Doctors turn away from lockdown policy
First word
ON this fourth d ay of the lifting of the lockdown in Metro Manila and most parts of the country, it is fitting to assess how the new approach is faring from a medical perspective. It is also wise to consider how the contrary warning that easing restrictions could spike a second wave of Covid-19 infections is doing
It would be imprudent to cling to only one side of this argument. There is a lot of ground for science and public health to cover in this conversation.
Orphaned by medical science
The most significant development over the past two weeks is the fact that medical science, led by epidemiologists and physicians, have turned away from the lockdown as the go- to policy in fighting the pandemic. Many doctors in America, Europe and Asia now counsel against lockdown as a policy against Covid- 19,
The biggest convert to the nolockdown policy is clearly Dr. Anthony Fauci, the distinguished infectious diseases expert who serves as United States President Donald Trump’s chief policy adviser in the White House coronavirus task force.
Switching sides
On May 22, after months of batting for draconian measures and interventions to stop the virus, Dr. Fauci declared on US TV that he supports the reopening of the US economy.
Fauci explained on CNBC: “We can’t stay locked down for such a considerable period of time that you might do irreparable damage and have unintended consequences, including consequences for health.”
“I don’t want people to think that any of us feel that staying locked down for a prolonged period of time is the way to go,” Fauci continued. “We had to do that when we had the explosion of cases, but now is the time depending upon where you are and what your situation is, to look at reopening the economy, reopening the country to try to get back to some degree of normal.”
THE EFFECT OF FAUCI’S flIPPING OF sides was electric. US public opinion shifted quickly towards support for lifting the lockdown and reopening the US economy. Many doctors weighed in with their own considered assessment that the economic lockdown was a policy mistake.
Doctors and medical scientists have been among the most vocal in the media and online in rejecting the lockdown strategy.
The case vs lockdown
One doctor, Benjamin Turner of Canada, has summed up cogently the key arguments against the lockdown strategy.
He put it all down in an article in Epoch Times ( May 31, 2020): “It’s time we ended this disastrous policy. ”
I quote key parts of his article below: “Add my name to the list of physicians who cannot stay silent any longer. The lockdowns must end. They must end immediately and in earnest, not a slow sinking into a morass of rules so complex, illogical, and destructive of privacy as to make lockdown look enjoyable.
“In March, the argument for lockdowns was simple: SARSCoV2 is far more deadly and infectious than seasonal influenza. A drastic and legally enforced decrease in socialization will prevent the overwhelming of hospitals. The cost of these measures is not to be compared to the loss of even a single life. We now hear a supplementary argument: The death toll was less than projected, but it would have been catastrophic without lockdowns.
“Every one of these claims is either questionable or outright false. But if even one point fails, so does the case for lockdowns.
“1. SARS-CoV-2doesnothaveahighERMORTALITYRATETHANSEASONALINflUENZA.
“Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director- general of the World Health Organization, said 3.4 percent of Covid- 19 patients die, and far less than 1 percent of influenza patients. Dr. Anthony Fauci, leading member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, estimated 1 percent fatality, ‘ 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.’ But both had severely underestimated mild cases.
“Early in any epidemic, mortality is estimated as the ratio of deaths to confirmed cases; this is the case fatality ratio ( CFR). Later, we can compare deaths to all cases, including those who did not seek medical attention; this is the infection fatality ratio ( IFR). Tedros’ 3.4 percent refers to the CFR. The flu’s 0.1 to 0.2 percent is an IFR. The two must not be confused….
“2. SARS-CoV-2 is more contagious than the flu in some countries, but not bymuch.
“Prof. Neil Ferguson, director of the MRC Center for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London, and member of the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, predicted up to 81 percent transmission of SARS- CoV- 2. This has happened
nowhere, regardless of lockdown. “3. Sofar,COVID-19mortalityis SIMILARTOTHATOFSEASONALINflUENZA.
“Though this could change, the comparison to influenza is presently valid. Covid- 19 has killed many thousands, and severely strained some hospitals. But influenza does the same…
“As of May 29, Italy counted 33,229 Covid- 19 deaths, 33 percent above 2016/ 2017 flu deaths ( 24,981), but still below that year’s deaths from influenza- like illnesses in general ( 43,336). At 83,142 ( CDC provisional count), the United States is even with the 2017/ 2018 flu season, estimated contemporaneously at 80,000…
“In worse years, influenza wins, hands down. Both the 1957 and the 1968 flu killed between 1 million and 4 million. The 1968 flu killed 100,000 Americans in a population two- thirds the present size, and younger; a modern equivalent would exceed 150,000.
“4. Deaths may be badly overestimated.
“There’s good reason to doubt even the numbers above. Early in the pandemic, Prof. Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, professor emeritus and former head of the Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany, pointed out that governments were failing to distinguish between deaths ‘ of” and merely ‘ with’ SARS- CoV- 2.
“Prof. Walter Ricciardi, scientific adviser to the Italian minister of health, reports that only 12 percent of Italian ‘ Covid- 19’ deaths were directly caused by Covid- 19. The CDC encourages logging Covid19 only on suspicion, without lab evidence. On the day New York started this practice, they added 3,700 deaths, about 50 percent of the previous total….
“5. The models triggering lockdown were grossly flawed.
“Around the world, Prof. Ferguson’s model was the most influential. It forecast as many as 2,200,000 dead in the United States and 510,000 in the UK. It was released without its supporting code, which should have disqualified it immediately….
“Pro- lockdown scientists from the Uppsala University ran a Swedish model based on Ferguson’s, and predicted 80,000 to
90,000 deaths by mid- May under the present rules, and 20,000 to 30,000 under lockdown. Without any lockdown, Sweden had 3,800 deaths by mid- May, 20 times fewer than predicted….
“6. There is no evidence that lockdowns saved lives.
Even if mortality increases well PAST A BAD flU YEAR, THAT STILL WON’T make lockdowns the right solution. Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government maintains a graph of lockdown stringency and prevalence of Covid-19 in different countries, and there’s no correlation between the two.
“Dr. Carl Heneghan, director of the Center for Evidence- Based Medicine, and researchers at both Switzerland’s ETH Zurich and Germany’s Robert Koch Institute have all separately argued that the transmission rate was already decreasing before lockdowns.
“Nobel laureate and Stanford professor of structural biology Dr. Michael Levitt has shown that transmission decays at similar rates regardless of lockdown. No wonder, then, that Sweden reached peak infection at the same speed as other countries, and, as of May 31, has a lower overall death rate per million ( 435) than the UK ( 567), France ( 441), Spain ( 580), Italy ( 553), and Belgium ( 817). If lockdowns make no difference, much less will the half- lockdowns we’re now told to call ‘ normal.’
“7. Lockdownshaveprobablykilled people,buttherecessionwillkillmore.
“The UK reports about 20,000 excess deaths outside hospital, not associated with Covid-19. Emergency treatment for heart attacks is down 40 percent in England, implying that enormous numbers of people are not being treated. But widespread poverty may prove more important yet.
“Suicide, drug use, and violence all increase with unemployment. Heart disease is directly related to poverty. One shudders to think of the developing world, where the UN World Food Program estimates that 130 million more people will be pushed to the brink of starvation….
“It’s time we ended this disastrous policy, so aptly described by Dr. Bhakdi as ‘ collective suicide.’ I beg my colleagues who agree with me to break your own silence. We are already late to do our duty.”