every expectation we’ve developed in the modern world that we can live freely and with the certainty of rights. Then 'science' took over and our human rights were slammed. And now the “science” actually deleted its own history, airbrushing over what it used to know and replacing it with something misleading at best and patently false at worst. Let there be no mystery why public confidence in public health is at a low.... 

"The science has not changed; only the politics have. And that is precisely why it is so dangerous and deadly to subject virus management to the forces of politics. Eventually the science too bends to the duplicitous character of the political industry."

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/the-world-health-organization-oversold-the-vaccine-and-deprecated-natural-immunity/ 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

'Pandemic of the unvaccinated' narrative falling flat

Don’t Panic, But Breakthrough Cases May Be a Bigger Problem Than You’ve Been Told Current public-health messaging may understate the scale and risk. | New York Magazine - David Wallace-Wells, Intelligencer:

August 12, 2021 - "''Breakthrough' sounds bad — implying an immune-escape mutation, likely rare, and therefore alarming. The vaccines were never tested to prevent transmission, only symptomatic disease, and those who knew the science expected, from the outset, that we would see some number of such cases, and that they would be, overwhelmingly, mild. But Delta appears to have changed things....

"Over the last few weeks, in the wake of an attention-getting internal CDC presentation on the severity of the current wave, we’ve heard a lot ... about how ... vaccines were working, that breakthrough cases remained rare and mild, that the pandemic was now largely a pandemic of the unvaccinated. On July 30, the Kaiser Family Foundation ... declared that the relative risk to the vaccinated of infection, hospitalization, and death was close to — or mathematically equal to — zero, and that in almost all states only about 1 percent of identified cases were breakthrough events. This reading was echoed by the later Times analysis, and itself echoed earlier, reassuring statements by Anthony Fauci, that 99.2 percent of deaths in June were in unvaccinated people, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, that, as of July 18, '99.5 percent of COVID deaths are among the unvaccinated'....

"The current, bleak Delta wave is being driven primarily by cases in the unvaccinated, and the best tool in attacking the pandemic is more vaccination.... But nevertheless a closer look at the data reveals that some of the public health communication may be overstating the vaccine effect on transmission and understating the scale and risk of breakthrough infections, which, while far from predominant, do appear prevalent enough to be helping shape the course of the disease.

"'The message that breakthrough cases are exceedingly rare and that you don’t have to worry about them if you’re vaccinated — that this is only an epidemic of the unvaccinated — that message is falling flat,' Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina told me.... 'If this was still Alpha, sure. But with Delta, plenty of people are getting sick. Plenty of transmission is going on. And my personal opinion is that the whole notion of herd immunity from two vaccine shots is flying out the window very quickly with this new variant.'

"'We’re seeing a lot more spread in vaccinated people,' agreed Scripp’s Eric Topol, who estimated that the vaccines’ efficacy against symptomatic transmission, which he estimated to be 90 percent or above for the wild-type strain and all previous variants, had fallen to about 60 percent for Delta. 'That’s a big drop.' Later, he suggested it might have fallen to 50 percent, and that new data about to be published in the U.S. would suggest an even lower rate. On Wednesday, a large pre-print study published by the Mayo clinic suggested the efficacy against infection had fallen as far as 42%.

“'The breakthrough problem is much more concerning than what our public officials have transmitted,' Topol continued.... 'I think the problem we have is people — whether it’s the CDC or the people that are doing the briefings — their big concern is, they just want to get vaccinations up. And they don’t want to punch any holes in the story about vaccines. But we can handle the truth. And that’s what we should be getting'....

"The central distortion reflected in the Kaiser report — and echoed by communicators elsewhere, including in the Times — is the result of a basic error of comparison ... using year-to-date 2021 data, which include several months before mass vaccination (when by definition vanishingly few breakthrough cases could have occurred) during which time the vast majority of the year’s total cases and deaths took place (during the winter surge).... And because those first few, brutal months of the year were exceptional ones, do not reflect anything like the present state of vaccination or the disease, they throw off the ratios even further. Two thirds of 2021 cases and 80 percent of deaths came before April 1, when only 15 percent of the country was fully vaccinated, which means calculating year-to-date ratios means possibly underestimating the prevalence of breakthrough cases by a factor of three and breakthrough deaths by a factor of five.

"Unfortunately, more accurate month-to-month data is hard to assemble — because the CDC stopped tracking most breakthrough cases in early May, before the Delta wave had begun, and the states maintaining their own databases often update them irregularly and, in some cases, according to idiosyncratic logic — but over the last week, I’ve tried. [S]everal states show prevalence rates roughly in line with Kaiser’s ballpark 1 percent estimate (in Virginia, for instance, breakthroughs represent 2.3 percent of new cases and 5.2 percent of deaths).... In Delaware, between July 1 and July 22, 'breakthrough' cases were 13.8 percent of the total. In Michigan, between June 15 and July 30, the figure was 19.1 percent. In Utah, 8 percent of new cases were breakthroughs in early June, but by late July, as Delta grew, the share grew, too, to 20 percent (even while the total number of cases almost doubled). According to those leaked CDC documents, there were, as of late last month, 35,000 symptomatic breakthrough cases being recorded each week — about ten percent of the country’s total....

"The 125,000 known U.S. breakthrough cases through the end of July represent, according to NBC News, only 0.08 percent of the vaccinated population — meaning that less than one-tenth of one percent of all vaccinated people have gotten a confirmed breakthrough infection. That is encouraging, and impressive, and reassuring. But less than one percent of the unvaccinated got a confirmed case in July, either.... In California, for the week ending July 31, the average case rate among the unvaccinated, the state reported, was 33 per 100,000, while the average daily case rate among the vaccinated was 7 per 100,000 — a five-fold decrease, more or less. That’s still very good! But five-fold or ten-fold is not the hundred-fold reduction implied by Kaiser, Fauci, or Murthy."

Read more: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/breakthrough-covid-19-cases-may-be-a-bigger-problem.html

Sunetra Gupta explains how viruses work

A Framework for Understanding Pathogens, Explained by Sunetra Gupta | Brownstone Institute - Jeffrey A. Tucker: 

June 19, 2021 - "Early last year, ... the lockdown lobby relied on argument by intimidation. They know about viruses. You do not. They know about public health. You do not. They have precise and complex models. You do not. They have university appointments and positions of power. You do not. People who would normally favor the primacy of liberty, property, and law fell silent, as if intellectually outgunned. The public, lacking knowledge too, acquiesced to lockdowns. The politicians panicked, throwing out everything they thought they knew about good governance.... 

"Thus did I embark on a long journey to learn about the history of pandemics, the cell biology of viruses and their interaction with the human population, the relationship between pandemics and the eventual endemic equilibrium, herd immunity and vaccinations, and all of the other features of infectious disease that have become so heavily debated this year.... I’ve lost count of the number of books I’ve read, including even medical school textbooks on viruses (what a slog!) as well as countless papers, in addition to probably one hundred hours of lectures online.... 

"I just finished one book that stands out, and that I wish I had read a year and a half ago. It’s brilliant, erudite, precise, evocative to the point of being visionary, and capable of completely shifting one’s view toward pathogens and the social order. It is a work of genius.... The author is the legendary Oxford University theoretical epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, one of the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration. The title of the book I find rather regrettable because it sounds coldly clinical rather than literary: Pandemics: Our Fears and the Facts.... Dr. Gupta, I suspect, wrote this book to familiarize readers with the normalcy of pathogens, and to explain why it is not likely that an entirely new and deadly disease will arrive to wipe out large swaths of the human race.... 

"With computer viruses, the way to deal with them is to block them.... One exposure could mean data loss, identity theft, and even machine death. Despite what Bill Gates seems to believe, our bodies are not the same. Exposure to milder forms of germs works to protect us against more severe forms. The cell memory of our body is trained through experience, not by blocking all bugs but by incorporating the capacity to fight them off into our biology. This is the essence of how vaccines work, but more than that, it is how our whole immune system works. Pursuing an agenda of zero-pathogenic exposure is the road to disaster and death. We did not evolve that way and we cannot live this way. Indeed we will die if we take the route. 

"I hesitate to put any words in Professor Gupta’s mouth but I will try to summarize the one major lesson of this book. Pathogens will always be with us, their forms always changing, and thus the best protection we have against severe outcomes from those that threaten us is immunities built by exposure to milder forms of them. She explores this idea in great depth, applies it to past pandemics, and examines the implications for the future....

"The applications of this general principle are wide. Why was the Spanish flu so virulent against young people while mainly sparing old people? She speculates that there had been a whole generation of young people who had lacked exposure to influenzas. The records indicate that for the 20 years prior, there had been no major flu outbreaks, so when this one hit following the Great War, it was particularly cruel against those with naive immune systems, most of whom were between 20 and 40 years old. By contrast, the elderly had been exposed to a flu earlier in their lives that imbued them with natural immunity from this more deadly one.

"Does this mean that with every new pathogen we can and must expect widespread death before its harms are minimized? Not at all. With most pathogens, there is a negative correlation between severity and prevalence. Viruses with unimpressive performance kill their host quickly and thereby do not spread – Ebola is the classic case here.... 

"However, widespread death isn’t necessary before the pathogen population collapses and dies — there will come a point in the natural course of every epidemic when a non-immune host will become very hard to find, and most infections will have been cleared before they’ve had a chance to transmit. This is because the density of susceptible hosts will have fallen, either because they are now immune or dead. And so the epidemic will start to diminish and will eventually burn itself out. Once the disease has run its course, the host population can start to recover and attempt to return to its original density. In time, the proportion of susceptible individuals in a population becomes high enough for the disease to make a comeback, but — unless a disease does not revisit a population for a very long time — the second epidemic will always be smaller, and the third time, smaller still. This is because much of the population will still be immune each time another epidemic occurs. Eventually, an equilibrium is reached where the infectious agent kills a constant number of individuals every year, which is a very small proportion of what it could achieve in ‘virgin soil’. At this stage, the disease is said to be ‘endemic’ rather than epidemic.

"To be sure, the reaching of this endemic equilibrium does not mean that the virus is no longer a threat. When a virus encounters a generation or a tribe or a territory where immune memory is unprepared, it can indeed be wicked once again. The struggle between us and the bugs is unending but our bodies have well equipped us with huge advantages, so long as we are wise about its biological management."

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/a-framework-for-understanding-pathogens-explained-by-sunetra-gupta/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Pandemics: Our Fears and the Facts on Amazon

Pfizer immunity from Covid infection down 32% in month, Israeli data shows

Israel notes decline in Pfizer vaccine efficacy against mild COVID-19: Ynet news | National Post - Alisa Odenheimer & Damian Shepherd, Bloomberg News:

July 05, 2021 - "The protection conferred by Pfizer Inc.’s vaccine against mild forms of Covid-19 appeared to wane after a few weeks in data garnered in Israel as the delta variant took hold, although the shot continued to shield users against severe illness.

"The vaccine developed with BioNTech SE protected 64 per cent of receivers against the illness between June 6 and early July as the government lifted restrictions, down [by 32% - gd] from 94 per cent between May 2 and June 5, the Ynet news website reported, citing Health Ministry numbers....

" [T]hose who were vaccinated remained far less likely to be hospitalized, with protection dropping only slightly to 93 per cent from 98 per cent [down 5% - gd] in the period. The efficacy against serious illness was similar, according to the report.

"Dervila Keane, a spokeswoman at Pfizer, declined to comment on the data from Israel but she pointed to other research that shows continued protection against new mutations — just slightly reduced in some cases. The evidence gathered so far suggests that the vaccine 'will continue to protect against these variants,' she said."

Read more: https://nationalpost.com/news/israel-notes-decline-in-pfizer-vaccine-efficacy-against-mild-covid-19-ynet-news 

The deadliness of the Delta variant

The Delta deception: New COVID variant might be less deadly | Blaze Media - Daniel Horowitz:

June 23, 2021 - "The headlines are screaming with panic over the impending doom of the Delta variant hitting the U.S.:

• "WHO says delta is the fastest and fittest Covid variant and will 'pick off' most vulnerable" (CNBC)
• "Highly contagious Delta variant could cause next COVID-19 wave: 'This virus will still find you'" (CBS)
• "Delta Variant Gains Steam in Undervaccinated U.S. Counties" (Bloomberg)
• "The Delta variant might pose the biggest threat yet to vaccinated people" (Business Insider)
• And of course, no list would be complete without the headline from Dr. Fauci yesterday, stating that the "Delta variant is the greatest threat in the US."

"The implication from these headlines is that somehow this variant is truly more transmissible and deadly (as the previous variants were falsely portrayed to be), they escape natural immunity and possibly the vaccine.... 

"However, if people would actually look at the data, they'd realize that the Delta variant is actually less deadly. These headlines are able to gain momentum only because of the absurd public perception that somehow India got hit worse than the rest of the world. In reality, India has one-seventh the death rate per capita of the U.S.; it's just that India got the major winter wave later, when the Western countries were largely done with it, thereby giving the illusion that India somehow suffered worse.... 

"Fortunately, the U.K. government has already exposed these headlines as a lie, for those willing to take notice. On June 18, Public Health England published its 16th report on 'SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England,' this time grouping the variants by Greek letters.

"As you can see, the Delta variant has a 0.1% case fatality rate (CFR) out of 31,132 Delta sequence infections confirmed by investigators. That is the same rate as the flu and is much lower than the CFR for the ancestral strain or any of the other variants. And as we know, the CFR is always higher than the infection fatality rate (IFR), because many of the mildest and asymptomatic infections go undocumented, while the confirmed cases tend to have a bias toward those who are more evidently symptomatic.

"In other words, Delta is literally the flu with a CFR identical to it. This is exactly what every respiratory pandemic has done through history: morphed into more transmissible and less virulent form that forces the other mutations out since you get that one.... To the extent that there are areas below the herd immunity threshold (for example, in Scotland and the northwestern parts of the U.K.) they will likely get the Delta variant (until something else supplants it), but fatalities will continue to go down.

"According to the above-mentioned report, the Delta variant represented more than 75% of all cases in the U.K. since mid-May.... You can see almost a perfect inverse relationship between hospitalization rates throughout April and May plummeting as the Delta variant became the dominant strain of the virus in England. Some areas might see a slight oscillation from time to time as herd immunity fills in, regardless of which variant is floating around. However, the death burden is well below that of a flu season and is no longer an epidemic."

Read more: https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz-the-delta-deception-new-covid-variant-might-be-less-deadly

Why Fauci moved "herd immunity" goalposts

Why Did Fauci Move the Herd Immunity Goal Posts? | Medpage Today - Vinay Prasad MD, MPH:

December 29, 2020 - "As a former National Institutes of Health fellow, I have a profound reverence for Anthony Fauci, MD, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.... At the same time, ... statements by Fauci raise a thorny and important question for scientists, doctors, and public health experts: Is it acceptable to distort the truth to get people to do what you want them to do?...

"Fauci told the New York Times that new science had changed his thinking on the herd immunity threshold.... Specifically, the fraction of people who would need immunity to SARS-CoV-2 (either through vaccination or recovery from prior infection) to extinguish the spread of the virus was initially estimated to be 60% to 70%. In recent weeks, Fauci had raised the percentage: from 70% to 75%, and then to  ... 80%, and 85%. Allow me to quote verbatim from the article, titled 'How Much Herd Immunity Is Enough?':

"When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent," Fauci said. "Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, 'I can nudge this up a bit,' so I went to 80, 85."

"Of course, the herd immunity threshold is just an estimate, and the precise figure is contingent on population mixing and a host of other assumptions.... But, the two undeniable admissions in the Times article are 1) Fauci is, to some degree, basing his statements on what he thinks the public will accept, and to what degree his rhetoric might help vaccination efforts, and 2) this is the absolutely stunning part, he is admitting this openly to a reporter for the New York Times!

"This is not the first instance when Fauci made a public statement while considering, in part, what he believed people would do with the information. The first instance concerns masks and occurred during an interview on 60 Minutes in March.... Fauci would later clarify that his words were chosen to prevent a run on masks -- so that healthcare workers would get first priority -- but some have used this interview to question his veracity.

"Irrespective of your feelings in these specific cases, the core tension in both examples is whether we want scientific advisors and public health experts to report just the facts, as they see them, or do we want them to make the additional calculation of what the public would do with those facts, and use that to shape their comments, aiming to maximize the greater good? I believe that in 2020, scientists and public health experts can only report the complete, unvarnished truth, as they believe it to be. We cannot and must not attempt to distort our ideas in an effort to generate responses we think might occur. I hold this position for four reasons.

1. The information gap no longer exists. Experts are not inherently smarter, more analytical, or logical than members of the lay public. Perhaps in the past, they preferentially had access to certain types of insider information. In the modern world, due to the internet, this information gap no longer exists ... because too many in the public can directly interrogate the source material.... If an expert seeks to distort their view of the science to further a behavioral change amongst the public, the risk of detection is high -- at least by some in the public. As such, it runs the risk of immediate backlash and the ensuing loss of credibility.

2. It is not an easy game to play. Human beings are masterfully complex, and not easily predictable.... Fauci's messaging in March may have been intended to prevent a run on masks, but it also may, to some degree, have contributed to masks becoming one of the most polarized issues of 2020, and, in many quarters, fostered a deep suspicion and distrust of Fauci.... Admitting openly that you are selectively presenting your view of the herd immunity threshold based on your reading of what the public is ready to hear, and the way in which that percentage might affect vaccine uptake is a bold and unprecedented statement.... 

3. Loss of trust is incalculable. Once it is revealed that any individual has presented information selectively to get the listener to change their behavior -- that person will forever be viewed through that lens.... The moment the public believes that you might be withholding, selectively presenting, or distorting information to get them to behave a certain way, they will immediately put your comments through a translator. He might be saying this because it's what he believes, but what if he is saying it to change my behavior.... The moment you enter this state in a relationship, there is no path back, it is over. Trust is irrevocably broken. A new spokesperson is needed.

4. Distortion steals power from the people and gives it to scientists. In a prior column, I argued that 'Follow the Science' is an incoherent message. That's because science can tell you what might happen in varying scenarios, but science cannot tell you what to value. Science is necessary for sound policy, but it is not sufficient.... This means that scientists must not distort their view of a situation to get you to do the right thing... A scientist must always and only and indefatigably tell you the scientific truth, as best they see and understand it, but we all -- every last one of us who votes and participates in society -- we alone get to decide what the policy should be.

"As I stated at the outset, I have profound respect for Fauci for his career of service, and like many, I am a fan of his clear public speaking. Yet, these two events force us to ask whether fact manipulation is acceptable. I believe it cannot be. The public will not trust us, and should not trust us."

Read more: https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/90445

UCL predicts UK at Covid herd immunity threshold

Britain will achieve Covid ‘herd immunity’ on Monday, according to a UCL model | Evening Standard - Abbianca Makoni:

April 8, 2021 - "The UK is expected to pass the threshold for herd immunity by Monday, according to experts at University College London. Dynamic modelling suggests that the number of people who are protected against Covid-19, either because they are naturally immune or have received a vaccine, will hit 73.4 per cent on April 12.

"Figures published by the Office for National Statistics last week - based on antibody testing - show that around 54 per cent had antibodies by March 14. Since then, a further 7.1 million people have received a first jab, while nearly 100,000 more people have tested positive for Covid-19.

"In addition to this around 10 per cent of the population is naturally immune, either through exposure to other coronaviruses or because they have T-cells, which would not be picked up in antibody testing.

"Professor Karl Friston, from UCL, said: 'The herd immunity estimates surprised me. However, they are unremarkable when one considers that over 50 per cent of adults have been vaccinated, around 42 per cent of people have now been exposed to the virus and about 10 per cent have pre-existing immunity.' 

"When factoring in the estimated efficacy of vaccination in terms of sterilising immunity, this – according to the model – means about 70 per cent of the population are immune. Based upon contact rates at the beginning of the pandemic and estimated transmission risk, this is nearly at the herd immunity threshold.

"The data, seen exclusively by the Daily Telegraph, is in stark contrast to modelling published earlier this week by Imperial College London, which suggested only 34 per cent of the population was immune by the end of March....

"The university also predicted that the threshold level needed for herd immunity will drop dramatically in the next couple of months with the UK needing just 40 per cent protection by the middle of the summer to be safe.

"The study comes just over a week after lockdown restrictions were eased to allow people from 6 households to mix outside. On Monday they will be eased further, with non-essential shops, gyms and leisure centres reopening for the first time in months. Pubs and restaurants will also be able to serve meals outdoors."

Read more: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/britain-herd-immunity-coronavirus-ucl-b928417.html

The failure of the precautionary principle

The Post-COVID-19 Blueprint (Part 1): How Precaution Failed | The Risk-Monger - David Zaruk: 

April 6, 2020 - "Ten weeks wasted! As the COVID-19 coronavirus spread throughout Asia in early 2020, Western risk managers did nothing. They hoped … they watched … they told the public to wash their hands. In almost every Western country, no credible risk reduction measures were implemented until it was too late, the outbreak was out of control and lockdowns were the only option.... And their only practical risk regulatory tool, the precautionary principle, was not fit for purpose.

"Precaution is a tool that should only be applied when risk management efforts do not succeed.... In the last two decades though, particularly in the EU, it has become more a strategy of ... unless you can prove, with certainty, that a product, process or substance is safe, then you must take precaution.... Europeans were promised a world of food without pesticides, energy without nuclear reactors and products that were 'chemical free' and any regulator who did not guarantee it, or tried to protect certain technologies with risk management measures, paid dearly. 

"Scientists and innovators have been excluded from public dialogue in precaution debates. The public didn’t want technological solutions; they demanded that the bad things be taken away. In 2019 when the public believed humanity would go extinct in ten years from climate breakdown and ecosystem collapse, no large populations were calling out for more nuclear energy, scientific solutions or innovative technologies – they wanted to ban flying, ban cars, ban meat.... We have limited research in gene editing, tried to sideline medical device technologies and made it uneconomical to develop new generations of antibiotics.... These disgraceful cult elitists campaigned for a world without pharmaceutical companies – I wonder how they feel now. These precautionary zealots were moving toward a plastic-free world not considering how our doctors and nurses relied on plastics to deliver healthcare – I wonder if they require medical support now.... 

"This risk-averse, expedient precautionary mindset was unprepared for the COVID-19 crisis.... Despite loud warnings from Mike Ryan at the WHO, for two months the public wanted to hear that things were fine.... As risk managers in China, South Korea and Singapore were applying risk reduction measures to address their coronavirus outbreaks, as they were providing proper PPE for their front-line medical staff, as they were increasing detection and testing methods and isolating victims, European and American authorities did little more than reassure their populations they were safe.... By the time Western European countries woke up, when Italian hospitals were suddenly overwhelmed, it was too late. The one remaining tool, a tool of last resort (the precautionary principle), was the only way the risk managers could respond: reduce the crisis by locking down entire populations. The lockdowns are precautionary: until you can prove with certainty that it is safe (for the entire society) to go out, then you need to stay in your home. If proper risk reduction measures had been applied early, then a massive loss of social and economic benefits could have been avoided....

"Like other precautionary measures, the lockdowns are practically useless from a risk management perspective. Sorry to be blunt, but these Western lockdowns are not about protecting the public from COVID-19 at all (what risk managers would be tasked to do). The lockdowns are about protecting the healthcare systems from collapsing from unthinkably large numbers requiring ICU beds and ventilators at the same time. Flattening the curve means fattening the curve: allowing the virus to infect more slowly with the hope that some lives could be saved. The only real risk management strategy coming out of the lockdowns is to wait for herd immunity: either with a vaccine to be developed (hopefully in less than 18 months) or, in the meantime, to wait for herd immunity to arrive through the survival of the fittest (with perhaps hundreds of millions dying). Precautionary lockdown measures are merely meant to slow the deadly consequences of failure; slow the failed risk management strategy so fewer people would die outside of overwhelmed hospitals. Our leaders, Western risk managers, are incapable of offering any other solutions. 

 "This didn’t have to happen. Our Western precautionary mindset created an entitled public assuming benefits without risks, no compromises and simple solutions to complex problems. Growing fat from affluence, our populations expect any uncertainty to be managed simply and surely by removing the source of the problem without any need to consider consequences or lost benefits. Over the last two decades, the precautionary principle has been the key means (often only means) to manage any and all hazards in this privileged world without want. Nuclear energy might be a risk? Ban it! Seed breeding technologies have evolved? Not in our food chain. The precautionary principle will save us. We can afford to pay more for renewable energy, organic food and all-natural products. The poor may suffer but they don’t donate to the NGOs pushing precaution and deindustrialisation....

"With no focus on the effects of its consequences, precaution has had a long history of preying on the poor. When the lockdowns were abruptly imposed and large populations lost their jobs, wealthy states could drop cash on their citizens by the trillion. Risk management, on the other hand, is a tool to protect populations from losing benefits and suffering severe consequences. Risk managers would do whatever they could to reduce exposure and prevent a lockdown; they would be able to see in advance how those helicopter trillions would lead to bigger problems long-term.

"Perhaps the most egregious transgression in this weak risk management framework is how the precautionary principle has been exported to developing countries. Many of these countries mirror the EU regulatory decisions either because they lack the risk assessment structure or fear losing export markets. But they lack the prosperity to protect their populations once the consequences of precaution (lost benefits) set in.... Now large developing countries from Nigeria to India are locking down their populations to prevent the spread of COVID-19. How do you practice social distancing in a slum with a population density of one million people per square mile? How do you enforce stay-at-home measures when the homes are not safe or enclosed? How do you keep people off the streets when their livelihoods are there and their governments cannot afford helicopter cash? Once again, precaution works for the wealthy and pays no heed to any suffering imposed on the vulnerable.

"Precaution’s failure to protect populations from the COVID-19 coronavirus has been spectacular. This principle has been shown to merely be an expedient stain remover for cowardly policymakers pushed into a corner by relentless activist interest groups. Tens of millions of the poorest of the poor will likely die from failed lockdowns with no risk management alternatives, likely unaccounted and likely long after the precautionistas have applauded themselves for saving a few lives in the affluent West."

Read more: https://risk-monger.com/2020/04/06/the-post-covid-19-blueprint-how-precaution-failed/

PA Amish community may have herd immunity

Amish community may have reached COVID ‘herd immunity,’ health official says | New York Post - Jackie Salo:

March 28, 2021 - "An Amish community in Pennsylvania may have become the first group in the US to achieve herd immunity, a local health official claims. The administrator of a medical center in the heart of Lancaster County’s New Holland Borough, which is known for its Amish and Mennonite communities, estimates that as many as 90 percent of the religious families have had at least one family member infected with the virus. 

"'So, you would think if COVID was as contagious as they say, it would go through like a tsunami; and it did,' said Allen Hoover, an administrator of the Parochial Medical Center, which caters to the religious community and has 33,000 patients.

"The Amish and Mennonite groups initially complied with stay-at-home orders at the beginning of the pandemic — shuttering schoolhouses and canceling church services. But by late April, they had resumed worship services, where they shared communion cups and holy kisses, a church greeting among believers. 

"Soon after, the virus tore throughout the religious enclave.... In late April and early May, the county’s positivity rate for COVID-19 tests exceeded 20 percent, according to nonprofit Covid Act Now. But Hoover said that it’s impossible to know the full extent of the virus outbreak since he estimates that fewer than 10 percent of patients displaying symptoms consented to being tested. 

"The medical center saw on average nearly a dozen infections a day, or around 15 percent of the patients it serves daily, Hoover said.

"While infections ebbed through the summer, before picking up again in the fall, Hoover said new cases are now far and few in between. The center hasn’t had a patient present with virus symptoms in roughly six weeks, Hoover said.

"But some experts are more skeptical that a large outbreak has led to widespread immunity in the community. Eric Lofgren, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Washington State University, said herd immunity is possible but rare. 'The key is that there is not necessarily a magic number,' said David Dowdy, a professor in the epidemiology department at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"Previous infections also might not be enough to protect against new variants of the virus, some experts have warned."

Read more: https://nypost.com/2021/03/28/amish-group-could-reach-covid-herd-immunity-health-official/

Scientists expect Sars-Cov-2 to become endemic

The coronavirus is here to stay — here’s what that means | Nature - Nicky Phillips: 

February 16, 2021 - "For much of the past year, life in Western Australia has been coronavirus-free.... The state maintained this enviable position only by placing heavy restrictions on travel and imposing lockdowns.... But the experience in Western Australia has provided a glimpse into a life free from the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. If other regions, aided by vaccines, aimed for a similar zero-COVID strategy, then could the world hope to rid itself of the virus?

"It’s a beautiful dream but most scientists think it’s improbable. In January, Nature asked more than 100 immunologists, infectious-disease researchers and virologists working on the coronavirus whether it could be eradicated. Almost 90% of respondents think that the coronavirus will become endemic — meaning that it will continue to circulate in pockets of the global population for years to come.... 'Eradicating this virus right now from the world is a lot like trying to plan the construction of a stepping-stone pathway to the Moon. It’s unrealistic,' says Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

"But failure to eradicate the virus does not mean that death, illness or social isolation will continue on the scales seen so far. The future will depend heavily on the type of immunity people acquire through infection or vaccination and how the virus evolves. Influenza and the four human coronaviruses that cause common colds are also endemic: but a combination of annual vaccines and acquired immunity means that societies tolerate the seasonal deaths and illnesses they bring without requiring lockdowns, masks and social distancing.....

"'The virus becoming endemic is likely, but the pattern that it will take is hard to predict,' says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist from Georgetown University, who is based in Seattle, Washington..... This is one scenario that scientists foresee for SARS-CoV-2[:] The virus sticks around, but once people develop some immunity to it — either through natural infection or vaccination — they won’t come down with severe symptoms. The virus would become a foe first encountered in early childhood, when it typically causes mild infection or none at all, says Jennie Lavine, an infectious-disease researcher at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

"Scientists consider this possible because that’s how the four endemic coronaviruses, called OC43, 229E, NL63 and HKU1, behave. At least three of these viruses have probably been circulating in human populations for hundreds of years; two of them are responsible for roughly 15% of respiratory infections. Using data from previous studies, Lavine and her colleagues developed a model that shows how most children first come down with these viruses before the age of 6 and develop immunity to them1. That defence wanes pretty quickly so it is not sufficient to block reinfection entirely, but it seems to protect adults from getting sick, says Lavine. Even in children, the first infection is relatively mild.

"Whether immunity to SARS-CoV-2 will behave in the same way is so far unclear. A large study of people who have had COVID-19 suggests that their levels of neutralizing antibodies — which help to block reinfection — start to decline after around six to eight months. But their bodies also make memory B cells, which can manufacture antibodies if a new infection arises, and T cells that can eliminate virus-infected cells, says Daniela Weiskopf, an immunologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California, who co-authored the study.... 

"The 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed more than 50 million people, is the yardstick by which all other pandemics are measured. It was sparked by a type of virus known as influenza A, which originated in birds. Almost all cases of influenza A since then, and all subsequent flu pandemics, have been caused by descendants of the 1918 virus. These descendants circulate the globe, infecting millions of people each year. Flu pandemics occur when populations are naive to a virus; by the time a pandemic virus becomes seasonal, much of the population has some immunity to it. Seasonal flu still has a significant toll globally, claiming roughly 650,000 lives per year. Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, thinks the coronavirus might follow a similar path ... and others say the virus could also settle into a seasonal pattern of annual winter outbreaks similar to flu.... 

"The future of SARS-CoV-2 will also depend on whether it establishes itself in a wild animal population. Several diseases brought under control persist because animal reservoirs, such as insects, provide chances for pathogens to spill back into people. These include yellow fever, Ebola and chikungunya virus. SARS-CoV-2 ... can readily infect many animals, including cats, rabbits and hamsters.... The virus has also passed between minks and people. If it became established in a wild-animal population and could spill back into people, it would be very difficult to control, says Osterholm. 'There is no disease in the history of humankind that has disappeared from the face of the Earth when zoonotic disease was such an important part of, or played a role in, the transmission,' he says."

Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00396-2

40% test positive for Covid antibodies in Sweden

Here’s a graph they don’t want you to see | Sebastian Rushworth M.D.: 

"Here’s a graph that doesn’t get shown in the mass media, and that I’m sure all those who want you to stay fearful of covid don’t want you to see. It shows the share of the tested population with antibodies to covid in Sweden week by week, beginning in the 28th week of 2020 (the first week for which the Swedish Public Health Authority provides data on the share of tests coming back positive) ... which is around the time the first Swedish covid wave was bottoming out. At the time, I personally thought this was due to enough of the population having developed immunity to covid, but we now know that was wrong. Rather, it [looks] due to seasonality – in other words, summer caused covid to disappear.

"The proportion testing positive for antibodies was 15% in early July. It remained stable for a few weeks, and then started to drop, as we would expect, given that the rate of new infections was very low at the time. Your body generally doesn’t keep producing antibodies forever after an infection, rather they wane. Of course, this doesn’t mean immunity is waning.... Although the actively antibody producing cells disappear, memory cells remain, ready to be activated at short notice if you get re-exposed to the pathogen.

"After an initial reduction, the proportion with antibodies stabilized at around 10% in August, and stayed that way until October, when it started to rise, in line with the beginning of the second wave. And it’s literally kept rising by a percentage point or two, every week, all autumn and winter so far. In the second week of January 2021, 40% of those tested in Sweden had antibodies to covid....

Graph courtesy Sebastian Rushworth M.D.

"[S]ome of you will respond that 40% doesn’t mean anything, because the data isn’t taken from a random sample. If all we had was one number, then that would be a valid point. But we ... have the number for every week stretching back six months. Any bias due to people preferentially getting tested after a respiratory infection that applies now, when 40% are testing positive, also applied three months ago, when 10% were testing positive....

"Apart from that, there is another form of bias that will tend to make the proportion with antibodies seem lower than it really is. This is the fact that people who already know they’ve had covid generally don’t keep re-testing.... This group gets bigger and bigger as more and more people get covid, and this will eventually make the proportion with antibodies seem lower than it really is. So at some point, there is an inflection point. In the early pandemic, a larger share of those being tested will have antibodies than you would get from a random sample. In the late stages of the pandemic, a smaller share of those being tested will have antibodies than you would see in a random sample.

"In the last few weeks the number of people being treated for covid in hospitals in Sweden has been dropping rapidly, as has the share of PCR-tests that are coming back positive. There is much discussion in the media about what the cause might be. Everyone seems to be very surprised.... No-one is discussing the obvious explanation – that so many people have now had covid, and have developed immunity, that the virus is having difficulty finding new hosts. In other words, Sweden’s oddly controversial 'herd immunity' strategy worked.

"So, 40% of those tested have antibodies. And that likely underestimates the proportion of the population that is immune to covid, because antibody production wanes much faster than immunity wanes, and because not everyone produces antibodies after infection, and because not everyone is susceptible to the virus in the first place."

Read more: https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/01/25/heres-a-graph-they-dont-want-you-to-see/

Scientists now think Covid immunity lasts for years

Covid-19 immunity likely lasts for years | MIT Technology Review - Neel V. Patel:

January 6, 2021 - "Covid-19 patients who recovered from the disease still have robust immunity from the coronavirus eight months after infection, according to a new study. The result is an encouraging sign that the authors interpret to mean immunity to the virus probably lasts for many years, and it should alleviate fears that the covid-19 vaccine would require repeated booster shots to protect against the disease and finally get the pandemic under control....

"The study, published January 6 in Science, contrasts with earlier findings that suggested covid-19 immunity could be short-lived, putting millions who’ve already recovered at risk of reinfection.... But the new study suggests reinfection should only be a problem for a very small percentage of people who’ve developed immunity — whether through an initial infection or by vaccination. 

"In fact, the new study does show that a small number of recovered people do not have long-lasting immunity. But vaccination ought to offset that problem by ensuring herd immunity in the larger population. 

"The new paper studied blood samples from 185 men and women who had recovered from covid-19 — most from a mild infection, although 7% were hospitalized. Each person provided at least one blood sample between six days and eight months after their initial symptoms, and 43 of the samples were taken after six months. The team that ran the investigation measured the levels of several immunological agents that work together to prevent reinfection: antibodies (which tag a pathogen for destruction by the immune system or neutralize its activity), B cells (which make antibodies), and T cells (which kill infected cells). 

"The researchers found that antibodies in the body declined moderately after eight months, although levels varied wildly between individuals. But T-cell numbers declined only modestly, and B-cell numbers held steady and sometimes inexplicably grew. That means that despite decreases in free-flowing antibodies, the components that can restart antibody production and coordinate an attack against the coronavirus stick around at pretty high levels. Crotty adds that the same mechanisms that lead to immune memory after infection also form the basis for immunity after vaccination, so the same trends ought to hold for vaccinated people as well. 

"And ... it’s worth looking at what happens in people who recovered from SARS, a close cousin of the virus that causes covid-19. A study published in August showed that T cells specific to SARS can remain in the blood for at least 17 years, bolstering hopes that covid-19 immunity could last for decades.

"The new study isn’t perfect. It would have been better to collect multiple blood samples from every participant. 'Immunity varies from person to person, and uncommon individuals with weak immune memory still may be susceptible to reinfection,' Crotty cautions. And we can’t make any firm conclusions about covid-19 immunity until years have passed.... Nonetheless, this latest result is a good indication that if the vaccination rollout goes well (a big if), we might soon be able to put the pandemic behind us."

Read more: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/06/1015822/covid-19-immunity-likely-lasts-for-years/

Read study: Jennifer M. Dan1, Jose Mateus1, Yu Kato1, Kathryn M. Hastie1, Esther Dawen Yu1, Caterina E. Faliti1, Alba Grifoni1, Sydney I. Ramirez1, Sonya Haupt, April Frazier, Catherine Nakao1, Vamseedhar Rayaprolu1, Stephen A. Rawlings, Bjoern Peters1, Florian Krammer, Viviana Simon4, Erica Ollmann Saphire, Davey M. Smith, Daniela Weiskopf, Alessandro Sette, and Shane Crotty, "Immunological memory to SARS-CoV-2 assessed for up to 8 months after infection," Science, 06 Jan 2021:eabf4063 

DOI: 10.1126/science.abf4063

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (2)

China’s Global Lockdown Propaganda Campaign | The Tablet - Michael P. Senger: 

September 15, 2020 - "On March 9, Italy, the first major European country to sign onto Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, took the WHO’s advice and became the first country outside China to lock down. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte had long advocated closer ties with China. Chinese experts arrived in Italy on March 12 and two days later advised a tighter lockdown.... On March 19, they repeated that Italy’s lockdown was 'not strict enough,' saying: 'Here in Milan, the hardest hit area by COVID-19, there isn't a very strict lockdown ... We need every citizen to be involved in the fight of COVID-19 and follow this policy.' Italy was simultaneously bombarded with Chinese disinformation. From March 11 to 23, roughly 46% of tweets with the hashtag #forzaCinaeItalia (Go China, go Italy) and 37% of those with the hashtag #grazieCina (thank you China) came from bots.

"While analysts typically focus on finding as many inauthentic accounts as possible, the purpose of the following discussion is different — using simple investigatory methods to evince the intent behind Beijing’s disinformation, which appears to be far more insidious than analysts have recognized. Social media and analytics companies generally only detect obvious automated activity, while fake, personally managed accounts can be created with ease. This works out well for the CCP, which has always preferred the human touch.

"On March 12, Twitter user @manisha_kataki posted a video showing Chinese workers disinfecting streets, apparently admiring China’s strategy: 'At this rate, China will be back in action very soon, may be much faster than the world expects.' As The New York Times’ Paul Mozur noted, this tweet was not shocking, funny, or newsworthy, yet it was shared hundreds of thousands of times. This caught the attention of Israeli company Next Dim, which flagged the activity as likely state-sponsored.... Twitter responded to Mozur’s article by deleting 170,000 accounts, but at the time of this writing many of the suspect accounts are still active, and a search for hundreds of similar examples can be easily repeated with one click.... 

"As more countries shut down, some suspicious online activity took a darker turn. When South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem famously refused to issue a statewide lockdown, suspicious accounts began filling her Twitter feed with abuse and graphic language to pressure her to do so. Upon closer examination, two of the accounts hurl similar abuse at governors thousands of miles apart.... When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, the first governor to end his state’s lockdown, honored late Rep. John Lewis, his Twitter feed was stormed with conspicuous, vulgar language that often invoked his anti-lockdown stance.

"Sweden’s skepticism toward the CCP predates COVID-19. In January, Beijing threatened Swedish trade ties over an award given to Gui Minhai, a Swedish publisher detained in China. Sweden did not back down and later refused to follow China’s lockdown model, opting for a herd immunity strategy. Thus, Sweden became a prime target of a Chinese campaign portraying it as weak against the COVID threat. In the words of China’s state-run Global Times:

Chinese analysts and netizens doubt herd immunity and called it a violation of human rights, citing high mortality in the country compared to other Northern European countries. “So-called human rights, democracy, freedom are heading in the wrong direction in Sweden, and countries that are extremely irresponsible do not deserve to be China's friend …”

"Initially, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also opted for herd immunity. But on March 13, suspicious accounts began storming his Twitter feed and likening his plan to genocide. This language almost never appears in Johnson’s feed before March 12, and several of the accounts were hardly active before then. Britain locked down on March 23."

Read more: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-covid-lockdown-propaganda

Also read: 

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (1)

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (3) 

Tokyo may have reached herd immunity to COVID

Tokyo citizens may have developed COVID-19 herd immunity, say researchers | News-Medical.net - Sally Robertson, B.Sc.:

September 24, 2020 - "Researchers in Japan and the United States have conducted a study showing that herd immunity to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) may have developed among the citizens of Tokyo during the summer. SARS-CoV-2 is the viral agent responsible for the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that is continuing to sweep the globe, posing significant threats to human health.

"Yasutaka Hayashida (Medical Corporation Koshikai, Tokyo) and colleagues from Boston Children’s Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical School, Boston, say their study suggests that seroprevalence for SARS-CoV-2 rose to almost 50% at around the same time cases of COVID-19 waned in the city. 'With the rise in SPR [seropositivity rate] nearing 50% within our cohort, matching the time when COVID-19 cases waned, the possibility of herd immunity should be considered, particularly in the highly-dense urban scenario like Tokyo,' writes the team. A pre-print version of the paper is available in the server medRxiv, while the article undergoes peer review.

"Compared with the United States and European countries, COVID-19-related mortality has been low in Japan, and the death rate has fallen despite the absence of a lockdown. The reasons for the low fatality rate are not yet known. They may be related to a low SARS-CoV-2 prevalence across the general population or decreased rates of fatality among infected cases....

"To estimate seropositivity for SARS-CoV-2 throughout the summer, the team enrolled 1,877 healthy, asymptomatic employees of large company from 11 disparate locations across Tokyo. Across the company, serology tests for SARS-CoV-2-specific immunoglobulin G (IgG) and IgM antibodies were performed weekly between May 26th and August 25th, 2020. This time window incorporated the well-documented 'second wave' of COVID-19 that occurred in Japan.

"To estimate seroconversion and seroreversion among the general population in Tokyo over time, the tests were offered to each participant twice, separated by around a month. The seropositivity rate was calculated by pooling data from each two-week window across the cohort. Changes in immunological status against SARS-CoV-2 were determined by comparing results between two test results obtained from the same participant. Six hundred fifteen individuals, aged a mean of 40.8 years, underwent one test, and 350 of those (aged a mean of 42.5 years) underwent two tests.

"The seropositivity rate increased from 5.8% at the beginning of the study to an unexpectedly high 46.8 % by the end of the summer.... Of the 350 individuals who underwent both tests, 54 (21.4 %) of 252 who were initially seronegative were seropositive by the time they completed the second test. Of the remaining 98 individuals who were seropositive on initial testing, 12 (12.2%) became seronegative. 'Seroreversion was not infrequent, seen in 12% of participants over the one-month span between tests,' says the team. 'This suggests that serological testing may significantly underestimate past COVID-19 infections, particularly when applied to an asymptomatic population.' 

"The researchers say that ... the findings can ... be generalized to the greater metropolitan area for a number of reasons, including the multiple disparate locations participants were from and the limited physical contact they had with each other. Furthermore, the exclusion of symptomatic individuals could potentially have led to an underestimation of the overall seropositivity rate. 'COVID-19 infection may have spread widely across the general population of Tokyo despite the very low fatality rate,' say Hayashida and team. 

"Although Japan took the atypical step of not implementing a mandatory lockdown, the second wave peaked and subsided nevertheless, they add. 'Given the temporal correlation between the rise in seropositivity and the decrease in reported COVID-19 cases that occurred without a shut-down, herd immunity may be implicated,' suggest the researchers. 'Future studies may consider evaluating whether lifestyle/habits, viral strain, the widespread use of masks, or host factors such as immunological memory are responsible for the observed low fatality,' they conclude."

Read more: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200924/Tokyo-citizens-may-have-developed-COVID-19-herd-immunity-say-researchers.aspx

Trump administration reportedly supports Great Barrington Declaration

White House Embraces Herd Immunity in Latest Push to End COVID-19 Lockdowns | Newsweek - Elizabeth Crisp:

October 12, 2020 - "The White House is doubling down on its push to reopen the economy, now openly embracing a herd immunity strategy at the urging of some health experts. Two senior advisers told Newsweek and other media outlets on Monday that the Trump administration supports the Great Barrington Declaration, a controversial document that argues against lockdowns and calls for a reopening of schools, businesses and other entities, while protecting people deemed vulnerable to the virus because of age or other risk factors.

"'I think Americans should be cautiously optimistic about what's going on here,' one of the officials said. The officials were not authorized to speak on-the-record about the matter, but both defended the decision to move toward a broad-scale reopening, even though at least 5,900 people in the United States died with COVID-19 last week. The coronavirus has contributed to the deaths of more than 214,000 people in the U.S. since the pandemic began earlier this year [more than half of those before June 1, when most of the country was under lockdowns - gd]....

"World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters during a virtual press briefing on Monday that such an approach would be 'unethical.' 'Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it,' he said. President Donald Trump has mentioned the idea in the past, mistakenly referring to it as 'herd mentality'....

"The Great Barrington Document, released last week, was authored by Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford, Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University. Thousands of additional scientists have signed onto the open petition.... 'As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists, we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection,' the open letter reads. 'Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health.'

"The White House official described the Great Barrington Declaration as focusing on 'aggressive protection of the vulnerable, opening all schools, opening businesses in society and ending the prolonged lockdowns.' 'We've learned a lot about the virus — this isn't April,' the official said, defending the push to fully restore business and social activity. 'It's very clear who are high risk and who are not high risk.'

"One official noted that thousands of college students have returned to campuses this fall, resulting in several hundred positive cases but few hospitalizations and no known deaths. The official [attributed] the high number of cases [to] colleges mandating testing, even among students who show no COVID-19 symptoms.

"'The goal is to make sure that we can do everything we can to protect the high risk people, while understanding that healthy people can get back to work," the official argued. The official said the White House would continue to support other public mitigation efforts, including social distancing, aggressive hand-washing and cleaning and mask-wearing, when appropriate."

Read more: https://www.newsweek.com/white-house-embraces-herd-immunity-latest-push-end-covid-19-lockdowns-1538430

Scientists call for new coronavirus strategy

 AIER Hosts Top Epidemiologists, Authors of the Great Barrington Declaration | American Institute of Economic Research:

October 5, 2020 - "October 1-4, 2020, the American Institute for Economic Research hosted a remarkable meeting of top epidemiologists, economists, and journalists, to discuss the global emergency created by the unprecedented use of state compulsion in the management of the Covid-19 pandemic. The result is The Great Barrington Declaration, which urges a 'Focused Protection' strategy. 

"After a brief explanation of the strategy, and a discussion of the astonishing costs of lockdown, the Declaration concludes: 'Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume.'

The primary authors and signers of the document are 

• Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Professor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
• Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Professor,  Medicine, Stanford University.
• Dr. Sunetra Gupta, Professor, Theoretical Epidemiology, University of Oxford.

Read more (including text of Declaration): https://www.aier.org/article/aier-hosts-top-epidemiologists-authors-of-the-great-barrington-declaration/

Clear thinking and confusion on COVID immunity

by George J. Dance

A neighborhood in Queen's, New York – ironically named Corona – may have become the first place in North America to achieve herd immunity to the coronavirua. Serological testing in New York during the summer found that 68% of the population had antibodies to the disease. If the virus spreads at an initial reproduction number (Ro) of 3 (the most common estimate), it would require 66.67% of a population to have it in order to achieve herd immunity, the point at which community transmission stops. (At an Ro of 2.5, the herd immunity threshhold would be 60%.) 

That makes Corona a very safe place to be in terms of COVID. Not completely safe, of course, as residents can still catch the disease elsewhere and bring it in; herd immunity will not prevent them from infecting anyone, only from restarting a local epidemic. The average of those with antibodies in New York is under 25%, far too low for that. And community transmission is ongoing, with the state experiencing an average 800-1,000 new cases, and 5-10 new deaths, every day. Still, the epidemic is over in New York: the virus is still spreading, and still killing, but now as a normal disease; the spread is endemic rather than an epidemic. For now the state, as its governor likes to brag, has somehow "tamed the beast." The only question is: How?    

Some religious people might say: Because we prayed, and God heard our prayers. A believer in the Church of Lockdown would say: Because the government locked us down. Both claims are similar, but the latter purports to be a scientific claim, meaning that it must be falsifiable; believers in lockdown must do more than just state the claim, but give some evidence for it besides the two events (the lockdown, and the drop in cases months later). At minimum, they have to deal with alternate hypotheses that explain the events better. 

In April, Israeli mathematician Isaac Ben-Israel analyzed the pandemic data, and noticed that outbreaks of the epidemic followed the same pattern: peaking in six weeks, then withering away after eight. Whether a atate locked down or not made virtually no difference. Therefore, he concluded, lockdown were ineffective. However, Ben-Israel, not being an epidemiologiat or virologist, had no explanation; he could only point to the numbers.

Nobel Prize winner Michael Levitt, who reached the same conclusion from the same data, noticed that the withering coincided with what he called 'saturation of infection' – a point when ~20% of the population (a figure he took from the Diamond Princess data) was no longer susceptible. Long before that point, while epidemics were still growing, their rates of growth had begun declining, an indication that the buildup of immunity was already slowing transmission. 

Others who looked at real-world data began to find the same dramatic drop at a similar infection ratio occurring around the world, from New York to Stockholm to Manaus, Brazil, to Shenzen, China.  Scientists have different theories why. One hypothesis, based on the theories of renowned epidemiologiat Sunetra Gupta, is that that there is pre-existing cross-immunity from other coronaviruas infections - enough, hypothetically, to achieve herd immunity at a lower level. Such cross-immunity may well exist, but not at that high an extent; for in none of the above communities (except possibly Shenzen) has the virus been eliminated, as herd immunity theory predicts. What has been eliminated is the epidemic, and with it most of the danger; but, as noted people are still dying of (or with) COVID in both New York and Stockholm. 

Another theory, to which I am partial, starts from the notion that "the herd" is a false analogy. Unlike a herd, where interaction is relatively the same for all, human interaction takes many different forms, within specific, limited social networks. Some people play key roles in such networks; they are more likely to get the disease, and more likely to spread it when contagious, but also more likely to block network transmission once recovered and immune. On this theory, a much lower number (~40%) of recovered patients is needed to reach "herd immunity" (at which point the disease is eliminated), while a much lower number than that would be enough to reduce the reproduction number R to ~1 (at which point the disease still spreads, but does not grow). Even some coronaviruas modellers have taken both theories seriously enough to model their assumptions, and use them to predict the pandemic's course.  

How do true believers in lockdown address the network theory, which also explains what happened in New York (and in Manauas and Stockholm, which the lockdown theory does not explain)? They don't. Rather, they first confuse the idea with the classical one of herd immunity – and, second, accuse the person who mentioned immunity of wanting more deaths simply to achieve herd immunity quicker. That was constantly done to Anders Tegnell in Sweden,  and also to Patrick Vallance in Britain, back when Britain had a no-lockdown policy. A speaker has only to mention 'immunity,' and a lockdown zealot will start ranting about 'herd immunity' instead.           

Another example occurs in this exchange between pandemic czar Antony Fauci and libertarian GOP Congressman Rand Paul. Fauci claims the epidemic ended in in New York because "they are looking at the guidelines that we have put together in the task force"; Paul points out that there is another possible explanation ("they've developed enough community immunity that they're no longer having the pandemic, because they have enough immunity"); and Fauci tries to shoot the idea down with this strawman: "If you believe that 22% is herd immunity, I believe you're alone in that." 

Paul seems to be thinking of Gupta's theory of cross-immunity, not the network theory. Still, he was clearly talking about building up a high enough degree of immunity (he says 'enough' twice) to lower the disease to New York levels, not reaching the herd immunity threshhold needed to eliminate it. Fauci either did not understand Paul's objection, or chose to misrepresent it.  

Why do they do that? Do they believe that the only possible level of immunity is herd immunity, or are they deliberately misrepresenting? Either may be possible – all that is known is that they consider the idea of 'immunity' evil, and are more concerned with eliminating it down than even considering it. It is also clear where they got that last idea; from the Bible of the Church of Lockdown, Tomas Pueyo's online writings, where the idea of immunity is discussed (not as a scientific theory, but as outright advocacy of more death:

The idea is that all the people who are infected and then recover are now immune to the virus. This is at the core of this strategy: 'Look, I know it’s going to be hard for some time, but once we’re done and a few million people die, the rest of us will be immune to it, so this virus will stop spreading and we’ll say goodbye to the coronavirus. Better do it at once and be done with it, because our alternative is to do social distancing for up to a year and risk having this peak happen later anyways.' (Tomas Pueyo, "The Hammer and the Dance")

To the best of my knowledge, no one else has ever said the sentences that Pueyo quotes.(I have searched). No one has to, as long as Pueyo's millions of readers are convinced it is what lockdown sceptics really believe down inside. The important thing then becomes not to logically answer sceptics, but to expose their evil intent. Fortunately, there are cracks in the monolith; despite everything lockdown advocates can do to suppress it, immunity theory seems here to stay.

No, the UK never had a "herd immunity" strategy

Defining the policy problem: ‘herd immunity’, long term management, and the containability of COVID-19 | Paul Cairney: Politics & Public Policy blog:

June 13, 2020 - "Frankly, the widespread and intense focus on ‘herd immunity’ was a needless distraction, sparked initially by government advisors but then nitrous-turbo-boosted, gold-plated, and covered in neon lights during a series of ridiculous media and social media representations of ill-worded statements. This initial focus took attention away from a much more profound discussion of what the UK government thinks is feasible, which informs a very stark choice: to define the COVID-19 problem as (a) a short term pandemic to be eradicated (as in countries like South Korea) or (b) a long term pandemic to be expected and managed every year (the definition in countries like the UK).

"The key thing to note is that ministers and their advisors:

1. Did talk in general terms about the idea of ‘herd immunity’ in March (best summed up as: herd immunity is only possible if there is a vaccine or enough people are infected and recover')
2. Did not recommend an extreme non-intervention policy in which most of the population would be infected quickly to achieve herd immunity (in February, advisers described this outcome as the Reasonable Worst Case Scenario)....

"Rather, describing the idea of herd immunity as an inevitability (not determined by choice) is key to understanding the UK approach. It helps us question the idea that there was a big policy U-turn in mid-March. Policy did change in the short term, but a sole focus on the short term distracts from the profound implications of its long-term strategy (in the absence of a vaccine) associated with phrases such as ‘flatten the curve’ (rather than ‘eradicate the virus’).

"[Witness] Full Fact’s challenge to the wilful misrepresentation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s appearance on the ITV programme This Morning (10.3.20), 'Here is the transcript of what Boris Johnson said on This Morning about the new coronavirus'.... These video stinkers, in which people (a) cut quotes so that you don’t hear the context, and provide a misleading headline, or (b) put a bunch of cut interviews in sequence and combine them with a tune that sounds like a knock-off version of the end credits to the TV Series The Hulk (in other words, people design these messages to get an emotional reaction)....

"This interview [at the bottom of the article] is described by Sky News (13.3.20) as: ‘The government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance has told Sky News that about 60% of people will need to become infected with coronavirus in order for the UK to enjoy “herd immunity”'. You might be forgiven for thinking that he was on Sky extolling the virtues of a strategy to that end. This was certainly the write-up in respected papers like the Financial Times ("UK’s chief scientific adviser defends ‘herd immunity’ strategy for coronavirus"). Yet, he was saying [at 4:10 - gd] nothing of the sort. Rather, when prompted, he discussed herd immunity in relation to the belief that COVID-19 will endure long enough to become as common as seasonal flu.

"See Vallance’s interview on the same day (13.3.20) during Radio 4’s Today programme (transcribed by the Spectator and headlined as 'How "herd immunity" can help fight coronavirus' as if it is his main message). The Today Programme also tweeted only 30 seconds to single out that brief exchange. Yet, clearly his overall message – in this and other interviews – was that some interventions (e.g. staying at home; self-isolating with symptoms) would have bigger effects than others (e.g. school closures; prohibiting mass gatherings) during the ‘flattening of the peak’ strategy (‘What we don’t want is everybody to end up getting it in a short period of time so that we swamp and overwhelm NHS services’). Rather than describing ‘herd immunity’ as a strategy, he is really describing how to deal with its inevitability.

"[PAC: Note that these examples are increasingly difficult to track, because people take the herd immunity argument for granted or cite reference to it misleadingly. For example, Scalley et al  state: 'To widespread criticism, [Vallance] floated an approach to "build up some degree of herd immunity" founded on an erroneous view that the vast majority of cases would be mild, like influenza.' Their citation takes you here, in which there is no reference to herd immunity or the quotation]....

"UK government policy [was] about reducing or moving the initial peak of infection, followed by longer term management to ensure that the NHS always has capacity to treat. The short-term focus emphasized the need to get the timing right in relation to the balance between public health benefits and social and economic cost.... Throughout, there [was] an emphasis on what might work in a UK-style liberal democracy characterised by relatively low social regulation, reinforced with reference to behavioural public policy."

Read more: https://paulcairney.wordpress.com/2020/06/13/3-defining-the-policy-problem-herd-immunity-long-term-management-and-the-containability-of-covid-19/

A little good news

by George J. Dance

As Anne Murray sang in her 1983 country hit, "We sure could use a little good news today." When I listened to that song the other night, for the first time in years, I was struck by the parallels with contemporary America. The line about the "local paper rolled up in a rubber band" dates it, but other lines could have been written today. The line "Nobody OD'd, nobody burned a single building down" almost gives me goosebumps. 

1983 was very much like 2020. Back then, a Republican president (Ronald Reagan) was running for a second term, and the Democratic-supporting media was doing its best to convince Americans that he had led the country into disaster. So Americans were hearing nothing but bad news, drummed at them on a daily basis. Hence the need for some good news then; and hence the same need today. 

The good news is there, even in the most alarming story. Take this week's headline news that the world has passed another "grim milestone," with 25 million cases of COVID-19. Where's the good news in that? There is some, but you will not find it any of the stories about that "milestone". To find it, you need to go to a statistics page like worldometer's COVID-19 website, where you will learn that just 7 million people have the coronavirus.

True, by the official statistics there have been 27,145,735 cases since the start of the pandemic. However, 20,148,479 of those cases are now closed; only 6,997,256 actually have the disease today. Of the closed cases, 884,948 have died – a large number – while 19,263,531 (or 96%) have recovered – a much larger number. 

Of the 27 million people who have had COVID-19, almost 20 million have made a full recovery. That is big news, well worth celebrating. Sure, they may have long-term effects, or their immunity may wear off; we do not know, simply because we do not know the future. All we know for certain, for now, is that they have had the disease, they got better, and for some time they will not get it again. Their own bodies are protecting them.

Their bodies are also protecting others. Take the example of 20-year-old Johnny, who likes to go to the bar or the pub with his buds, and also likes to spend time with his grandfather. If he does both, there is a chance of him getting infected and passing the disease to his grandfather, who may get ill or even die. So the government decides for Johnny and his friends that they should not go to bars or pubs, and closes all of those. Yet that does nothing to solve the problem, since Johnny can still get infected somewhere else. Johnny's visits to the bar or pub are not what is causing the problem.  The problem lies with Johnny's visits to his grandfather. He should not spend time with his grandfather, without a negative test for the disease; if he tests positive, he should not see his grandfather at all.  

However, if Johnny does get the disease, he will almost surely recover, and when he does, he will have immunity, in which case everything changes. In that case  he should see his grandfather, as much as they can both stand: he is the safest person possible for his grandfather to spend time with. Suppose he does the previously unthinkable, and moves in with his grandfather. By handling all contacts with those who come to the door, his immunity is protecting his grandfather not only from infection by him, but  from infection by all of them. 

Seen in this light, there is nothing "grim" about an increasing number of cases. The world has a million new cases of COVID-19 every four days. Some of those million people are in danger, and all of them pose a danger to the rest of us, because they also can now transmit the disease. But most of them are in no danger, and they can endanger us for only a week, because after five days they are no longer contagious. Once they have recovered from COVID-19, and are back in the community with immunity, they are not only not transmitting the disease, but blocking its transmission. They are not endangering others, but protecting others, including the most vulnerable who need that protection. 

COVID-19 can be beaten. Most people do beat it. And every person who gets it and beats it is a win; they are now safe from it, and they are helping to keep others safe. That is good news indeed.