2020-04-18

If Caswell is right then antibodies would not show up in 50% of the population even though they have been exposed to the virus. Is there any chance of finding an epidemiologist or three to comment on his hypothesis and conjectures? They seem very promising in explaining emerging data but do any epidemiologists think they’re plausible? I hope yes.

Different types of immune response. See my full comment.

Awesome work. Thank you Toby. Please keep going.

Unfortunately the Charles de Gaulle ship saw nearly a 60% infection rate: https://www.lefigaro.fr/international/coronavirus-bilan-definitif-de-1046-cas-sur-le-charles-de-gaulle-20200418
So the Caswell theory is out

“Près de 50% des cas sont asymptomatiques. Entre 20 et 30 marins sont actuellement hospitalisés, selon les jours, et un major d’une cinquantaine d’années est en réanimation.” Quoting from said article.

His model does allow for higher infection rate in some contexts eg high population density with high interaction, such as on a naval vessel. He includes weaker forms of resistance than antibody immunity that will be overcome in certain conditions. So it’s not invalidated by this data, but it obviously needs to account for it. In my view the model needs to be looked at by an epidemiologist or two to give an idea whether from their point of view its assumptions are plausible.

At last – someone has noticed – and has been brave enough to publish – the observation that many counties on the infamous exponential death curve graph are following almost identical trajectories – regardless of the domestic measures taken.

Further, the possibility that the virus might actually burn itself out after eight or so weeks is something we should be paying close attention to.

The idea that we are all going to live in a world of semi-permanent distancing until a vaccine is ready is fanciful. By that time those that haven’t starved to death or been killed by previously very treatable medical conditions, will have lost the will to live anyway.

My argument for a while has been the only way to “protect the NHS” is a dead population – from starvation, suicide or dying at home from heart attacks or strokes.

Well said.

When the economy crashes will those affected be able to sue the experts who have been advising the government?

Thank you – this website is a godsend.

It’s horrifying and I wonder who answered the poll. On twitter there’s a heavy cohort of indefinite stay-at-homers who want to live isolated ‘until a vaccine’. Elsewhere there’s growing dissent (e.g., https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism which has gone from a few hundred to over 3k subscribers in just over a week).

Re: the petition: “We’re checking this petition.
5 people have already supported Robert Kok’s petition.

We need to check it meets the petition standards before we publish it.

Please try again in a few days.”

I’m pretty sure other similar petitions have got as far as 5 signatures and then been denied. Hopefully this one goes through. Please link to it again here and/or on Twitter if it goes live!

I don’t want to appear overly sceptical or cynical but I wondered about the petition too and why I couldn’t sign it.

Interestingly the petition has been removed from the Parliament website…

I’ve never considered protesting once in my life. I’ve always dismissed it as a component in the illusion of freedom, giving those who partake the illusion of choice.
But even that illusion has been forcibly removed, and now I feel compelled to engage in some kind of protest. I’m so ashamed of my countrymen. I simply cannot associate with them anymore. What an earth can be done? Where is everybody?

Totally agree. Seems to have been a collective loss of backbone and rationality!

Anyone read this. Thoughts?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/16/sweden-has-shown-not-tackle-coronavirus-fights-now-save-face/

Locked down Denmark is easing restrictions, moving towards the Swedish regime rather than vice versa. Illuminating:

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-denmark/denmark-to-ease-restrictions-next-week-after-coronavirus-lockdown-idUKKBN21O2LD

I read your article in the Telegraph today and agree. I don’t wish ill on anyone but am shocked at how the government could impose on us what amounts to a police state overnight with little or no opposition. These measures, and the complete lack of focus on more usual (but just as serious) health issues will cause us all more problems in the long run than Covid19. Glad to have finally found a place where people are dissenting from the official madness.

It’s not really correct to speak of weaker immunity. The first response of the immune system to an invading pathogen is mediated by what’s called innate immunity. Innate immunity is not pathogen-specific. It is a range of bodily defences that include local inflammation, fever and the engagement of cells called Natural Killer Cells to literally consume the pathogen – as well as others I won’t go into. It’s complex!

Healthy young people and adults under ~40 seem to be able to see off the virus with just their innate immunity. This is good, it means the virus didn’t present much of a threat to them. They don’t have antibodies only because they didn’t need to produce them. They are not “immune” in the antibody sense, but they aren’t particularly vulnerable either.

If the innate immune system doesn’t defeat the pathogen, that’s when the adaptive immune system kicks in and the chain of events that leads to antibody production is kicked off.

Hope that helps.

Thanks that’s very helpful (do you have a medical background? You seem very knowledgeable). If a large proportion of the population are fending off the virus in this way (in most contexts, clearly not on the Charles de Gaulle) then it would explain the low infection rates and antibody rates we are seeing in most of the surveys. It would also mean aiming for herd immunity defined in terms 60% having antibodies is completely the wrong aim and government policy needs to be urgently recalibrated to reflect this, recognising the large role played by innate immunity.

I’m a healthcare professional in general practice, I have medical training but I’m not an expert.

Commend your website and work Toby. The Dutch figures though may actually support aspects of the points being made in the other studies cited. If 3% of the Dutch population has antibodies and is presumed to be have been infected, that adds approximately 514,000 to the total infections. And the fatality rate plummets considerably with 3601 deaths for 545,000 infections (adding the 3% to today’s count of total cases in the Netherlands, not quite right due to the time lag, but serves as an approximation) rather than 3601 deaths for 31,589 cases. Am in Sri Lanka under “curfew”, and a Dutch mate was cheering this finding on the above basis.

Good work Toby – really appreciated. Hope that petition goes through very soon.

My problem with the lockdown is that what we are told to do is actually wrong and is making the situation worse. Stay at home and stay indoors simply spreads the disease as it transmits by attaching itself to surfaces to be picked up by us. Unlike other diseases like malaria, it is not transmitting through the air. Surely, therefore, we should be encouraged to be outside in the fresh air where the chances of picking it up, if social distancing is maintained, is tiny. The message should be ‘stay near home, get in the fresh air as much as possible, with social distancing, and if you have to be indoors, open the windows to let fresh air circulate’. Did we learn nothing from the cruise ships? Confining people to air-conditioned cabins simply spread the virus like wildfire, yet ships who encouraged passengers to be out on deck or on their balconies avoided the disease! And now we are making the same mistake with care homes – is it any surprise that our infection and death rates are so high?

The Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine has now officially revised it’s estimation of the Covid infection fatality rate to 0.1 – 0.36%

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/

The petition is ‘not available’….

I seriously doubt that NHS workers are healthier than the rest of the population. NHS doctors are known to have higher rates of alcohol consumption.