Alternative Perspectives on the Corona-Crisis By Mrs Vera West
We have been pointing out in our coverage of the coronavirus crisis, that there are still radically divergent points of view about this, among alternative sources who we have trusted in the past. Each side of the debate has marshalled studies and authorities which are far from unreasonable. Thus, we continue to strive to give balanced coverage. First, taking the coronapocalpyse line is Natural News.com, arguing that the coronavirus is much deadlier than the seasonal flu, and would have killed millions if not for lock down:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-03-27-danger-coronavirus-10-times-more-deadly-than-influenza.html
https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-03-27-coronavirus-would-have-killed-40-million-if-the-world-didnt-go-on-lockdown.html
“A new study points out that the outbreak could have caused 40 million deaths had it not been kept in check. The study comes from Imperial College London, where researchers estimated the potential scale of the coronavirus pandemic across the globe had measures not been put in place to stop its spread. The paper appeared in the 12the report of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modeling within the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis and the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics. “Our findings suggest that all countries face a choice between intensive and costly measures to suppress transmission or risk health systems becoming rapidly overwhelmed,” said the study’s co-author Dr. Patrick Walker, a member of the faculty of medicine at Imperial College London. “However, our results highlight that rapid, decisive and collective action now will save millions of lives in the next year,” Walker added. Currently, the latest estimates show that the coronavirus has infected over 531,000 people worldwide. However, according to the study, that number could have been as high as 7 billion people — about 90 percent of the world’s population — had it remained unchecked.”
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196496/coronavirus-pandemic-could-have-caused-40/
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-Global-Impact-26-03-2020.pdf
“We estimate that in the absence of interventions, COVID-19 would have resulted in 7.0 billion infections and 40 million deaths globally this year. Mitigation strategies focussing on shielding the elderly (60% reduction in social contacts) and slowing but not interrupting transmission (40% reduction in social contacts for wider population) could reduce this burden by half, saving 20 million lives, but we predict that even in this scenario, health systems in all countries will be quickly overwhelmed. This effect is likely to be most severe in lower income settings where capacity is lowest: our mitigated scenarios lead to peak demand for critical care beds in a typical low-income setting outstripping supply by a factor of 25, in contrast to a typical high-income setting where this factor is 7. As a result, we anticipate that the true burden in low income settings pursuing mitigation strategies could be substantially higher than reflected in these estimates. Our analysis therefore suggests that healthcare demand can only be kept within manageable levels through the rapid adoption of public health measures (including testing and isolation of cases and wider social distancing measures) to suppress transmission, similar to those being adopted in many countries at the current time. If a suppression strategy is implemented early (at 0.2 deaths per 100,000 population per week) and sustained, then 38.7 million lives could be saved whilst if it is initiated when death numbers are higher (1.6 deaths per 100,000 population per week) then 30.7 million lives could be saved. Delaysin implementing strategies to suppress transmission will lead to worse outcomes and fewer lives saved. We do not consider the wider social and economic costs of suppression, which will be high and may be disproportionately so in lower income settings. Moreover, suppression strategies will need to be maintained in some manner until vaccines or effective treatments become available to avoid the risk of later epidemics. Our analysis highlights the challenging decisions faced by all governments in the coming weeks and months, but demonstrates the extent to which rapid, decisive and collective action now could save millions of lives.”
However, there is an alternative point of view, made by Trump’s man Anthony Fauci in the New England Journal of Medicine, the world’s leading establishment medical journal:
https://gellerreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Fauci_NEJM_COVID.pdf
“In another article in the Journal, Guan et al. report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.”
“Two professors of medicine at Stanford University published an opinion article Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal, suggesting there is little evidence that the coronavirus would kill millions of people without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines. “Fear of Covid-19 is based on its high estimated case fatality rate—2% to 4% of people with confirmed Covid-19 have died, according to the World Health Organization and others,” the article, headlined "Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?" and written by Dr. Eran Bendavid and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, reads. “So if 100 million Americans ultimately get the disease, two million to four million could die. We believe that estimate is deeply flawed. The true fatality rate is the portion of those infected who die, not the deaths from identified positive cases.”
The deaths from identified positive cases are “misleading” because of limited data, according to the professors. “If the number of actual infections is much larger than the number of cases—orders of magnitude larger—then the true fatality rate is much lower as well. That’s not only plausible but likely based on what we know so far,” the professors argued. The professors cited data from Iceland, China, the United States, and Italy, which is arguably the hardest-hit region when it comes to the coronavirus. “On March 6, all 3,300 people of Vò were tested, and 90 were positive, a prevalence of 2.7%,” the professors said. “Applying that prevalence to the whole province (population 955,000), which had 198 reported cases, suggests there were actually 26,000 infections at that time. That’s more than 130-fold the number of actual reported cases. Since Italy’s case fatality rate of 8% is estimated using the confirmed cases, the real fatality rate could in fact be closer to 0.06%.” The professors argued that current epidemiological models aren’t adequate for two key reasons. “First, the test used to identify cases doesn’t catch people who were infected and recovered. Second, testing rates were woefully low for a long time and typically reserved for the severely ill. Together, these facts imply that the confirmed cases are likely orders of magnitude less than the true number of infections,” it reads. Ultimately, while stressing the seriousness of the virus that has infected almost half a million people, the professors aren’t convinced a universal quarantine is the most logical course of action. “A universal quarantine may not be worth the costs it imposes on the economy, community and individual mental and physical health,” the article concluded. “We should undertake immediate steps to evaluate the empirical basis of the current lockdowns.” Co-author Bhattacharya spoke with the Washington Examiner and elaborated on the main message of the article. “The main message my colleagues and I want to get across is that the facts to date are consistent with a tremendous range of uncertainty regarding the fatality rate from COVID-19,” Bhattacharya said. “We desperately need a population-representative estimate of the seroprevalence of the disease so we can reduce that uncertainty and make better policy on the basis of our improved knowledge. Such a study would not be too expensive and is feasible to run immediately.”
https://www.theblaze.com/news/stanford_coronavirus_too_high_death
https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/26/the-scientist-whose-doomsday-pandemic-model-predicted-armageddon-just-walked-back-the-apocalyptic-predictions/
“British scientist Neil Ferguson ignited the world’s drastic response to the novel Wuhan coronavirus when he published the bombshell report predicting 2.2 million Americans and more than half a million Brits would be killed. After both the U.S. and U.K. governments effectively shut down their citizens and economies, Ferguson is walking back his doomsday scenarios. Ferguson’s report from Imperial College, which White House and other officials took seriously, said that if the U.S. and U.K. did not shut down for 18 months, and isolation measures were not taken, “we would expect a peak in mortality (daily deaths) to occur after approximately 3 months.” His “models” showed overflowing hospitals and ICU beds. “For an uncontrolled epidemic, we predict critical care bed capacity would be exceeded as early as the second week in April, with an eventual peak in ICU or critical care bed demand that is over 30 times greater than the maximum supply in both countries,” the report reads. Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, reportedly said the administration was particularly focused on the Imperial College report’s conclusion that entire households should stay in isolation for 14 days if any member suffered from COVID-19 symptoms. But after tens of thousands of restaurants, bars, and businesses closed, Ferguson is now retracting his modeling, saying he feels “reasonably confident” our health care system can cope when the predicted peak of the epidemic arrives in a few weeks. Testifying before the U.K.’s parliamentary select committee on science and technology on Wednesday, Ferguson said he now predicts U.K. deaths from the disease will not exceed 20,000, and could be much lower.”
Oh, thanks for telling us, professor. And, outside of the mainstream science establishment, there are numerous sites with articles also contesting the establishment crisis view:
https://vaccinationdecisions.net/
https://mailchi.mp/2447a2302d5e/newsletter-247-how-the-world-health-organisation-created-a-pandemic-of-a-disease?e=a42bd6abdb
On the coronavirus issue, I am still keeping an open mind but I think the skeptics will be proven right. Whatever happens, the economic consequences are sure to be worse than any disease, and in fact are a plague in themselves.
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