Reposted from Dr. Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.
Posted on September 22, 2020 by niclewis |
By Nic Lewis
I showed in my May 10th article Why herd immunity to COVID-19 is reached much earlier than thought that inhomogeneity within a population in the susceptibility and in the social-connectivity related infectivity of individuals would reduce, in my view probably very substantially, the herd immunity threshold (HIT), beyond which an epidemic goes into retreat. I opined, based on my modelling, that the HIT probably lay somewhere between 7% and 24%, and that evidence from Stockholm County suggested it was around 17% there, and had been reached.
I then showed in a July 27th update article[1] that mounting evidence supported my reasoning.
It is pleasing to report that the evidence for heterogeneity of susceptibility across the population, arising from variability in both social connectivity and biological susceptibility, has continued to increase. Not least, there have been a number of further papers reporting pre-existing cross-reactive T-cells in a substantial proportion of people, which as I discussed in my July 27th article is likely be a key reason for heterogeneity in biological susceptibility. Mainstream journals are now starting to acknowledge that these factors are significant, with the implication that the herd immunity threshold (HIT) can be expected to be substantially lower than that often quoted by scientists close to governments. Unfortunately, in the UK at least, there is little sign as yet that those scientific advisors are prepared to recognise these facts.[2] [3]
Here I will focus excerpt on statements in a recent, quite hard hitting, feature article in the British Medical Journal by one of its associate editors.[4]
The article points out serological studies have generally indicated that no more than around a fifth of people now have antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, saying:
With public health responses around the world predicated on the assumption that the virus entered the human population with no pre-existing immunity before the pandemic, serosurvey data are leading many to conclude that the virus has, as Mike Ryan, WHO’s head of emergencies, put it, “a long way to burn.”
As the article says, this has led most planners to assume that the pandemic is far from over:
In New York City, where just over a fifth of people surveyed had antibodies, the health department concluded that “as this remains below herd immunity thresholds, monitoring, testing, and contact tracing remain essential public health strategies.” “Whatever that number is, we’re nowhere near close to it,” said WHO’s Ryan in late July, referring to the herd immunity threshold.
However, the article notes:
Yet a stream of studies that have documented SARS-CoV-2 reactive T cells in people without exposure to the virus are raising questions about just how new the pandemic virus really is, with many implications.
It also points out that the WHO and the CDC has been repeating mistakes that they made and recognised in the past, suggesting a lack of scientific competence (unless explainable by a prioritising of other objectives over scientific ones).
In late 2009, months after the World Health Organization declared the H1N1 “swine flu” virus to be a global pandemic, Alessandro Sette was part of a team working to explain why the so called “novel” virus did not seem to be causing more severe infections than seasonal flu. Their answer was pre-existing immunological responses in the adult population: B cells and, in particular, T cells, which “are known to blunt disease severity.” Other studies came to the same conclusion: people with pre-existing reactive T cells had less severe H1N1 disease. In addition, a study carried out during the 2009 outbreak by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 33% of people over 60 years old had cross reactive antibodies to the 2009 H1N1 virus, leading the CDC to conclude that “some degree of pre-existing immunity” to the new H1N1 strains existed, especially among adults over age 60. The data forced a change in views at WHO and CDC, from an assumption before 2009 that most people “will have no immunity to the pandemic virus” to one that acknowledged that “the vulnerability of a population to a pandemic virus is related in part to the level of pre-existing immunity to the virus.” But by 2020 it seems that lesson had been forgotten.
Regarding pre-existing T-cell mediated immunological responses to SARS-CoV-2, the article quotes Alessandro Sette, an immunologist from La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California and an author of several of the studies:
At this point there are a number of studies that are seeing this reactivity in different continents, different labs. As a scientist you know that is a hallmark of something that has a very strong footing.” It also notes that a paper in Science confirmed its authors’ hypothesis that, because they’re closely related, the origin of these immune responses would be ‘common cold’ coronaviruses.
As the article says, the T-cell evidence suggests that antibodies are not the full story, in relation to which it gives this quotation:
“Maybe we were a little naive to take measurements such as serology testing to look at how many people were infected with the virus,” the Karolinska Institute immunologist Marcus Buggert told The BMJ. “Maybe there is more immunity out there.”
and comments that studies by Buggert and others have shown that many people who have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 generate T-cell responses but no antibodies.
The article makes the telling point that:
Taken together, this growing body of research documenting pre-existing immunological responses to SARS-CoV-2may force pandemic planners to revisit some of their foundational assumptions about how to measure population susceptibility and monitor the extent of epidemic spread.
The article also discusses the fact that the classical formula HIT = 1 − 1/R0 (where R0 is the disease’s basic reproduction number) assumes that immunity (the complement of biological susceptibility) is distributed evenly and members mix at random, saying:
While vaccines may be deliverable in a near random fashion, from the earliest days questions were raised about the random mixing assumption. Fox and colleagues wrote in 1971 [that] truly random mixing is the exception, not the rule.
The author quotes Gabriella Gomes, noting that she and her colleagues wrote:
More susceptible and more connected individuals have a higher propensity to be infected and thus are likely to become immune earlier. Due to this selective immunization by natural infection, heterogeneous populations require less infections to cross their herd immunity threshold.
and points out that
While most experts have taken the R0 for SARS-CoV-2 (generally estimated to be between 2 and 3) and concluded that at least 50% of people need to be immune before herd immunity is reached, Gomes and colleagues calculate the threshold at 10% to 20%.
The article further notes that Sunetra Gupta’s group at the University of Oxford has arrived at similar conclusions of lower herd immunity thresholds by considering the issue of pre-existing immunity in the population.
The author also quotes Ulrich Keil, professor emeritus of epidemiology from the University of Münster in Germany, as saying
the notion of randomly distributed immunity is a “very naive assumption”
that ignores the large disparities in health and social conditions in populations.
As so often, the case of Sweden is brought up, in this quotation:
Buggert’s home country has been at the forefront of the herd immunity debate, with Sweden’s light touch strategy against the virus resulting in much scrutiny and scepticism. The epidemic in Sweden does seem to be declining, Buggert said in August. “We have much fewer cases right now. We have around 50 people hospitalised with covid-19 in a city of two million people.” At the peak of the epidemic there were thousands of cases. Something must have happened, said Buggert, particularly considering that social distancing was “always poorly followed, and it’s only become worse.”
Social distancing will reduce the R0 level of an epidemic and thus, while it continues, with reduce the HIT. The fact that social distancing in Sweden has become relatively minor therefore means that the epidemic’s recent behaviour there should provide a better guide to the HIT in the absence of social distancing than its behaviour in many other countries. Supporting Marcus Buggert’s comments, that in Stockholm (a densely populated region where R0 will be higher than average) the epidemic is almost extinct and social distancing is now minor, are these recent comments from a hospital doctor[5] in Stockholm:
In the hospital where I work, there isn’t a single person currently being treated for covid.
I haven’t seen a single covid patient in the Emergency Room in over two and a half months.
My personal experience is that people followed the voluntary restrictions pretty well at the beginning, but that they have become increasingly lax as time has gone on.
When I sit in the tube on the way to and from work, it is packed with people. Maybe one in a hundred people is choosing to wear a face mask in public. In Stockholm, life is largely back to normal. If you look at the front pages of the tabloids, on many days there isn’t a single mention of covid anywhere.
Covid is over in Sweden. We have herd immunity.
In Sweden, the epidemic gradually spread throughout the country from its original centre in Stockholm, with different regions seeing differently timed surges in cases, almost all of which have now tailed off despite national seroprevalence estimates of only 5-6%.[6] However, it looks as if in countries such as the UK lockdowns may have impeded the epidemic’s spread from its original centre to regional metropolitan centres, where the epidemic is growing now that young people in particular no longer fear COVID-19 much. Nevertheless, serious illness and deaths remain rare in the UK; in recent weeks only 1% of death certificates have any mention of COVID-19[7].
Returning to the T-cell immunity issue, the BMJ article further comments:
The immunologists I spoke to agreed that T cells could be a key factor that explains why places like New York, London, and Stockholm seem to have experienced a wave of infections and no subsequent resurgence. This would be because protective levels of immunity, not measurable through serology alone but instead the result of a combination of pre-existing and newly formed immune responses, could now exist in the population, preventing an epidemic rise in new infections.
Although noting that these epidemiologists added the qualification that this hypothesis is currently unproven, the article quotes Daniela Weiskopf (the senior author of the Science paper mentioned earlier) as commenting:
Right now, I think everything is a possibility; we just don’t know. The reason we’re optimistic is we have seen with other viruses where [the T cell response] actually helps you.”
As the paper says, one example is swine flu, where research has shown that people with pre-existing reactive T cells had clinically milder disease.
.
In conclusion, it is encouraging to see an article like this in an medical establishment journal like BMJ. I can only hope that epidemiologists, other scientists and modellers advising governments will now finally take seriously the issues that it raises.
Nicholas Lewis 22 September 2020
[1] Lewis, N: Why herd immunity to COVID-19 is reached much earlier than thought – update; with further update added on July 31st.
[2] For example: The academy of Medical Sciences 14 July 2020 report “Preparing for a challenging winter 2020/21” appears to rely on modelling by Professor Ferguson and colleagues from Imperial College, whose models make little allowance for population heterogeneity of susceptibility https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-preparing-for-a-challenging-winter-202021-7-july-2020
[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54234084
[4] Peter Doshi: “COVID-19: Do many people have pre-existing immunity?” BMJ 2020;370:m3563 https://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m3563
[5] https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/09/19/covid-19-does-sweden-have-herd-immunity/
[6] https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/376f9021a4c84da08de18ac597284f0c/pavisning-antikroppar-genomgangen-covid-19-blodgivare-delrapport-2.pdf The latest published estimate is 5% for week 22; it may have grown since then but based on disease incidence seems likely to have remained under 10%.
[7] https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=%2fpeoplepopulationandcommunity%2fbirthsdeathsandmarriages%2fdeaths%2fdatasets%2fweeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales%2f2020/publishedweek372020.xlsx
Originally posted here, where a pdf copy is also available
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The timing of this article couldn’t be worse. A big spike in cases has been detected in Stockholm. They are even considering introducing restrictions.
This is a major setback since there were big hopes that Stockholm was at least close to herd immunity. We’ve also got some hefty spikes across the UK which are not translating into hospital admissions.
This virus has a long, long way to go.
I do not see any “big spike in cases”. Could you point to a reference, please?
Although I live in Sweden, I do not see Swedish TV-propaganda.
Have a look at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/ and notice that case, whatever the definition is, does not show any spike until yesterday. Similarly the death toll is about 1 a day, which is sad, but there is absolutely no upward trend according to the above mentioned web page.
Carl Friis-Hansen
” … notice that case, whatever the definition is, does not show any spike until yesterday. ”
Oooops?! What about looking at this screenshot of Worldometers’ Sweden data?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ujuUdV9l3F4n8aKWix2dSZkGlJ_laKGU/view
J.-P. D.
Bindidon / J.-P. D.
Please learn to read a chart!!!!
=========================
Read very carefully what is on the X-axis (under the horizontal line).
Under that line are dates, not minutes, hours or something else.
The spike You are talking about was on June 24th 2020.
If you were trolling, then please do it in a way where we know you are, so we can have a laugh and not waste time analyzing your suggestions.
Carl Friis-Hansen
Please Mr Friis-Hansen! Keep calm / restez calme s.v.p.
I did not understand that you meant ‘no spike since then’.
Apologies.
And… thanks for the subcutaneous arrogance in
” If you were trolling, then please do it in a way where we know you are, so we can have a laugh and not waste time analyzing your suggestions. ”
Y personally would prefer you doing some useful job instead, e.g. by trying to answer my question below:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/23/herd-immunity-to-covid-19-and-pre-existing-immune-responses/#comment-3090446
How you can manage to suppose me being a troll I can’t understand.
J.-P. D.
Thanks, John Finn, for that informative link to back up your assertion that Stockholm has suffered “a major setback” regarding the Wuhan Virus.
Oh wait… it seems you didn’t provide a link to back up your assertion… That’s odd! Someone might think you’re just making things up.
You have a long, long way to go to re-establish your credibility. Good luck!
if you catch it but dont die from it and the IFR is .1-.2 max, does case count really matter other than to spread fear? move on with your life… or stay home and let others move on with theirs.
Farmer Ch E retired [September 23, 2020 at 9:54 am]
” No one seems to want to compare Sweden w/ Norway or Finland??? ”
Oh sure I want!
Here are some comparisons of Sweden with Scandinavia excluding it, i.e. Denmark, Finland and Norway (in the following ‘DFN’).
Sweden has about 10 million of inhabitants, DFM has in the sum 15; their population densities are quite similar.
1. While Sweden has a COVID mortality rate of about 560 deaths / million (the US is at over 600), DFN accounts for no more than 73, i.e. about eight times less: it is way below the Globe’s average, with currently 120.
The comparison is best understood when you remember that the seasonal flu’s mortality per million is about… 20.
2. How did Sweden’s and DFN’s mortality develop over time?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10efpKI8YKLxL3sRdaEcYzc7biEYe9nwT/view
3. But this is only half the job you should do. Because it doesn not matter only to show how death tolls cumulate over time; it is important as well to show when they develop, by using daily increment information:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17-xfYmcR42njzAQtLVXkj48ohQRFRAs5/view
4. I never understood this strange interest for a Sweden allegedly doing ‘everything well’ during this pandemic (unless one is brazen enough to compare that country with e.g. New York state).
*
Case mortality, as suddenly put in front by Trump for merely political reasons, is a perfect non-sequitur: while the US and the UK are on par for both tests per million and deaths per million, their case stats per million differ by a factor of over 3, what leads UK having a case mortality of over 10 compared with 3 for the US.
Of interest is one more time the comparison with the seasonal flu, with a case mortality of 0.1 for the US!
Rgds
J.-P. D.
Bindidon,
Did Sweden do a great job at handling COVID-19 w/ 581 deaths/1M pop?
I would rather live in the next-door neighboring country of Finland (62 deaths/1M pop) or Norway (49 deaths/1M pop). They share borders w/ Sweden whereas Denmark does not. Denmark (111 deaths/1M pop) shares a boarder w/ Germany (113 deaths/1M pop).
(worldometers.info 9/22/20)
The 20 year old Öresund bridge linking Sweden to Denmark is cause for major problems.
unlike sweeden, those other countries had lockdowns and mask mandates…. some are locking down again because case loads are up (not sure why but if u never built up herd immunity then deaths will likely happen). sweeden did have a much higher death toll than their neighboring countries… but most were elderly.. like nearly 90% of all deaths were 70+.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1107913/number-of-coronavirus-deaths-in-sweden-by-age-groups/
. the point is the godless country of sweeden appears to base their decision on science more than other countries did…. and they were right all along. if you’re not sick and elderly, covid was a nothing burger even lower IFR than flu/pneumonia if your under 50.. the lockdown and mask madness are abhorrent abuses of power… and the sheep wear the diapers on their faces with pride.
goracle – straw man argument doesn’t address why Finland & Norway have done an order of magnitude better to date. While visiting Japan a few years ago, I was surprised to see many residents wearing masks. There must be some benefit even w/o our mild pandemic.
“the point is the godless country of sweeden appears to base their decision on science more than other countries did”
In some respects I agree. If the US would have continued to allow the use of HCQ/zinc (based on science), 10s of thousands would still be alive. What I’ve observed is that when Judeo-Christian values are thrown out the window, science becomes a tool for achieving more power.
farmer, stop eating the straw you grow… it effects your thinking. I’ve already said Norway and finland did much better regarding death count than sweeden…. because lockdowns and masks…. and now reopening are being delayed again because infection hotspots due to lack of herd immunity…
as for japan, if lockdowns and masks worked, why the 2nd spike? strawman, admit it, you’re wrong, lockdowns and masks were wrong decision,
as for Christian values, here in USA we’ve reached the point of no return IMO… it’s either revival of Christian values or into the trash heap of history we go.
Goracle- thanks for reply. Regarding Japan, their use of masks, & a 2nd rebound- they must be doing something right as their C-19 reported deaths are less than 2% that of the USA despite their higher population density.
As for Christian values, we are in agreement.
Reported deaths should be “deaths/1M pop”
I always read Nic Lewis articles, and I find he is very good at pulling apart those that get statistics wrong.
Not sure about this. I get the feeling none of the statistical models have any resemblance to reality, so just because the statistical models all appear rubbish it really doesn’t answer the question of “what shall we do?”
Experienced hard nosed Medics I know, who work on the frontline, have never seen anything like it, and are scared stiff, so how do you model something like that!
Historical precedent exists, the 2nd wave always kills more than the first wave.
What exactly are they scared about? Fear has a way of feeding on itself. I’m pretty sure that doctors have seen stuff like this before, but I would be interested in what it is exactly that they’ve never seen before.
“Historical precedent exists, the 2nd wave always kills more than the first wave.”
Care to expand on that?
China has a 3 thousand year old culture and has been living with flu and cold viruses for quite a while. After all, many of these viruses come from China so they are habituated.
I see these comparisons between Sweden and the adjacent Nordic countries. The difference in deaths per million of population is factual but the notion that this is due to differing lockdown regimes is a supposition. Consider other pairs of adjacent countries :-
France (482 deaths per million) v Germany (113)
Spain (664) v Portugal (189)
Italy (592) v Greece (34)
and yet France, Spain and Italy have had some of the strictest and most rigorous lockdowns in Europe.
I think we should also be very wary of the so-called second wave of infections. At the height of the pandemic in late March and early April, certainly in the UK, only hospital admissions were being tested. These were genuine covid-19 cases, i.e. people who were ill. Nowadays, most tests are being carried out in the community using throat and nasal swabs which are tested using the PCR technique. If you look at the link below, you will see that the PCR test is utterly unsuitable for coronavirus testing and returns ridiculously high false positives. Even the genuine positive results are not necessarily indicative of a viable virus. The second wave is, up to this date, phoney.
It’s not surprising that so many perfectly healthy individuals are being told they have the virus and must self-isolate. For UK readers, think
David Moyes and two West Ham players
Most of Leyton Orient
Several Aberdeen players, etc
https://lockdownsceptics.org/lies-damned-lies-and-health-statistics-the-deadly-danger-of-false-positives/
What IMHO would be much more interesting than these strange herd immunity considerations, would be a really scientific evaluation of the comparison of COVID19 cases/death tolls for all Earth’s continents, together with the somewhat more special cases Western Europe and the US.
If you average the ECDC data
https://opendata.ecdc.europa.eu/covid19/casedistribution/csv
for all these parts of Earth, you obtain this:
1. Cumulated cases
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z_o7FINqnDhatBpBoQI5e1CllevSmDVN/view
2. Weekly means of daily cases
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hr6Qi4Nd8yOHsrNpzhkzwu3vpGXbjxjF/view
3. Cumulated death tolls
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LR-mCGPYTh_EUhR70YQlEM5FHUAu4zU6/view
4. Weekly means of daily death tolls
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zbvbRzRgVXATllqG7KSBcvlU0Q5cbjqS/view
How is it possible that, though statistically having had at least as many potential COVID victims, not only Oceania but also Africa and Asia keep so far below the Globe’s average, while Europe, but especially America and above all the US keep so far above?
J.-P. D.
I am amazed the entire article and all the comments apart from commieBob September 23, 2020 at 8:06 am concentrate on the Adaptive Immune System.
There is also the ‘Innate Immune System’ that just by design makes it difficult for viruses to take over the body and cause disease. For the Innate Immune System to work correctly it is essential to have the correct diet. In particular it is essential that the body is sufficient in zinc, selenium and Vitamin D. Zinc is not easily taken up by cells without the presence of a zinc ionophore. In nature these would be polyphenols such as quercetin, resveratrol, and EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate) from green tea. If there is sufficient intra-cellular zinc then viral replication is blocked as it prevents viruses taking over the cell’s RNA transcription mechanism. This blocking works with Corona Viruses, Influenza Viruses and Polio Viruses.
This was known by experiments in vitrio and cell cultures and this was published in 2010.
[See Journal.ppat.1001176 ]
Of course the most famous zinc ionophore is now Hydroxychloroquine which if taken with zinc and antibiotic at the first sign of symptoms usually cures COVID-19 in 5 days. These cures now number in the thousands and countries which are using this regimen have hugely lower ~75% hospitalization and death rates. These results were said to be ‘anecdotal’ and the medical establishment demanded clinical trials – these people knew of the paper from 2010 remember. They also persuaded governors to outlaw the prescription of HCQ. Then when the trials were run they did NOT include zinc (remember that is the active element) and were given to people that were already hospitalized and in extremis. This was deliberate.
As you will see from the paper intracellular zinc blocks many viruses from replication, viruses that currently are the raison d’être for a huge vaccination industry. In short if your innate immune system is in kept strong with zinc and zinc ionophores and together with Vitamin D3 and selenium (from Brazil nuts). Not welcome news for the industry.
Chronic COVID-19 has been in the news recently to talk up the dangers. The reason for this is that the response from doctors to a positive case of COVID-19 with symptoms is to tell them to quarantine at home with perhaps acetaminophen and call for hospitalization if things get too bad. This is the equivalent of the fire service saying call us back when the roof is well alight. By that time the SARS-CoV-2 viruses have started infecting all the endothelial cells lining blood vessels as well as the lungs. Considerable damage can be done in this stage not only to the lungs but to other vital organs such as cardiac problems, brain inflammation and multiple strokes, kidney damage, even damage to toes and testes. It may be that this damage is permanent and will not heal.
All because the medical establishment do not want people to know that a simple zinc/zinc ionophore/antibiotic treatment will cure many viral infections. Indeed, a good diet that keeps a person sufficient in zinc, zinc ionophore (fruits and vegetables), selenium and vitamin D3 will ensure that they are NOT susceptible to viral infections.
This is not new. You can find support for this by simple searches on the internet.
The fact is that just by ensuring the population has a diet that provides sufficiency in easily available minerals and vitamins this pandemic could have fizzled out. Those people that did become sick could have been easily treated as outpatients.
Someone needs to explain why that was not the case.
With your permission, I would like to post this to other forums. I will attribute it to you using your WUWT handle.
I have no problem with any reposts David
Given the recent Spanish study, I am gobsmacked that the authorities aren’t embracing Vitamin D supplements and therapy.
As you say, it looks deliberate.
What other reason could there be?
Boils down politics and power. Pretty much all things do. Government is a disease masquerading as a cure.
Well. Is it a matter of – There’s your problem.
Getting your Zinc, Selenium or Vitamin D from healthy diet and sunlight.
Is it a fact that 42% of the US population is obese? Bad dietary choices.
In many western countries the obesity rate is approaching that percentage? Same bad dietary choices.
In poorer countries diet is compromised for the simple lack of funds to buy the “healthiest” food.
I’ve seen it stated that normal vaccines are much less effective in obese persons because of their tendency to have many more Ace2 receptors than “healthier” weight people. Any Sars-Cov2 vaccine is also to be much less effective for that group.
Should not the medical profession, governments and MSM be running a huge scare campaign against obesity and the need for a healthy diet instead?
” As you say, it looks deliberate. ”
Well, if that was really true, no US administration would publish an own link to the paper.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7456194/
J.-P. D.
Thank you, Ian W. This knowledge about how to protect oneself and one’s loved ones to the extent possible is summarized beautifully in your comment.
Ivermectin is also important, an even more potent virus killer (at least this virus) than zinc with its ionophore. All can be used together. All are cheap. All are proven safe – for many years.
Also as I understand it hydroxycholorquine is most important for protecting all the other body organs even if it is not the actual virus killer like zinc is. (Maybe it would lessen or limit the “long-haulers” if used early on.)
A significant level of Vit D is important, probably greater than 50. Very high doses of Vit D also is curative for pts infected with the virus.
Thank you Anthony for these excellent scientific articles.
We should be very angry at those powers who want to continue both the illness and the lowered economic development.
In addition to sharing Ian’s comment with those we care about, also see DrBeen (Dr.Mobeen) YouTube lectures for all these treatments, the research and/or doctor’s behind them, and the microbiology that explains them. Excellent, friendly, and important information.
According to the latest statistics for the USA, there have been a total of 6,985,791 “confirmed cases” of COVID-19, and 202,421 deaths from COVID-19, for an average fatality rate of 2.89%.
One problem with these values is that they are cumulative since the pandemic began in March, although new cases and new deaths have been declining steadily since about mid-July, and no hospitals anywhere in the country are “overwhelmed” with COVID-19 cases.
If we estimate the USA population at 330 million, about 2.12% of the population has been tested positive at some time since March, and 0.061% of the population has died from COVID-19 since March. But what happened to those who were tested positive in March or April or May who didn’t die? Have they completely recovered? Are they now immune?
There’s also been some discussion of false positives in testing, since the method used attempts to replicate fragments of DNA to “amplify” their concentration a thousand or a million-fold to help with detection. However, discovering a fragment of viral DNA in someone’s blood or nasal sample doesn’t mean there are active viruses–the person could have had a few viruses that were killed by the body’s immune system, and a few dead fragments remain. Such a person would be asymptomatic and unable to spread the disease to others.
It has been estimated that about 3% of the people tested are false positives, who are diagnosed as positive without any real disease. The percentage of tests which come back positive varies by state, but generally between 6% and 10%, meaning that 30% to 50% of “positive” tests are false positives, and the actual infection rate (contagious carriers) is much lower than 2.12% of the population. Adding in the fact that some people who tested positive months ago (and survived) are no longer contagious, and there may be less than a 1% chance that some random person you meet has COVID-19.
We also find out that the median age of people who die from COVID-19 is about 80 years old, which is close to the average life expectancy. With an average life expectancy of 80 years, one would expect about 1.25% of the population to die (of all causes) in a given year. So, if 0.061% of the population died from COVID-19 in six months, that represents about a 10% increase in the overall death rate from all causes.
With this knowledge, do continued lockdowns make any sense whatsoever? Since the effects of COVID-19 are more serious in older people than younger people, wouldn’t it make more sense to have elderly people (most of whom are retired) stay at home, and have younger, COVID-negative people take care of their daily needs, while the rest of the population goes back to work and school and life as usual?
If you take any large city, even where the handling of COVID-19 was poor. The actual numbers infected are usually 5% or less. As I say above this is because people with a good innate immunity due to diet and fitness cannot get infected.
Take London for an example, the SARS-CoV-2 virus probably arrived in London sometime around January. At that time the London underground was handing 5million passenger journeys a day. London buses similar numbers. Anyone who has been in London during rush hour knows how crowded together passengers are and none wearing masks. This from January through to the mid-March lockdown. If everyone was susceptible to the virus the numbers sick should have been in millions. It was not. Nor were those the numbers in Wuhan a city of comparable size, nor were they the numbers in New York City, or Los Angeles. Everywhere that there should have been a huge infection rate there was not. Only around 5% were infected. This is what got me looking at innate immunity.
There was a lot from hospital doctors that people sufficient in vitamin D were not turning up in ICU and the level of sufficiency seemed to be directly proportional to the disease severity.
I then found research on the web published by NIH in 2005 that showed that chloroquine stopped Corona Virus replication. It seemed to me there was no need to panic over the pandemic as cheap treatment – zinc/hydroxychloroquine/antibiotic given at first symptoms or contact with an infected patient would cure the infection in a week. I was saying this to people in February 2020.
Then Trump mentioned that hydroxychloroquine showed promise as a treatment and immediately talking heads (normally those that hadn’t hands-on-treated a patient in decades) started claiming all sorts of problems with HCQ. All the side effects that they started claiming are known now to be symptoms of COVID-19. The virus will infect any cells with the ACE-2 receptor. All the blood vessel endothelial cells can be infected all over the body, so any organ with a blood supply may get damaged. These symptoms only occur after around 10 days of untreated infection.
Alongside the howling from media talking heads, the FDA/NIH ‘experts’ called all the claims of cures using HCQ/zinc ‘anecdotal’ it could not be sanctioned as a treatment until there had been a clinical trial. Clinical trials were set up most of them not including zinc (the main antiviral) and most in hospitals given to severely ill patients rather than as a first course of action with an outpatient.
I have set up formal trials many times – that level of ineptitude in setting up the clinical trials for HCQ/Zinc had to be deliberate.
There was also a affected lack of understanding of the side-effects of COVID-19 even web pages like WebMD were publishing lists of side effects of COVID-19 that these ‘professional experienced clinical researchers’ were blaming on HCQ. All the publicity was about HCQ and that they were testing HCQ. Whereas ‘all’ HCQ was doing was acting as a zinc ionophore to raise the level of intracellular zinc. Zinc has to be added to the regimen as most people are insufficient in zinc in their diet (especially if they have been on hospital food for a week or so). So the repeated talking of HCQ clinical trials was a deliberate bait and switch.
My question then was – “Why are these ‘professional medical researchers’ not using zinc in the clinical trials?”. I then found another 10 year old paper that said that zinc with a zinc ionophore blocks RNA virus replication . not only Corona Virus but also others like Influenza and Polio.
“Zn(2+) inhibits coronavirus and arterivirus RNA polymerase activity in vitro and zinc ionophores block the replication of these viruses in cell culture” [DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1001176 ]
This paper was published by the NIH. So they knew that intracellular zinc would prevent viral replication a decade ago. Perhaps the idea that influenza and polio can be blocked by a simple diet change might cause a monetary loss to a vaccine industry.
So what we see now in the USA and some other countries is an approach to COVID that does NOT treat patients when a $25 cure works in a week. Instead the patients are told to go home with acetaminophen and if things get too bad go to the hospital. Needless to say it is this untreated wait in which the virus can propagate all around the body that causes what is now called chronic COVID and also all the organ damage.
I am left with a very poor view of the medical profession particularly the medical bureaucrats. The intent seems to be to want to profit from vaccines not cure patients. Clinical trials are deliberately set up to fail. The metrology (metrics) being used is being deliberately sullied by venal attempts to get more money so every death is COVID even if it is a motorbike accident. It is now not possible to calculate IFR/CFR and other figures as a positive test is called a ‘case’ even symptomless and probably a false positive as the PCR amplification is set to as high as 45. And the deaths are always recorded as COVID if the patient has ever had a positive test. The fiddled figures are then put into graphs that [like climate change graphs] have a stretched Y axis to look scary and are then fed to innumerate politicians.
Any one of the points above would be suspicious – having them all in a sequence……raises issues that need to be discussed. But then if social media is used to discuss these them, as ‘the front line doctors’ found, that discussion can be removed from the web and social media globally inside a few minutes with Twitter, Facebook and Google all acting in concert.
One of the ‘Front Line doctors’ has assessed that 75% of patients that died of COVID could have been cured using the zinc/zinc ionophore/antibiotic regimen. You can imagine her frustration. That is a lot of people dead. Figures for countries that do use the protocol are startlingly better than USA or UK.
Sufficiency in Zinc, Vitamin D3, Selenium and a diet that includes a zinc ionophore such as quercetin or EGCG and you will join the majority of unsusceptibles – not only for COVID but for a swathe of other viral infections. It is your innate immune system feed it well.
Face it kids, China’s Gift to the World came in, harvested all the terminally ill and then ran out of things to do.
Since then many of us have caught it without realising, and, not being terminally ill, are still alive.
In the coming months far from seeing a second wave we are very likely to see the ‘Excess Deaths’ drop below the national average lines and remain there for several months.
I dispute we are seeing Herd Immunity in the sense the virus can no longer spread. I put to you the virus is happily spreading in a largely uncontrolled manner and we are seeing a drop in hospitalisations and deaths because, as mentioned earlier, we are running out of terminally ill elderly victims.
Intentional Self Harm deaths on the other hand will continue to grow for months.
WuFlu stopped being a medical issue back in March. Since then it is political.
I suspect you are right Craig 🙁
Denmark is now having more cases than they had during the peak in April.
This doesn’t seem to have much influence on mortality though.
Finland sees much the same tendency and are going to close the border to Sweden – again.
Sweden is still not seeing any significant increase.
My opinion: Sweden is unlikely to see any issues before the winter sets in, where cold, flue and Wuhan usually get a better bite.
Here’s Dr. Atlas saying the same thing as Nic’s article, with the same references…Hmmm…..
https://dailycaller.com/2020/09/23/scott-atlas-peter-alexander-coronavirus-robert-redfield/
I went and read the BJM piece and I wondered after reading it if “The Vaccine” might not have been among us the whole time. If, in fact, it could be established that exposure to Coronavirus colds imparts not immunity but resistance to SARS Cov2, then could infection by a relatively benign Coronavirus cold be a way to prevent or at least minimize serious cases? If we really feared Covid19 that much, then perhaps an intentional infection with one of the cold-inducing Coronaviruses could provide the resistance needed to prevent serious infection in persons with preexisting conditions.
Probably completely unworkable from a public health perspective (mostly because a coronavirus cold may be enough to kill many of those dying of Covid 19 – in my home state of SC the median age of death is 78, a year older than the average life expectancy of 77!), but it might make a great plot for a fiction piece . . . hmmmmm.
Though I call myself a Chemist, I studied much T-Cell immunology for my PhD at the turn of the century, including a lot of work by Alessandro Sette. (Delighted he is still going.)
As something of a scientific ‘outsider’, like my supervisor before me, I was struck by immunologists focus on B-Cell immunolopgy and antibody production in cases where the T Cell response was known to be of critical importance.
I suspect that that is largely because the effector molecules of the B Cell response (ie antibodies) are so much easier to measure. It is a classical example of the drunk found searching for his car keys under the street lamp when he actually dropped them some distance away. When asked why he was searching there, the reply was that “that is where the light is” even though he knew that it was an almost forlorn task to search there instead of where he was actually more likely to find them.