La inmunidad de rebaño?

“La inmunidad de rebaño es una peligrosa falacia sin respaldo científico”: La inmunidad de rebaño, que consiste en dejar que la población se infecte libremente para que desarrolle protección de forma natural, es “una falacia peligrosa sin evidencia científica”. De esta forma contundente se ha expresado un grupo de 80 científicos en una carta abierta en la publicación científica The Lancet ante la proliferación de teorías que defienden esta estrategia frente al coronavirus. Los investigadores advierten de que la ausencia de medidas de control aumentaría la mortalidad en toda la población, afectaría a la economía de forma irreversible, prolongaría la epidemia y colapsaría todos los sistemas sanitarios. La jefa científica de la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS), Soumya Swaminathan, calcula que el 1% de la población mundial (77 millones de personas) moriría con una medida como la inmunidad natural de rebaño.

Covid Is Not Categorically Different

Covid Is Not Categorically Different: the coronavirus is well within the same category as other viruses.

Yet humanity has reacted – and continues to react – to the coronavirus as if it is a beast that differs from other health risks categorically. The hysterical overreaction by the press, public-health officials, and politicians – an overreaction undoubtedly supercharged by social media – has convinced many people that humanity is today being stalked by a venomous monster wholly unlike anything to which we are accustomed.

Covid, while certainly no nothingburger, is not remotely close to being the extraordinary monster that it has become in the popular mind. And so he’s having the following information printed on business-card-sized notices:

COVID-19 INFECTION SURVIVAL RATES (per CDC)
Ages 0-19:    99.997%
Ages 20-49:  99.98%
Ages 50-69:  99.5%
Ages 70+:     94.6%
Seasonal Flu Infection Survival Rate (for population as a whole): 99.90%

This single slice of information should be sufficient to put Covid-19 in proper perspective.

What’s Behind The WHO’s Lockdown Mixed-Messaging

What’s Behind The WHO’s Lockdown Mixed-Messaging: Last week, in a major departure from months of pro-lockdown messaging, Britain’s envoy to the WHO Dr. David Nabarro called for world leaders to stop locking down their countries and economies as a “primary method” of controlling COVID19. “I want to say it again: we in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” Dr. Nabarro told The Spectator.

“The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganise, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.” Dr. Nabarro’s position aligns with the Great Barrington Declaration, of which he spoke favorably, in which 30,000 scientists and public health experts have joined in advocating an immediate return to normal life for those at low risk. Nabarro and the thousands of signees of the Declaration opine that this approach will minimize overall mortality and lessen the disproportionate burden of lockdowns on the working class and underprivileged.

The day after Nabarro made his remarks, WHO director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus flatly contradicted him, declaring that lifting lockdowns would be a recipe for “unnecessary infections, suffering and death.” Tedros claims that herd immunity can only be “safely” achieved through vaccination, a conclusion premised upon the frightening assumption that the development of a safe and effective vaccine is guaranteed, and the dubious premise that natural infections can be held back “as long as it takes” to prepare and distribute the vaccine. However, according to Tedros, there is no other way: “allowing a dangerous virus that we don’t fully understand to run free is simply unethical. It’s not an option.”

It’s difficult to reconcile this stance with the data from states and nations which did not lock down for COVID19. For example, Swedish all-cause mortality is on average for 2020 — incredibly, the nation had higher per-capita mortality just five years ago, in a year in which there was no pandemic. This undeniable, easily-verifiable fact is shocking in light of the decimation of world economies on the premise of “stopping” a “highly deadly” pathogen. Far from “unethical,” allowing the virus to “run free” produced a much better result than tight lockdowns such as those imposed in Argentina and Peru — yet Tedros is ignoring this. The question is: why?

Pode um polícia entrar-lhe em casa sem mandado? Pode [ou talvez não]

Pode um polícia entrar-lhe em casa sem mandado? Pode: "A declaração da situação de calamidade é condição suficiente para legitimar o livre acesso dos agentes de proteção civil à propriedade privada, na área abrangida" - que no caso, conforme aprovado nesta quarta-feira no Conselho de Ministros, todo o país.

Neste artigo a expressão-chave é "livre acesso". Por outras palavras: os "agentes de proteção civil" ficam doravante autorizados a entrar em "propriedade privada" sem mandado judicial.

Quem são os "agentes de proteção civil"? A lei também o diz: polícias, claro (GNR, PSP e PJ). Mas não só: elementos dos corpos de bombeiros, das Forças Armadas, agentes da Autoridade Marítima Nacional, da Autoridade Nacional da Aviação Civil, do INEM e "demais entidades públicas prestadoras de cuidados de saúde", bem como, por último, sapadores florestais. Todos estão autorizados a ter "livre acesso" à propriedade privada.

[act.: o artigo 23º da lei refere-se ao "Acesso aos recursos naturais e energéticos"]

Apps and Covid-19

Apps and Covid-19 | Privacy International: Using apps in the context of Covid-19 is useful to the general public to help people to report their symptoms and to learn about the virus and the health response. Apps are now being explored to trace contacts through interaction and proximity analysis.

They are also being explored as quarantining enforcement tools, monitoring location and interactions. In this context, they are not necessarily voluntary tools.

A app obrigatória e a maluqueira opcional

A app obrigatória e a maluqueira opcional: Imaginemos que esta obrigação era constitucional, o que não deverá ser. Está o Orçamento do Estado preparado para financiar a compra de smartphones para os tais segmentos da população que o executivo identifica? Ou o Governo acha que toda a gente tem smartphones compatíveis com a dita app? Comprar um telemóvel com memória suficiente passa também a ser obrigatório, como descontar para a Segurança Social, pagar o imposto automóvel e as portagens?

Pandemics and inequality: A historical overview

Pandemics and inequality: A historical overview: What the historical experience of the last seven centuries seems to suggest is that in the case of this specific pandemic, the mechanisms leading to an increase of inequality and poverty in the aftermath of the crisis will prevail. From a certain point of view, this is good news because it comes from the fact that the final mortality caused by Covid-19 will be orders of magnitude lower than that associated to levelling catastrophes like the Black Death. But from another point of view, this means that governments worldwide need to be prepared to manage, and possibly to prevent, the social crisis that seems sure to follow the current health crisis.