When the Coronavirus outbreak first came to light I wrote this article. The gist of it is that governments should simply let the virus run its course and deal with the disease as it occurs, preferably treating people in their homes and only in hospitals as a last resort. I suggested that governments train medical people who can visit houses and perform checks and deal with the patients as far as possible, using CPAP (Continuous positive airway pressure) rather than intubation. CPAP does not require anaesthetising and is much less intrusive and safer than intubation. The intention would have been to get heard immunity and keep the economy buoyant. Sweden adopted a similar, but watered-down approach with a death rate lower than many other countries that had severe lockdowns. (This has been distorted in the press. If we look at the raw figures from woldmeters.info we can see that Sweden’s deaths per 1M pop is lower than Belgium, the UK, Spain or Italy — all countries that imposed severe lockdowns.)
The responses to my article were consistent and were on the lines that if we were to allow the disease to run unchecked the hospitals would be overloaded and we must ‘flatten the curve’. In most countries now, the curve has been flattened. In Australia there are currently 39 people in hospital and 10 in intensive care. Less than a few months ago the ABC was forecasting doom. It is now argued that this didn’t happen because there was a lockdown. However there is no empirical evidence for this. There was no attempt to look at this in a proper scientific way, there was simply a blind adherence to an unproved theory and the results in Sweden are either ignored or distorted.
However, now the narrative has changed. The city of Melbourne has been locked down again to prevent a ‘second wave’. The hospitals have plenty of capacity. What happened to ‘flatten the curve’? We are told that this is the ‘new normal’. What’s so frightening about this is that the empirical evidence does not back any of this up but politicians blindly follow advice because they are assured it is based on science.
When there was an outbreak of Coronavirus on the Dimond Princess, they immediately confined all the passengers to their rooms. The idea was to isolate people for 14 days by which time anyone who had the virus would have been either taken to the infirmary or the virus would have run its course. Except that didn’t happen. Instead the infection rates went up even after 14 days. The reason was that it was being circulated in the air conditioning.
The Spirit of Tasmania runs overnight between mainland Australia and the island of Tasmania. It still runs although the only passengers are approved individuals and freight. I asked if I, as a health practitioner, could travel and I was told I could but I would have to book a cabin and stay in there for the duration of the trip. So having found a process that didn’t work for the Diamond Princess, they now want to implement that on the Spirit of Tasmania. It could be argued that this is simply an anomaly but it is not. Across the board we see unproven practices being implemented and sold as ‘science’. The cost to lives, the economy and mental health is enormous.
If you question any of these practices you are told that you are ‘anti-science’. Dissenting opinions are censured, and if you question the cost to the economy you are denounced as putting money before lives. It’s a method of mind-control that uses guilt. Catholics used guilt to great affect for many hundreds of years and certain groups are using the same techniques to bring people into line. We are told that if you don’t wear a mask you are putting people lives at risk.The time-honoured advice for corona viruses has been to not wear a mask. But now we are told to feel guilty if we don’t wear a mask. Of course it’s not about the mask or the science of suitability or otherwise of mask wearing. It’s a badge, like the ribbons that Hollywood stars would wear to show their support for gay rights or some other cause.
The psychological and economic results of a lockdown are ignored or simply dismissed as a side effect of a necessary cure.
The reality is that for most people the Coronavirus will be innocuous and there is no need for social distancing and even testing is simply a waste of resources that could be better used to treat the people who are vulnerable. People who are high risk should isolate themselves until the virus has run its course — typically within 6 months.
By Philip Braham on .