Figures of this pandemic just don’t add up
The pandemic is in its fifth month and South Africans are out on parole, dependent on the good behaviour of a virus we hardly understand. How did we get here?
Using the scant data then available from China and Italy, epidemiologists derived a mortality rate higher than the
Spanish flu of 1918-1920, the worst recorded viral pandemic in human history.
Some modellers then produced estimated fatalities so fantastic that the political elites promptly locked us all up. The most influential models proved to be wrong by factors ranging from three to 23 within the first four months of the virus.
The first whole-community testing programmes in Germany now suggest a mortality rate of only 0.3%. This, if right, is equal to a severe influenza virus.
The modellers did not take account of the regional realities, which contributed to some of the initial panic-making fatalities and ignored that Europe had an exceptionally mild two prior flu seasons, which left a large accumulated reserve of high-risk people.
Standard modelling holds that for every reported infection there are 10 unreported. Again, 77% of Covid-19 victims have underlying severe conditions, or comorbidities. The concept of excess mortality seeks to distinguish those who die from a disease as opposed to those who merely die with it.
Stripping out best estimated comorbidities from the current Covid-19 fatalities, and using the expanded infection numbers, we find that across a sample of 10 high and low fatality Covid-19 countries, the infection fatality rate is in a remarkably consistent spread of 0.1% to 0.4%. It thus ranges in severity from a normal to a severe influenza pandemic equal to the Asian flu of 1956-1958 or the Hong Kong flu of 1968/1969. Neither caused the world to shut up shop.
Covid-19, as at end-April, and with fatalities in decline across the northern hemisphere, did not even make it to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO’s) top 10 killer diseases in the first four months of its existence or compare with war dead over five years, or road accidents. It just beats murder.
It is only now competing with the estimated 290,000 to 650,000 annual deaths from influenza-related causes.
Covid-19 fatalities account for
0.38% of total average annual global fatalities and 0.08% if one uses excess mortality numbers.
The proponents of the severe lockdown claim the lower than expected mortality numbers were because of the lockdowns. Yet most of the lockdowns occurred near or after the virus peak. Sweden, which did not lock down, has lower fatalities than many severe lockdown countries.
Recent research by professor Isaac Ben-Israel, chair of Israel’s National Council for Research and Development, suggests that lockdowns and social distancing are irrelevant. The virus follows the same life cycle and trajectory.
Across Europe, beds created and staffed at enormous cost stand waiting for patients who never arrive. The UK had a 40% vacancy of ordinary intensive-care beds over Easter.
Here is the scary thought: five months into the virus, we sit with squabbling scientists and as yet no credible scientific evidence to justify locking down.
An inquiry by the European parliament into the swine flu fiasco of 2009 produced a report that reads like the business plan for Covid-19. It found the pandemic had been plagued with exaggeration, inaccurate modelling, incorrect use of the word “pandemic”, failure to modify assessments on the basis of new facts, dubious links between the WHO and pharmaceutical companies and inflated fatality counting.
Swine flu started with a mortality rate of 0.5% and ended at 0.05%. The WHO fatality number was 18,449. By the time the modellers had finished it was between 151,700 to 575,400.
The extra numbers came from “surveillance modelling” in Africa and Asia. From such guesswork the WHO expects 190,000 Covid-19 fatalities this winter. In the bitterly political world of pandemics, statistics are always the first casualty.
The pandemic had been plagued with exaggeration, inaccurate modelling