Node
Dear oh dear.
Ben Goldacre’s God has spoken. First Goldacre said godlike figure not God. Secondly the pronouncements were made on a serological study of 3000 individuals selected through a facebook ad campaign on a serological test on which we are told little and know not if it is validated, in a pre-peer reviewed internet publication. That is the smoking gun? So all it has postulated is that we still do not know what the actual death rate from Covid-19 is but it is less than that of seasonal influenza. That in itself is not surprising and maybe a bit encouraging, but it does not explain why there are so many people dying all over the world. Yes of course they are all old and frail and would have died anyway in 2 weeks, 3 months or two years, so why worry? But hang on a minute Ioannidis says we are OK so we must be OK. But what about the 80 or so healthy caseworkers who were healthy and expected to live for a few more years, productively saving lives, they have died with Covid-19 not because of it? Well of course because of the panic produced, a stampede is always a possibility that may kill innocent passerbys.
To be fair to Ioannidis all he is saying is that there is hope at the end of the tunnel, mankind is not going to be wiped our by this disease and at worse we might cull the oldest and weakest and perhaps that is not worse than saving our economies. If this sounds familiar, it is because it is a reiteration of what Boris-take-it-on-the-chin-herd-immunity-Johnson also said at the outset.