Rita Panahi: World’s leading epidemiologists slam Victoria’s COVID response
COVID-19 is a deadly virus but for the great majority who are infected it is neither a death sentence nor an illness needing medical treatment, and leading epidemiologists have slammed our backwards approach, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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Nine months into the coronavirus crisis and we know a great deal more about SARS-CoV-2 and how to minimise its impact without needlessly destroying lives and livelihoods.
Sadly, that knowledge seems to have bypassed the Dan Andrews’ government and bureaucracy who are still operating under the misconception that we are dealing with the Black Death and the only way to save lives is to lock up the young and healthy along with the elderly and infirm.
Metropolitan Melbourne has been locked down longer than the pandemic’s ground zero, Wuhan. Meanwhile, world-leading infectious diseases experts, professor at Stanford University Medical School, Dr Jay Bhattacharya, Oxford University professor Dr Sunetra Gupta and professor of medicine at Harvard University, Dr Martin Kulldorff, have come together to write the Great Barrington Declaration imploring governments not to impose lockdowns to fight COVID-19.
All three are renowned epidemiologists and their declaration has been co-signed by more than 30,000 medical and public health scientists and practitioners, including Nobel Prize-winning scientist Michael Levitt, professor of modelling and epidemiology at Oxford, Dr Lisa White and professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Edinburgh, Dr Paul McKeigue.
“Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health — leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden,” the GBD reads.
“Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice. Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.”
The experts warn that we must adopt a more sophisticated approach with the evidence showing that lockdowns cause far more harm than good.
The most compassionate approach would see those at minimal risk living as normal, building herd immunity which will help minimise deaths, hospitalisations and social harm. Indeed the GBD approach looks very much like what Taiwan has instituted with great success.
“We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza,” the world leading scientists write.
One wonders how many Victorians are aware of this pertinent fact. We have watched our children’s education and mental health suffer despite overwhelming evidence that schools should not have closed. COVID-19 is a deadly virus but for the great majority who are infected it is neither a death sentence nor an illness needing medical treatment.
Indeed the World Health Organisation states that “80 per cent of infections are mild or asymptomatic”.
The signatories to the GBD call for a targeted approach to protect the vulnerable, particularly those in nursing homes, while “those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal” with sensible precautions adopted such as regular hand washing and staying home when sick.
These are scientists with far greater credentials and expertise than those advising the Andrews government and yet the “listen to the experts” crowd will ignore their calls. As will the Victorian government, which also ignored the 500-plus local doctors, professors and surgeons who wrote to the Premier about the devastating impact of Victoria’s prolonged lockdown.
On Sunday I had the great pleasure to speak to Prof Bhattacharya, who as well as being a world-renowned epidemiologist is a health economist and professor at the prestigious Stanford University Medical School.
He was scathing of Victoria’s backward approach in quarantining the healthy instead of devoting resources to protecting the vulnerable.
“If the resources had been spent on protecting the people in those nursing home settings, you would have many, many fewer deaths and you could open up ... no more civil rights violations, no more restriction on normal behaviour,” he said.
Prof Bhattacharya also spoke of the “devastating” impact COVID-19 scaremongering has had on non-COVID health conditions.
“People are more afraid of COVID than cancer so they are delaying treatment ... people have stayed home with strokes and heart attacks in the US, they have delayed cancer screenings,” he said.
On the weekend a most unlikely expert echoed the calls of the thousands of medical experts who’ve already signed the GBD.
The WHO’s Special Envoy on COVID-19 Dr David Nabarro declared: “We in the World Health Organisation do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus” and “the only time we believe a lockdown in justified is to buy you time to reorganise, regroup, rebalance your resources.”
That sounds an awful lot like two weeks to flatten the curve. Remember that?
IN SHORT
It took Peta Credlin one press conference to get the hotel quarantine inquiry to do its job and demand phone records, leading to the state’s top bureaucrat and the Premier’s right-hand man resigning in disgrace. The Dan cult, including his media mates, are right about Peta not being a journalist. She’s a force of nature.
RITA PANAHI IS A HERALD SUN COLUMNIST