Professor Robert Clancy on the World Beyond the Covid Lockdowns By Brian Simpson

Robert Clancy is Emeritus Professor of Pathology at the University of Newcastle Medical School, and a member of the Australian Academy of Science’s COVID-19 Expert Database. In the second of two vitally important essays in Quadrant, a journal to be praised for being one of the few Australian mainstream media journals to raise critical concerns about the Covid “consensus,” Professor Clancy discusses life beyond the lockdowns, and how it is not possible to vaccinate our way out of this. On the horizon, for example is the Lambda variant, identified in Peru in early April. It has been isolated in twenty-nine countries by July 2021. Lambda has enhanced viral infectivity, and is resistance to current vaccines. When it arrives the Australian response will be back to the drawing board, and so on forever as ever-new variants of Covid arrive. Not to say other diseases that will arise, by nature, or by use as bioweapons.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2021/10/covid-strategy-beyond-lockdown/

“Lockdown fever” has crept into our lexicon with its destructive effect on the fabric of our lives. We are assured this is but a temporary measure and the only way to keep our community “Covid-free” until the vaccine uptake reaches the magical figures of 70 to 80 per cent. Then what? Does it mean the end of Covid-19, or a new way of life? The Doherty Institute’s “modelling” informed the government’s decision to plan an end to lockdowns and an opening of our national border. It appears to be basic modelling with limited incorporation of variables. What it does not do is provide a vision of how Australia will “look” once 80 per cent is achieved.

It is not surprising that “modelling” for Covid, indeed modelling for any complex multifactorial event, has a poor record. A great imponderable with Covid is the unpredictable appearance and impact of mutant variants that can change the pace of disease by being more aggressive, more transmissible, and/or more resistant to vaccine protection. The current “third wave” is due to the Delta variant out of India, which delays the host immune response, enabling a higher viral load and greater infectivity. This is similar to the influenza variant which caused the second wave of Spanish flu in 1919 and led to secondary bacterial infection. The Delta variant also stresses waning vaccine immunity but is less lethal than earlier variants. The Lambda variant, identified in Peru in early April, has been isolated in twenty-nine countries by July 2021. It has enhanced viral infectivity, and resistance to current vaccines. We await its arrival.

While the pandemic has raged across the northern hemisphere over the last twenty months, Australia has remained relatively free of Covid due to its maritime border and efficient public health controls, as it did in 1919 when faced with the Spanish flu. In the US there have been 36 million cases and 630,000 deaths and in the UK 6 million cases and 130,000 deaths. Over the same period Australia has reported 35,000 cases with just over 1000 deaths. While a cause for concern, this is low compared to most countries. There is now a loss of synchrony with many trading partners, who are hesitantly moving to “business as usual”, while we have created a “bubble” to keep us “Covid-free” with strict border controls, quality “test and isolate” public health measures and “lockdowns”. The success of these methods comes with increasing human and economic cost and distancing from the rest of the world.

This article discusses three difficult but important questions related to our future with COVID-19. First, what does “escape from the bubble” actually mean? Does it mean we return to a pre-Covid world? Second, what is the path to the “escape”? Third, how can we retain this freedom?

Much can be learnt from the experiences of countries attempting to move on from Covid restrictions. While none are quite the same as Australia, a review of four countries can contribute general principles that shed light on a future Australian experience. Key characteristics related to Covid exit in the UK, Israel, Sweden and Iceland are summarised in the table on the next page.

Each of these four countries has experienced three waves of Covid infection, although with different profiles. The shapes of these profiles likely reflect differences in national management strategies. Critical is an understanding that the third or “July-August” wave of infections is due almost entirely to the Delta variant. The following observations can be made:

♦ The UK and Israel had similar levels of infection, although Israel had fewer deaths. Both countries had high vaccination levels (Israel used Pfizer vaccine; the UK used both Pfizer and AstraZeneca). During the third wave both countries experienced similar high infection rates but with few deaths and less hospitalisation. In both countries those infected irrespective of their vaccination status have been a source of transmission. In Israel, protection waned against mild to moderate disease following vaccination, with little protection at six months, although protection against severe disease remained at 85 to 90 per cent.

♦ Sweden had a more liberal approach to community control, with avoidance of lockdowns. The discrete infection peaks seen in countries using extensive lockdowns were absent. Swedish epidemiologists called this a “front-end loaded” pattern as infections in the “third wave” are lower. This is a level of herd immunity, following both infection and vaccination, and is consistent with emerging evidence that post-infection immunity is broader and more durable than that following vaccination. It is tempting to suggest that natural immunity has an inverse relationship to lockdowns, which are considered by Swedish epidemiologists as “simply buying time”.

♦ The experience in Iceland bears comparison to Australia, as both are islands attempting to be Covid-free. Points of difference are Iceland’s early high-level vaccination rate and a more porous maritime border. Iceland’s tracking data is between that of Australia and Sweden. Iceland’s “third wave” experience is characterised by a high case rate with few deaths.

♦ Normalised to a population of 10 million, the current seven-day averages for Israel and the UK are about 6000 per 10 million population, with about twenty deaths—a six-fold increase over current New South Wales numbers. Both Israel and the UK have vaccination rates of 60 per cent and rising—considerably above Australia. Iceland is overloading its health system with case numbers of 3000 per 10 million, but with no deaths. Sweden is ahead of the game with a flattened “third curve” attributed by their epidemiologists to a high natural immunity from their “front-end loaded” strategy.

The experiences of these four countries recovering their international relationships provide poignant scenarios for Australia. Vaccines will reduce severe disease but with little impact on the number of infections. There will be high rates of mild-to-moderate Covid, with transmission from vaccinated and non-vaccinated subjects causing considerable pressure on our health services. With seven-day averages of 730 infections at the time of writing and three deaths during the current New South Wales outbreak, and with these numbers continuing upwards despite a lockdown in excess of eight weeks, the idea of a Covid-free society is over for Australia.

It is likely that Australia will continue with significant numbers of Covid cases until the end of the year when an 80 per cent vaccination rate is expected. Greater movement within and outside Australia will be associated with more cases. This was seen in Europe and Israel, when greater movement of people occurred early in the northern summer. As there is near zero natural immunity to Covid in Australia, continued border controls and quarantine of those infected will continue, although screening of asymptomatic subjects may well be stopped. Given current “normalised” New South Wales numbers of 1200 per 10 million are stressing health systems (although low compared with six times that number recorded in “opened UK”), strategies to complement vaccine protection are urgently needed. Waning post-vaccine immunity will exacerbate infection numbers and virus transmission in early 2022. As the pandemic evolves, the virus likely will adapt to its niche in the community, with a loss of its destructive power. The future use of vaccines is discussed below, but current experimentation with “booster” shots has little appeal on efficacy or safety grounds.

As borders are relaxed and international travel is resumed, the only logical and science-based way to reinforce vaccine protection is to adopt widespread use of re-positioned drug therapy.

The roadmap for “escape”, as modelled by the Doherty Institute, anticipates transition to Phase B in late 2021 with minimal serious disease and hospitalisation requiring light social restrictions. Phase C is a consolidation period, prior to Phase D, when border restrictions are modified during the first half of 2022. Although this modelling was based on the Delta strain, it was released before the July-August third wave swept into Australia. The government strategy of accelerated vaccination and enforced lockdowns until achieving 80 per cent vaccination is already a rocky one.

Five months after receiving the Pfizer vaccine, protection in Israel against mild-to-moderate disease was only 15 per cent. The unpredictable nature of new variants leads to an increasing realisation that a Covid-free community in Australia will not happen without draconian and continued lockdowns. There is an immediate need for early drug therapy to complement the vaccine program.”

Professor Clancy then goes on to give an outline of the available drugs that he has discussed in more depth in a previous Quadrant article. He then goes on to make criticisms of the mRNA vaccines, which is similar to the objections we have been documenting at this blog from other sources. The death statistics cited below are now much worse.

“The current experimental genetic vaccines were introduced purportedly due to the need for speed to develop vaccines in a crisis. They are a basis for “escaping the bubble”, but are not a long-term answer. They produce uncontrolled amounts of spike protein which appear to be linked to a range of adverse effects including death. The reported mortality rates, in excess of thirty per million vaccinations, across agencies in the northern hemisphere, is unacceptable in the longer term. For context, the highest reported number of deaths linked to an influenza vaccine was one per million, which led to its withdrawal. Current reports to VAERS (the US government reporting agency) of post Covid-vaccine deaths at 13,000 (or 65 per million vaccinated) is a concerning signal of toxicity. Adverse events are known to be under-reported and can be coincidental to the vaccine. Deaths temporally associated with Covid vaccines have been analysed by “rules of causation” and post-mortem studies concluding that vaccination may contribute to death in between 40 and 80 per cent of reports. Mechanisms appear to involve immune-mediated damage of host cells expressing spike protein. Subsequent vaccination or natural infection could initiate serious inflammation.

That genetic vaccines are in unknown territory is reflected in warnings from scientists, including Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier, identifying possible long-term outcomes that need study. They point to antibody-enhanced infection and emergence of variant viruses that could promote disease. Pathological outcomes raised include prion disease (including Parkinson’s disease and dementia caused by “prion sequences” within the spike protein), autoimmune disease (due to disturbed immune regulation and spike protein acting as an antigen), vascular disease due to spike protein toxicity to endothelium, and incorporation into host DNA using the cells reverse transcriptase capacity. Recent reviews that emphasise the importance of mutagenicity and transformation studies to screen for carcinogenicity are a reminder that Frank Graham, forty years ago, in Canada, showed adenovirus vectors caused “transformation” in human cells. There is simply insufficient data for long-term decisions. Basic cell research and vaccinology follow separate paths. Before long-term commitment to genetic vaccines, there is an urgent need for vaccine research to come together with mainline cell biology to give confidence on safety. Discussion of manufacturing genetic vaccines in Australia should not progress until these questions are answered.”

Instead, the governments are making these vaccines mandatory, and the universities are preventing the unvaccinated from attending campuses. It is truly a form of social psychosis, where reason has flown out of the cuckoo’s nest.