Vanadium 50 said:
Can you summarize it so we don't have to sit through a 38 minute video?
Sure. He is looking at a few things. First the shape of the case curve, and he finds them all similar in Europe and North America. It rises sharply in the beginning, reaches a peak, then tapers off to a small amount. He then looks at the shape in South America and Southern USA - it has the same sort of shape but has a second hump to it at the end, or in some cases rises slowly, then is constant for some time, then slowly tapers off - this due to no actual 'winter'. Why that is he calls the dry tinder theory. He looks at how bad the flu season was the year before and hypothesises in countries where it was weak, and not many older people died, they were 'fodder' for when the virus hit and we saw a bad spike. If it was a normal or worse season then the spike when it did hit was not as big or even smaller. Although he did not examine Australia our aged deaths are in fact 1000 down on last year at this time - and that is even with how horrid we managed our aged care homes. Last year was a bad flu season so that is consistent with his view. He also compared it in some countries to the Spanish Flu, and showed it had a much bigger spike in deaths - while Covid is bad the Spanish Flu was much worse - at least for the countries he looked at. He then looked more closely at Sweden. They took very few forced precautions, although we have no idea the amount of voluntary precautions people took. That is generally thought to be the reason for the high death rate - however Sweden had a very good flu season last year (ie not many dying) and his hypothesis is it was the dry tinder effect. Why Sweden now has a sharp fall off, as if heard immunity had been reached, when in fact not as many people were infected for heard immunity to be achieved, he attributes to t-cell immunity from previous exposure to coronavirus's that cause the common cold. Basically he thinks the pandemic is over except in a few countries where, while not quite over, soon will be. He also found no real evidence, when his tinder hypotheses was taken into account, for the effectiveness of stringent lockdowns, and other draconian measures. He also hypothesised in some countries that had a second wave it was from over-testing - people immune still had fragments of the virus in their nasal passages. As evidence he cites the death rate per case found plummeting.
That's his view. I do not agree with it for a few reasons. First, to me by not examining Australia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, other Asian Countries, and Africa he IMHO is cherry picking results. Nor is he looking at what happened in very successful Taiwan where throughout the pandemic things have been close to normal. They did not do draconian lockdowns etc but simply implemented the basics very well. Excellent tracing and quarantine is the key. Social distancing and mask wearing, while strongly encouraged, were nonetheless optional - still most did it anyway. Mandatory temperature taking on entering any building. When someone is quarantined they are randomly rung 3 or 4 times a day not just to check they are there, but to ensure everything is fine - do they need food, drugs, how is the quality of food they are getting if it is a hotel, how are the staff and other guests etc. Contrast that to Melbourne Australia where people were banging on walls, running naked in corridors, begging to be let out, and offering money and/or sex to guards, who had received no relevant training except for an hour or so on diversity. It was overseen by a number of government departments each with their own priories eg one department did a video congratulating staff for getting dates to 'guests' at the end of Ramadan. Basically a total stuff-up and responsible, with nearly 100% certainty (as found by an independent enquiry) for the entire second wave here in Australia that we are now experiencing. There were also tracing issues. Some states were doing tracing brilliantly like NSW, and others very good like Queensland where I am. But Victoria was a basket case as far as tracing went and that has only now been rectified to some extent by sending people to NSW to learn how they did it recently. Of course at the start of the pandemic every state should have got together, decided on best practice tracing and implemented a coordinated approach. That alone would have avoided border closures and other draconian measures politicians are still arguing about. Plus the horrid individual cases that occurred:
https://www.theguardian.com/austral...-wont-be-bullied-by-pm-over-border-exemptions
But Taiwan's 'partnership' approach is best of all:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/a...-the-best-model-for-coronavirus-data-tracking
IMHO the lessons we should be learning is do the basics right and the rest will follow. But there can be no slip ups, and everything, down to the last detail, must be meticulously planned. To be blunt our public service here in Aus is simply not up to it, and to add insult to injury they all got a 2% pay rise. I do not know about other countries but I suspect it was similar to Aus - the bureaucrats and associated bureaucracy were simply not up to it.
Bottom line - IMHO the 'science' of the video is of dubious value due to cherry picking and not examining how countries that did really well accomplished it.
Also I must mention, although not as yet passing appropriate trials, much more use should be made of treatments we know are safe, and perfectly legal as off-label prescriptions, because we really have nothing to loose. Those treatments are as a prophylactic (from Dr Zev Zelenco whose protocol has been adopted by a number of countries) Querectin 500mg, Vitamin C 500mg, Zinc 25mg daily - all very safe and readily available OTC. He also recommends a HCQ protocol which GP's have prescribed for years here in Aus, and know when and when not to prescribe it. But after speaking to my Rheumatologist, even though it is only used for 5 days in normal doses of 400mg, I am not convinced of its total safety eg the contraindication if you have psoriasis. However, Ivermectin is very safe, and as is now slowly being prescribed in Aus by GP's under Professor Borody's supervision. He will only give out his protocol to doctors, but it is probably similar to Dr Zev's Ivermectin protocol - two 6 mg doses day one (that is all he uses and I checked its the normal dose for a 60kg person), and all days for 5 days, 50mg Zinc and 200mq Doxycycline. The 50 mg Zinc is the only concern as long term use of more than 40mg a day interferes with copper - but for 5 days is fine. Thats it.
Thanks
Bill
