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Sweden which did not have a lockdown now has the highest daily number of deaths of people who have the Covid-19 virus. What is more important is the total number is not unacceptably high (under 4,000 for a country of 10 million inhabitants) and the number of daily deaths from Covid-19 is falling.
Anglo-Swedish journalist Pelle Neroth Taylor tells me:
Swedish deaths are falling, though maybe not quite as fast as the lockdown countries. About a 50 day died [last] week, which is maybe half the April figure. If you scale up it's about 300 at UK Italy pop levels. The point is if you add up all these deaths during the period of decline it won't add up to much on total numbers, even if it is higher for the next three weeks than rest of Europe. Doesn't invalidate the case against lockdown. Wittkowski and the sceptics are more is less right. It comes and goes in about six weeks or eight weeks and that's it.
When I first blogged about Knut Wittkowski I did not do so because I thought he was right but simply because I thought he was interesting. In fact at one point weeks later I worried that his interesting ideas might be dangerous and I considered archiving the post about him, which attracted a lot of clicks. I don't think he is right about everything now, but it is now obvious to me that he is certainly a lot closer to the truth than the newspapers.
Adevarul makes a good point today when it says:
The problem with the “Swedish model” was not that citizens were able to take to the streets freely, but that officials did not properly train nursing home staff, did and still do too few tests, and were wrong when they decided not to place in quarantine tourists returning to the country from skiing in March. The consequence of these decisions was a higher number of deaths, according to an analysis by the newspaper Expressen, based on the opinions of Swedish experts.
By the way, Knut Wittkowski would strongly agree about nursing homes. He has made the same point about the USA.
4000 patients traités VS Big Data : qui croire ?
ReplyDeleteBulletin d'information scientifique de l'IHU - Nous avons le droit d'être intelligents !
Pr Didier Raoult, Directeur de l'IHU Méditerranée Infection
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZFN3DryH68&feature=push-u-sub&attr_tag=etdv5jM3wFxyzlI-%3A6
My French is not really good enough but I did find this. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/french-doctor-covid-19-coronavirus-hydroxychloroquine-study-12768388
DeleteI do wonder if the WHO's decision that HCQ is dangerous for Covid-19 is influenced by Donald Trump championing the drug. After all it has been prescribed for many years.
'Hydroxychloroquine is normally used to treat arthritis while chloroquine is an anti-malarial. Both drugs can produce potentially serious side effects, particularly heart arrhythmia.
Delete'Raoult, a distinctive figure with his shoulder-length shaggy grey hair, ended the video by repeating another controversial claim that "this is the end of the epidemic".
'Looking at the records of 96,000 patients across hundreds of hospitals, the study published in The Lancet found that administering the drugs actually increased the risk of dying.'
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/french-doctor-covid-19-coronavirus-hydroxychloroquine-study-12768388
Actually the WHO is merely following the Lancet which should be utterly objective - even though it has now become woke.
Looking briefly on the net it seems this drug is risky. How disappointing.
DeleteAAPS - Association of American Physicians and Surgeons:
DeleteDoctors and Patients Are Pawns in a Dangerous Political Brinkmanship
By Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D.
Front-line physicians treating patients with SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 are seeing an alarming, escalating, orchestrated attack on chloroquine (CQ) and its safer derivative, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). Both medicines have been safely used in millions of patients worldwide for malaria prevention and treatment since FDA-approved for safety and effectiveness in 1934 and 1955, respectively. The World Health Organization (WHO) lists CQ and HCQ as “essential medicines” because of safety, effectiveness, low cost, and wide availability.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) itself has published guidelines on its website: “ Hydroxychloroquine can be prescribed to adults and children of all ages. It can also be safely taken by pregnant women and nursing mothers.”
About side effects, CDC says: “Hydroxychloroquine is a relatively well tolerated medicine. The most common adverse reactions reported are stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, and headache. These side effects can often be lessened by taking hydroxychloroquine with food. Hydroxychloroquine may also cause itching in some people. All medicines may have some side effects. Minor side effects such as nausea, occasional vomiting, or diarrhea usually do not require stopping the antimalarial drug.”
NOTE: CDC guidelines for use in malaria do not even mention the “fatal heart arrhythmia” hyped in the fear-mongering articles in the media. Rheumatology guidelines for HCQ in lupus and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) do not require a baseline EKG to check heart rhythm, although doctors might order one before prescribing HCQ if needed for a patient with heart disease. SARS-CoV-2 itself, which can damage to the heart, may be responsible for some heart problems now blamed on HCQ.
https://aapsonline.org/doctors-and-patients-are-pawns-in-a-dangerous-political-brinkmanship/
US Brand Name
DeletePlaquenil
Hydroxychloroquine is used to treat malaria. It is also used to prevent malaria infection in areas or regions where it is known that other medicines (eg, chloroquine) may not work.
Hydroxychloroquine may also be used to treat coronavirus (COVID-19) in certain hospitalized patients.
Hydroxychloroquine belongs to a group of medicines known as antimalarials. It works by preventing or treating malaria, a red blood cell infection transmitted by the bite of a mosquito. However, this medicine is not used to treat severe or complicated malaria.
Hydroxychloroquine is used to treat discoid lupus erythematosus (DLE) or systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE or lupus). It is also used to treat acute and chronic rheumatoid arthritis.
This medicine is available only with your doctor's prescription.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/hydroxychloroquine-oral-route/description/drg-20064216
The Italian Society for Rheumatology studied 65,000 patients on longterm hydroxychloroquine for RA and Lupus.
DeleteOnly 20 patients tested positive for COVID-19. No ICU, no deaths:
Although there are still no Italian publications on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine as a "shield" from the virus, among the directors of the infectious disease wards, the specialists, Primaries and general practitioners contacted during this research, many admitted - under a whisper - to use the drug as a "prophylaxis", that is, to prevent infection. Healthcare professionals who are in close contact with contagious patients take the drug in advance, precisely to decrease the probability of contracting the infection. For now, in support of this prophylaxis effect, there is a recent publication, involving 211 people. It was published on theInternational Journal of Antimicrobial Agents , the official body of the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. Of 211 people exposed to Covid19 positive individuals and subjected to prophylaxis with hydroxychloroquine, none were infected.
Finally, further confirmation of this hypothesis are the data collected in the register of the SIR (Italian rheumatology society). To assess the possible correlations between chronic patients and Covid19, SIR interrogated 1,200 rheumatologists throughout Italy to collect statistics on infections. Out of 65,000 chronic patients (Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis), who systematically take Plaquenil / hydroxychloroquine, only 20 patients tested positive for the virus. Nobody died, nobody is in intensive care, according to the data collected so far.
https://www.iltempo.it/salute/2020/04/28/news/coronavirus-farmaci-efficaci-news-danni-cura-annalisa-chiusolo-artrite-terapia-idrossiclorochina-sars-cov2-1321227/
Looking briefly on the net it seems this drug is risky. How disappointing.
DeletePeople are looking for a miracle cure. Miracle cures usually only happen in movies. In real life most miracle cures turn out to be quack cures. In real life cures take years of research and testing. Trump is pushing it because he's desperate for a miracle to save his re-election chances.
Unfortunately the same applies to a vaccine. It will most likely take years because that's how long it takes to do the testing if you want a safe vaccine that actually works. And a coronavirus vaccine may not even be possible.
Of course treatments will improve, but they will improve slowly. The virus may become less lethal as it mutates, which is apparently common. Viruses that kill their hosts don't survive long.
Everyone wants a miracle. A miracle cure, a vaccine, herd immunity - they all involve a great deal of wishful thinking. Maybe (hopefully) the outbreak is burning out naturally. Maybe it will return. No-one knows.
According to Wikipedia, that cites a January 2020 census, Sweden has 10.3 million inhabitants.
ReplyDeleteThank you. I shall correct my mistake. I should have checked it.
ReplyDeleteCrucial Facts About Covid 19
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op6RTkTtJQk&feature=push-u-sub&attr_tag=6ueDly7hnSggcvBj%3A6
Rigorous documentation and daily updates of the facts in this video are available at:
https://www.justfacts.com/
Today, officials at the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) confirmed that, as the Freedom Foundation reported on Monday, the state is counting in its COVID-19 death total the deaths of persons who tested positive for the virus but died from other causes.
ReplyDeleteIn remarks made during a telephonic press briefing, DOH officials even acknowledged knowingly including multiple deaths caused by gunshot wounds in the state’s COVID-19 fatality count.
https://www.freedomfoundation.com/washington/washington-health-officials-gunshot-victims-counted-as-covid-19-deaths/
Are all states doing this? As you know Dr Moldovan the Secretary of State at the Romanian Ministry of Health said he had studied in detail all the reported Romanian Covid-19 deaths and 80% of the deceased did not die from Covid-19. Could this be true of America?
Delete"As I’m sure you know, American hospitals get paid around $30,000 by the federal government for each patient they lose to the virus, which must result in some fatalities being ascribed to COVID-19 when the real cause of death is something else."
DeleteToby Young
https://spectator.us/lockdown-wrong-matt-labash-toby-young-debate/