I think it is interesting that the discussions are only framed in measuring deaths, and also focus on deaths of the old.<p>I'm watching friends and family knocked back by this virus for weeks, and now pushing into months (36 days and 42 days since first symptoms for 2 people I know), and research in the US and China points to the increase in long term health risks in the 20 to 50 year olds that recover from this. I know people that just walk away from this with no impact, but if we only focus on death we are likely missing the bigger picture.
A lot of these discussions also sound like lockdown measures are "free". But in reality it's about balancing two unknowns.<p>On the one hand we don't know how dangerous the virus actually is. If you look around you can find very serious scientists calculating the risks both as very low and very high. There are a number of various complicating factors (like comorbidity, or lockdown measures) to take into consideration.<p>On the other hand we have some idea that lockdown is going to be really bad. We are likely to face a huge economic crisis, except a lot of the outlets for negative emotion have been cut off. That is going to have a very real death toll as well. But again, we don't know how bad this is going to be. Will it cause wars? Perhaps. Will it cause suicides? Definitely.<p>I am personally fairly surprised that the Giesecke view isn't more popular around the world. Having a bit more scepticism about the virus before one decides to also sacrifice a lot of people's livelihoods seems prudent to me.
Being a swede it's hard but I don't know if non-swedish epidemiologists make the same mistakes and claims.<p>Giesecke has claimed less than two weeks ago that at least 600k people in Stockholm (pop 950k) have had it. We did viral and antibody tests that came up with 11%(and had to be retracted because it was based on blood donors and included all donors who had recovered and were specifically asked to donate plasma with antibodies, so 11% is above max) and 2.5% respectively.<p>This claim and Gieseckes claim that deaths are <0.1% were was then the basis of a study published to show the Swedish policy was right, which had to be retracted because it put the population of Sweden to be >3*45million.<p>Gieseckes claims and articles starting to disappear/overwritten on same URLs made me back up 4000 news articles yesterday. I think we are close to one of our famous overnight 180 degree public opinion turns from the media starting to question any claims at all.<p>A large anti body study was supposed to be released yesterday, and I'm waiting to see what it says. We seem to be very far off the herd immunity Gieseckes strategy is based on.
The problem with the Giesecke approach is that it relies on 2 assumptions being true. 1) that infection brings long term immunity to the currently circulating strains. 2) that covid-19 will not mutate into a new strain with equivalent pathogenicity to which those with immunity to the current strain are no longer immune.
If either of these are false then you will not get a meaningful form of immunity in the population. Currently we don't have any evidence that either assumption is true so pursuing this approach carries an increased risk for very little benefit.
How is Giesecke's approach of "so we should do what we can to slow it so the health service can cope, but let it pass" different than what is currently happening?<p>As I understand it, that is what most countries do and achieve with various success. And as soon as there is any respite in the load of the hospitals, people are already pushing for a easing of restrictions in place.
An interesting aspect is that the authority where the Swedish State Epidemologist works is the "public health agency". That is: the agency responsible for the health of the whole population. That's not irrelevant here.
Their mission is always the <i>long term</i> health of the population. They are <i>not</i> in a position to recommend actions that they belive will reduce deaths from Covid if they simultaneously believe that e.g the economic effects on the healthcare system will mean it is a net negative for the public health long term.<p>Meanwhile in other countries perhaps some authorities are working from shorter term ethical guidelines.<p>Using different views and optimizing for different goals isn't necessarily wrong. There is no "right" here. Everyone realizes that thousands will die in the coming years from things we can afford to treat today, but that we won't be able to afford if we have 15% unemployment. Whether that's part of the equation or not varies between countries and experts. In many places these decisions aren't even left to relevant expert authorities but rather to politicians who have an additional set of concerns (such as popularity) to deal with.<p>Note: Johan Giesecke is no longer working as State Epidemologist but his views are rather consistent with those of the current authority and the current State Epidemologist Dr Tegnell, so his views are probably shaped in this framework.
I doubt there’s a <i>single</i> best way of dealing with this crisis across the entirety of our planet, given the incredible diversity in demographics, cultures, population density, wealth, health care systems and dna.<p>EDIT: should have added politics as another differentiator
If Covid19 is 10x deadlier than flu, they both say the same thing.<p>> it’s like a tsunami sweeping across Europe.” The real death toll, he suggested, will be in the region of a severe influenza season<p>>UK fatality rate of Covid-19 is likely to be 0.8-0.9%,
"Whether you’re more Giesecke or Ferguson, it’s time to stop pretending that our response to this threat is simply a scientific question, or even an easy moral choice between right and wrong. It’s a question of what sort of world we want to live in, and at what cost."<p>That right there is the thing. I think there are a lot of questions that fall into this catagory. People want them to be questions of science but they are fundamentally political questions. You can use science - in ways that are fair or unfair - but at heart science can't answer them.
I take the editorial stance that we should only use "believe" in a religious context, so that we tag the thought as something subjective and unprovable in the mathematical sense.<p>Instead put a Figure of Merit against the idea.<p>I 30% buy off that covid-19 is a nasty virus that one Does Not Want, and that precautions are in order to protect those with compromised immune systems (my wife).<p>I 70% think that a variety of leaders on all levels and parties are not "letting a crisis go to waste" here, and purging the backlog of items that they don't care to discuss in detail.
History won't be kind to Giesecke.<p>Deaths are almost an order of magnitude higher in Sweden v the rest of Scandinavia: <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-daily-deaths-trajectory-per-million?yScale=linear&country=NOR+SWE+FIN+DNK" rel="nofollow">https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-daily-deaths-trajec...</a>
Not this bunch for sure:<p><a href="https://calmatters.org/health/2020/04/debunking-bakersfield-doctors-covid-spread-conclusions/" rel="nofollow">https://calmatters.org/health/2020/04/debunking-bakersfield-...</a>