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I do not know enough but I know stats well enough. The peak of the epidemic in the world seems over for now. In the USA total deaths is not the 2,2 million first predicted and far lower than the revised 1,1 million predicted. The mainstream panic is not justified. 1
Other mainly top-rated scientists around the world are now making their voices clear. Latest ones are in Hamburg. They say the numbers do not justify the fear https://www.abendblatt.de/hamburg/article228908865/hamburg-corona-virus-uke-infektion-covid-19-pueschel-coronavirus-krise-patienten-impfstoff-immunitaet-krankenhaeuser-kontaktverbot-kliniken-infektionsrate-krankheit-pandemie-test-lungenkrankheit-sars-cov-epidemie-sars-cov-2.html (use google translate) 2
The head of statistics and virology at Stanford University has stated the same Read it here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.05.20054361v1 Stanford professor of medicine John Ioannidis is the top of the top in this game. Far more experience than the very young team at London Imperial College 3
The worlds top HIV researcher - part of the team that developed the now-famous Ro Everyone uses. His research that the peak has happened in most of the world. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.28.20036715v2.full.pdf. Knut Wittkowski was widely criticized for his early research on AIDs which is now mainstream 4
The case in point is that countries that did not close down have similar numbers and trends to those that did. Sweden, Belarus, Latvia, Vietnam. Those that added a lot of track and trace did well too. Taiwan, South Korea, Japan 5
Strangely these countries are a mix of old and rich and poor and young. If the world economy shut down due to overestimated numbers and panic the world will soon be looking for people who enforced poverty on the world. 6
It is not a question of lives vs the economy. Poorer people which the world will now have will die earlier and more often! It is lives vs lives! Studies show that the economic impact will kill more people than the virus https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/economic-crash-could-cost-more-lives-than-coronavirus-study-warns-nxrn3bzbs
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Antibody tests show that many have had the virus without knowing it and this is not just Oxford (who asked the question but actual results from studies in Germany https://www.zeit.de/wissen/gesundheit/2020-04/hendrik-streeck-covid-19-heinsberg-symptome-infektionsschutz-massnahmen-studie/komplettansicht And in Denmark https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/doedelighed-skal-formentlig-taelles-i-promiller-danske-blodproever-kaster-nyt-lys 8
So reading well-established researchers in virology, statistics of medicine, economics and other disciplines while looking at world numbers it seems to me that the Economic shutdown was not needed. I may not know much and there will always be outbreaks and nasty ones at that, 9
These do not cause the economies of the world to shut down. The impact of a shutdown economy is bad and most countries will cost lives many more than the virus, Increase inequality, loss of schooling of an age group that is not impacted, people locked up 10
is totally out of proportion to the actual problem. We should have helped the aged and the sick - that is clear, but we should not have introduced Lockdowns. The backlash will come and it will be harsh. Very clever people made assumptions which were wrong and 11
that will not just end their careers it will end up costing far more lives. At present, the World in total may lose less than a million lives. Maybe I'm wrong but if the world economy declines as IMF predicts then more lives will be lost along with livelihoods! Madness 12/12
This may be one of those times when being a scientist may not be a good thing. Some researchers have not thought things through and assumptions made were bad. The world brought it now the prices will be determined. End of university research as we know it perhaps?
