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Seven are now infected after 'Amy Coney Barrett superspreader event' amid fears that it's only a matter of time before more of Trump's senior team develop COVID
- Kellyanne Conway became the seventh person to test positive for COVID Friday after the Rose Garden event
- Thom Tillis, senator for North Carolina, also tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday, his office announced
- Tillis's diagnosis came after Mike Lee, senator for Utah, on Thursday confirmed his positive result Thursday
- Both Tillis and Lee were present at Amy Coney Barrett's official nomination on Saturday in the Rose Garden
- Also present and testing positive were Donald and Melania Trump, Hope Hicks and Notre Dame president
- Coney Barrett herself has tested negative on Friday morning, despite meeting Lee on Tuesday
- Republicans have vowed to press forward with the Supreme Court nomination of Coney Barrett
- Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, chair of the Judiciary Committee, said it is 'full steam ahead'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... House.html

We are throwing the working class under the bus – an interview with Professor Martin Kulldorff


Do lockdowns work? What does it mean to "follow the science"? Professor Martin Kulldorff of Harvard Medical School discusses the costs of suppressing the virus, evidence-based approaches to public health and whether we should shift to an age-targeted strategy.

BY ALASTAIR BENN | tweet ALASTAIR_BENN / 2 OCTOBER 2020

In this interview with Reaction’s Deputy Editor Alastair Benn, Martin Kulldorff, Professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and leading figure in the field of infectious disease epidemiology, argues for an age-targeted response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lockdowns result in too much collateral damage, he argues, and impose unreasonable costs on the working class and the young in particular. He also has some fascinating comments on the uses and misuses of “the science” in the debate over public health.

...

The key feature with Covid-19 is the huge difference in mortality between the old and the young. The older people among us have more than a thousand-fold risk of death compared to the youngest among us. We have to use that in order to deal with this virus. So that means we have to protect the elderly among us and other high-risk persons while we wait for herd immunity which will either come via a vaccine or natural infections or a combination of the two.

...

The burden is primarily being put on young children who have not been able to access education. Instead of protecting the elderly and letting young people live their lives, we are protecting professionals who can work from home while older working class people, who work out in society, are getting infected and some of them are dying, even though they are at higher risk. Basically, we are throwing the working class under the bus.

...

There is an enormous difference of risk. For older people this is much worse than the annual flu. For children the risks are much less than the annual flu. This is not a dangerous disease for children. We don’t close schools because of the annual flu. We don’t ban people from driving cars because there are people who die in car accidents. We let people live normal lives with standard precautions.

...

It’s not a question of whether we choose to tolerate infectious diseases. They are a part of life and have been for thousands of years. We had pandemics in the past. We are going to have many more pandemics in the future. Instead of going into panic mode, what we have to do is look at the particular disease and respond with public health measures that minimise the deaths. We haven’t done that.

...

The burden is primarily being put on young children who have not been able to access education. Instead of protecting the elderly and letting young people live their lives, we are protecting professionals who can work from home while older working class people, who work out in society, are getting infected and some of them are dying, even though they are at higher risk. Basically, we are throwing the working class under the bus.

...

As a scientist I have worked with infectious disease outbreaks for a couple of decades. Then suddenly in the spring, I was hearing that we should “follow the science” by doing something that I think is contrary to science. That was absolutely stunning to me. I could not understand it. Maybe what happened was one or two epidemiologists would say something and then the media and politicians would fall on it and claim that that is “the science” and then one or two other scientists outside of the field of infectious disease epidemiology might agree to it.

Among my colleagues who I spoke with who are infectious disease epidemiologists, the majority are in favour of an age-targeted strategy. A minority are in favour of lockdowns and contact tracing. Those are the two different philosophies. There are many who are in favour of the age-targeted strategy like Sunetra Gupta at Oxford, Carl Heneghan at Oxford, and Francois Balloux at University College London, as well as many people in the US and other European countries.

...

AB: Worst-case scenarios extrapolated from the available data seem to have set the terms of the debate. The Imperial College Model in the UK, for example.

MK: In that model they used some input parameters. We didn’t know at that time what the correct values for those were, like the Infection Fatality Ratio (IFR). They made a guess, put that in the model, ran the simulations and something came out. But if the input parameters are a guess, then the output is also a guess. It is just sophisticated guesswork. Maybe journalists prefer to listen to scientists who are willing to make a wild guess rather than scientists who are honest about what they do not know.

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I am a native of Sweden. In the Covid-19 debate in Sweden I am a raving socialist. In the US, where I live, I am a right-wing fanatic. But it is critical in a pandemic that we keep it apolitical. As a public health scientist I have to put my own political beliefs aside. I want to get out to as many as possible the right public health message that will minimalise mortality in the population as a whole. Some scientists have failed to do that. They have been mixing their public health message with their political beliefs. That is very damaging both for our pandemic response and general trust in scientists.

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Lockdown is a new invention of 2020. Every European country had prepared pandemic plans. We knew one was going to come along. Except for Sweden, all the countries threw it out of the window when Covid-19 arrived. Of course, we don’t know the specific nature of the next pandemic so the plans have to be adjusted accordingly. But basic public health practice was ignored.

There is a difference between those who want to pursue an age-targeted approach and those who want to do a lockdown combined with testing and isolation. Testing and isolation is a very common way to deal with infectious disease outbreaks. When we had an Ebola outbreak in the US there were a few cases so we had to isolate them and then we had to check all their contacts and isolate other people. For many infectious diseases this is the right approach. But it doesn’t work for Influenza. It doesn’t work for Covid-19 or Measles before we had a vaccine. By definition, it doesn’t work in pandemics.

Maybe if you do very extreme measures and you keep lockdowns forever until there is a vaccine or a cure, then contact tracing can do a little bit on top of that. For example, that has happened in New Zealand. But that strategy does require a lockdown until we have a vaccine, which may never happen.

...

norton ash » Fri Oct 02, 2020 6:18 pm wrote:The other prerequisite is being in care at Walter Reed. They can decide if he dies or not.

BenDhyan » Sat Oct 03, 2020 7:54 pm wrote:Happy days...

• Setting: Mini Oval Office w/Flags.
  
  Appearance: Slightly disheveled, wig on straight.
  
  Wardrobe: Patriotic lapel pin, cuff links, no tie.
  
  Desk accouterments: Official Blue Notebook, files, pen.
  
  Demeanor: Look busy.

Harvey » Fri Oct 02, 2020 10:20 pm wrote:Intriguingly similar to when Borris Johnson supposedly had Covid, deaths door and all that, bouncing around a day or two after intensive care. I'm amazed it still works. I heard some people were expressing sympathy. The wonders of PR.

Dr. Fuellmich announces an International network
of lawyers will argue the biggest tort case in world history.



10/3/2020: Attorney Reiner Fuellmich presents comprehensive overview of how the fake PCR test was adopted as the standard for Covid-19 “diagnosis” and how Germany’s Green Party persuaded the German majority government to adopt talking points of deliberate fear and panic in violation of international law of crimes against humanity. Dr. Fuellmich announces that an International network of lawyers will argue the biggest tort case in world history.

Barak Ravid
@BarakRavid
Hackers broke into Sheldon Adelsin's newspaper @IsraelHayomEng twitter account and published this fake tweet about President Trump's medical condition. The tweet was quickly deleted and Israel Hayom issued a statement clarifying the tweet was fake

Climbing's Little Helper
Several near deaths on the world’s highest peaks have shed light on a dangerous trend in mountaineering: rampant use of performance-enhancing drugs, particularly the powerful steroid dexamethasone. Devon O’Neil reports on how dope is corrupting the game.
https://www.outsideonline.com/1914501/c ... tle-helper