There are many studies released under the WHO banner. This is just facilitating publication, not an endorsement. Iâm not suggesting they are universally saying one thing but that was their consensus statement that I found on the website earlier which I will dig up.
That study you posted seems very flawed. It relies on lots of low quality data and an awful lot of general extrapolation. Really it should just have concluded that the data is very different. Adding Qatarâs 0.01 with Italyâs 1.33 as inputs to an average seems like a giant leap.
The author seems to have a bit of a reputation for poor quality papers. The peer reviews of this paper are interesting, e.g.
And thatâs not to say your man is wrong but in my opinion thatâs the type of âstudyâ that takes a couple of hours on Excel and a whole lot of leaping to conclusions based on a large assumption on infection rates.
And as an FYI, Ferguson and his team (which many western countries relied on) used flight data from Wuhan to estimate theirs. It was a very low sample size.
My criticism of introducing level 5 at the time they did was they didnât stick to their own framework for living with covid. The whole point of level 3 is to reduce the r number, so either they didnât introduce level 3 quick enough, or they didnât convey the sense of urgency for compliance with level 2 or 3. Level 3 should be enough to get the r rate down relative to ICU capacity for 2 or 3 weeks with relevant compliance to the restrictions.
Only speaking from my own point of view but I had seen a complacency towards restrictions in level 2 where I live, including myself in that.
Itâs a long hard game. I personally think another week or two in level 3 with a very strong messaging to say if we donât do this we wonât have Christmas etc. Now theyâd have taken a lot of shit for âscaremongeringâ, but they are taking a lot of shit whatever decision they make anyway.
Again that is easy for me to say, because if it goes South, I wonât have the extra deaths attributed to my actions, but I think a massive stray from the framework was unnecessary as a slight reduction in the r rate through proper compliance with level 3 was achievable.
To be clear, because I probably wasnât earlier, there are countless reports with very different conclusions on death rates. Iâm not saying this is correct, but nor is the study saying itâs harmless likely to be correct either.
Iâm not saying it is 50X flu or likely to be. But I donât think itâs in any way clear cut to suggest itâs the same as the flu or to muddy the waters on the death rate by talking about median ages etc.
They are separate arguments that people jump to when they canât assert that there is no increased mortality.
the comparisons to previous flu death rates are meaningless, in the extreme and serve no purpose other than to push a false/dangerous narrative.
Any of the deaths from previous flu seasons have been the upper limit of that particular season, there are no mitigation attempts at the flu other than vaccines, so the death rate for that particular flu for that particular season is the highest it could be.
With covid 19, the death rate is the lower limit that it could have been, as we donât have a vaccine and we are doing absolutely everything in our power, relative to trying to balance other areas of life to keep the incidence down. So despite all the restrictions, almost globally to keep the incidence down and is still higher than or equal to the worst case flu (previous seasons), the death rate is kept to itâs lowest possible limit, with a gargantuan effort to keep it there.
it will drop the r number faster. Itâs all about limiting contacts. People gather in retail etc. They are going for a hard and fast approach to slow the R. It will have the same impact but quicker (in theory), and they have the previous results from level 5 which was successful in terms of it achieved what they wanted it to achieve.
I think another couple of weeks at level 3, with the caveat that there was full compliance could have gotten the r number down to manageable levels, but again, itâs easy for me to say that as I donât have to live with the consequences of it going wrong.
you can look at all cause mortality for flu seasons to get a comparable number. All cause mortality is the number most of the experts are looking at to get retrospective understanding of the impact of covid.