Another highly qualified scientist voices dissent against the pandemic histeria and lockdown.
“As with all respiratory diseases the only thing that stops it is herd immunity.”
“I’m not paid by the government, so I’m entitled to actually do science.”
Professor Knut Wittkowski has headed The Rockefeller University’s Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology for 20 years. Before that he spent 15 years as researcher at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.
He says that social distancing and lockdown is the absolutely worst way to deal with an airborne respiratory virus.
“As with every respiratory disease we should protect the elder and the fragile because when they get pneumonia they have a high risk of dying.
Children do very well with these diseases, they will be exposed a lot of viruses during their lifetime, they are evolutionary “adapted” [my wording]. They should keep going to school and infect each other, that will contribute to herd immnunity. After 4 weeks they could be joining their families. As with all respiratory diseases the only thing that stops it is herd immunity.”
“For a respiratory disease, the flu ends during springtime, that people spend more time outdoors because outdoors, the viruses cannot easily spread. That is a form of containment, spending more time outdoors.”
“We are told that we shouldn’t be outdoors. But outdoors the virus can not easily spread. That is a form of containment. And we are told to stay indoor. Indoors keeps the virus healthy.”
“…what people are trying to do is flatten the curve. I don’t really know why. But, what happens is if you flatten the curve, you also prolong, to widen it, and it takes more time. And I don’t see a good reason for a respiratory disease to stay in the population longer than necessary.”
“It’s not the first coronavirus that comes out, and it won’t be the last. And for all respiratory diseases, we have the same type of an epidemic. If you leave it alone, it comes for two weeks, it peaks, and it goes for two weeks and it’s gone.”
“People are social, and even in times of social distancing, they have contacts, and any of those contacts could spread the disease. It will go slowly, and so it will not build up herd immunity, but it will happen. And it will go on forever unless we let it go.”
“We don’t have a vaccine against the common cold. We don’t have – we have some vaccines against flu, but they are not that effective. Would it be nice to have a vaccine against SARS? Yeah. It would be nice. But it would help to create herd immunity a bit faster, because those who have the vaccine are already immune, and those who don’t, they just need to be exposed to become immune.”
“There is nothing to be scared about. This is a flu epidemic like every other flu. Maybe a bit more severe, but nothing that is fundamentally different from the flus that we see in other years…
I think at least one factor is the internet. People are using the internet now much more often, and so news, wrong or false, is spreading the globe within hours, if not minutes. And so, let’s say 50 years ago, we would read in the paper that about a week ago there was an epidemic of flu in the United States or in China or somewhere else, and at that time, it was already over. So, people would say, “Okay, that happens all the time.” Now, what we read is, “Oh! There were 785 cases in the Vatican for two days” Eh, maybe not. And even if it was a reporting error, these stories are circulating the world and contributing to chaos and people being afraid of things they shouldn’t be afraid of.”
About the containment policies being implemented:
“Well, we will see maybe a total of fewer cases – that is possible. However, we will see more cases among the elderly, because we have prevented the school children from creating herd immunity. And so, in the end, we will see more death because the school children don’t die, it’s the elderly people who die, we will see more death because of this social distancing.”
“If we had herd immunity now, there couldn’t be a second wave in autumn…
The second wave is a direct consequence of social distancing.”
“We already know that the social distancing cost the US taxpayer 2 trillion dollars, in addition to everything else that it costs, but it also has severe consequences for our social life, and depression is definitely something that we will be researching. I can say for myself, walking through New York City right now is depressing.”
“We should be resisting, and we should, at least, hold our politicians responsible. We should have a discussion with our politicians.”
“If we do antibody testing, we would actually get an estimate of how close we are to herd immunity. That could be useful. But, testing for people who are infectious [current PCR tests] means they probably have already been, for two or three days, been in for half of their infectious period. Now, they are being tested positive what are they supposed to do? We are already having social distancing. They can’t do much more than they are already doing. Testing for respiratory disease is neither necessary nor effective.”
Quarantiranny – Perspectives on the Pandemic – Dr. Prof. Knut Wittkowski (2020.04.1-2)
Transcript of the interview:
https://ratical.org/PerspectivesOnPandemic-II.html
Prof Wittkowki just did an analysis of the data from the first 3 months of this epidemic and wrote an impressive paper:
The first three months of the COVID-19 epidemic: Epidemiological evidence for two separate strains of SARSCoV- 2 viruses spreading and implications for prevention strategies – Two epidemics of COVID-19
By KNUT M. WITTKOWSKI
Abstract
About one month after the COVID-19 epidemic peaked in Mainland China and SARS-CoV-2 migrated to Europe and then the U.S., the epidemiological data begin to provide important insights into the risks associated with the disease and the effectiveness of intervention strategies such as travel restrictions and social distancing. Respiratory diseases, including the 2003 SARS epidemic, remain only about two months in any given population, although peak incidence and lethality can vary. The epidemiological data suggest that at least two strains of the 2020 SARS-CoV-2 virus have evolved during its migration from Mainland China to Europe. South Korea, Iran, Italy, and Italy’s neighbors were hit by the more dangerous “SKII” variant. While the epidemic in continental Asia is about to end, and in Europe about to level off, the more recent epidemic in the younger US population is still increasing, albeit not exponentially anymore. The peak level will likely depend on which of the strains has entered the U.S. first. The same models that help us to understand the epidemic also help us to choose prevention strategies. Containment of high-risk people, like the elderly, and reducing disease severity, either by vaccination or by early treatment of complications, is the best strategy against a respiratory virus disease. Social distancing or “lockdowns” can be effective during the month following the peak incidence in infections, when the exponential increase of cases ends. Earlier containment of low-risk people merely prolongs the time the virus needs to circulate until the incidence is high enough to initiate “herd immunity”. Later containment is not helpful, unless to prevent a rebound if containment started too early.
About the Author
Dr. Wittkowski received his PhD in computer science from the University of Stuttgart and his ScD (Habilitation) in Medical Biometry from the Eberhard-Karls-University Tuüingen, both Germany. He worked for 15 years with Klaus Dietz, a leading epidemiologist who coined the term “reproduction number”, on the Epidemiology of HIV before heading for 20 years the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at The Rockefeller University, New York. Dr. Wittkowski is currently the CEO of ASDERA LLC, a company discovering novel treatments for complex diseases from data of genome-wide association studies.
Highlights:
“There is a narrow window-of-opportunity for interventions to “flattening the curve” (reducing R0) to be successful in terms of public health:
- Starting after the peak prevalence (of infections) has little effect (not shown). The curve goes down, but is not “flattened”.
- Starting at the peak prevalence gives the epidemic a “coup de grace”, shortening its duration, albeit at the price of reducing the R/S ratio. The curve is narrower, but also not “flattened”.
- Starting at the peak incidence “flattens” the curve without broadening it and maximizes the number of deaths prevented during the current epidemic (unless behavioral adaptations reduce that effect), but reduces herd immunity and, thus, the chance of another epidemic coming sooner.
- Starting before the peak incidence “flattens the curve”, but also broadens it and causes a rebound, unless the intervention is continued for many more months.
It is herd immunity that stops the spread of an infectious disease, so, in general, one would want to let the epidemic initially run its natural course (or even accelerate it, as people have traditionally done with “measles parties”) to build immunity as fast as possible. If the aim were to reduce the duration of the epidemic and its impact on the economy (and also increase the time until the next epidemic can spread), one would wait until the prevalence of infectious people (I) reaches its peak (in the above model: day 83)”
Evidence for (at least) two different strains of SARS-CoV-2
Viruses improve their “survival” if they develop strategies to coexist with the (human) host…
One strain, which traveled through South Korea, remained more infectious, while the other strain, which traveled through other Asian countries lost more of its infectiousness… Only sequencing samples from these countries can help to answer these questions.”
A major problem with respiratory diseases is that one cannot stop all chains of infections within families, friends, neighbors, … . Even after a couple of weeks of “lockdown” there will be a few infectious persons, and as long as there are enough susceptible people in the society, this is enough to re-start the epidemic until there are enough immune people in the society to create “herd immunity”. Hence, one would expect the cases to appear in waves
Conclusions
Until a vaccine will become available, the only pharmacological strategy to reduce the number of deaths is to reduce the damage the infection (and immune system) does, e.g., by reducing the initial viral load,(Chu 2004) and making sure that people get treated at the earliest signs of pneumonia.
Aside from separating susceptible populations (elderly and high-risk subjects, e.g., in nursing homes) from the epidemic, which is effective as long as virus is circulating, public health intervention aiming to contain a respiratory disease need to start within a narrow window of opportunity starting at or a week after the curve of the new cases changes from increasing faster to increasing more slowly.