Read on Twitter
Just came across the opinion of somebody deeply respected in health that I need to address.
John Ioannidis makes some good points but unusual & major errors in his comparison of COVID-19 to the existing Coronaviruses silently contributing to annual “flu-like illness” mortality.
John Ioannidis makes some good points but unusual & major errors in his comparison of COVID-19 to the existing Coronaviruses silently contributing to annual “flu-like illness” mortality.
He recorded an interview on March 23 that is still making the rounds despite updated data from the US showing his estimate of <10k deaths in the US is already surpassed at 20k and rising by 2k/day.
His thesis outlined in the interview is that each year we care for patients that die from circulating Coronaviruses that we simply don’t test for and lump them under a “flu-like illness” when measuring mortality.
1. The pathogenisis of COVID-19 is not what we see in normal undetected Coronavirus. The lung and/or haematological pathology is novel. We have not seen this before. For some reason does not appreciate this is something new.
2. US already at 20,000 deaths and still rising rapidly https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-deaths-covid-19?time=1..&country=OWID_WRL+USA+ESP+ITA
This is with public health measures in many US states, and would otherwise be much, much worse.
This is with public health measures in many US states, and would otherwise be much, much worse.
3. He claims that Italy is different from the US. Their demographic, comorbidities, and their number of ICU beds per population. Milan is likely the highest in Europe. Although they have less ICU beds per capita than US, when you deal with exponentials this is almost academic.
4. In the absence of strict public health measures to buy time and flatten the peak how do we protect health care and essential workers over the age 30 who are at risk? Most health professionals are well above this age.
He really needs to do a followup interview in light of the new data in the US. If I have missed that followup please point me to it.
His word carries weight and it’s clear he had access to limited data as we all did, but it would be helpful if he addressed these inaccuracies.
His word carries weight and it’s clear he had access to limited data as we all did, but it would be helpful if he addressed these inaccuracies.
