Covirus 19 coronavirus: six arguments against blocking, and where they fail

You may have seen the arguments. New Zealand overreacted by blocking. Many of those who would die from Covid-19 would likely have died at any time. Right now, the economy should come first. Science reporter Jamie Morton puts some data around six of those common points that permeate social networks.

Elimination is not necessary and we can get a good result for New Zealand without it

Most countries have been forced to choose one of two options, mitigation or suppression, that come from the playbook to deal with a flu pandemic.

Mitigation is about “flattening the curve,” or allowing the virus to spread, but at a slow enough speed that hospitals can cope.

Initially, the UK chose this course with a strategy that would have seen vulnerable and elderly people isolate themselves, as the disease effectively spread to the rest of the population.

That, of course, changed when the landmark Imperial College London document predicted that around 250,000 people in the UK would have died under mitigation, even if hospitals could withstand the pressure.

Like any other nation in Europe, the United Kingdom turned to repression, or “crushing the curve,” and ordered the British to observe strict measures of social distancing.

New Zealand may also have had to choose between these “bad” and “worst” options, and face the possibility of losing at least 14,400 if the virus got out of control.

Hopefully, our country will have acted just in time to end Covid-19 with a third option not available to virtually every other developed nation on the planet.

That’s removing or removing the virus with our radical four-week block, and ideally moving to a phase where authorities can remove any persistent cases.

This week, a group of academics broke ranks with public health experts by suggesting that a blockade was no longer necessary; that many restrictions, such as school closings, could be eased; and that the removal of Covid-19 was probably neither unreachable nor necessary.

This alleged “Plan B” horrified many scientists, including the prominent epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker of the University of Otago.

“Of the available options, elimination is the least bad, not only because it’s proven, but it has an exit strategy.”

Baker pointed to China, now in the process of reopening its institutions after taking the virus to low levels through strict measures.

“Is there a better strategy that these people think we should follow? The only exit strategy for repression is to wait until an effective vaccine or antiviral appears.”

New Zealand, however, had a chance to resume Covid-19’s free life.

Many people will die because they cannot access surgeries

In New Zealand’s response to the pandemic, hospitals postponed and canceled elective surgeries, and released wards for a possible wave of Covid-19 cases.

That raised concern that many people could die because their procedures were postponed, or because they have avoided hospitals when they might otherwise have detected cancers and diseases through pathology tests.

Emergency departments similarly reported that the number of patients plummeted during the shutdown.

But Baker notes that the surgeries would likely have been independently canceled.

“It has nothing to do with whether we seek elimination or not; this has been happening around the world as countries have prepared for the arrival of the pandemic wave.”

Baker said the removal not only offered the possibility of preventing hospitals from being flooded, as the models suggested they would have been under repression or mitigation, but of returning their operations to normal earlier.

“By not having a pandemic, you can get your health system back to normal.”

“Otherwise, one of the biggest impacts of a pandemic is to obstruct the health system for many months, or perhaps even a year or more.”

Still, many elders who could die from Covid-19 would have died shortly.

Baker says it is true that many of the people at highest risk of dying from Covid-19 have a shorter than average lifespan ahead.

But that argument failed to reflect two points. One was the fact that this would not simply be a case of a handful of older people dying, but a 20-30 times higher rate than in a severe flu season.

Models made by him and his colleagues suggested that up to 89 percent of 8,560 to 14,400 potential deaths would be in the age group over 60.

“More importantly, however, these are people who are highly valued by their families and would, in fact, be present for several years,” Baker said.

“We are talking about a potentially huge loss of elderly New Zealanders: that would affect all families in the country.”

Professor Christine Stephens of the Massey University School of Psychology also warned against such ageist attitudes.

“Grouping all people over the age of 70 is like treating people between the ages of 10 and 40 as a homogeneous group,” Stephens said.

“Additionally, people bring their diverse backgrounds for life at an advanced age where physiological, social and health differences really widen. Although some are vulnerable, many older people are healthy and can survive the disease. Using generalizations , targeting a very large group, can be detrimental to that group. “

In the case of the current pandemic, Stephens said you could see how Ageism became the basis for “spurious oppositions” falsely pitting the economy against the lives of older people or the future of young people versus the health of old.

“To further counter the views that threaten to reinforce an intergenerational divide, we must recognize the contributions older people make to society.”

Baker added that the models also indicated that many of the potential deaths would be among people under the age of 70, who would otherwise be vulnerable or exposed.

“These are people scattered across all age groups, who could have been productive members of society,” he said.

“That includes a large number of health workers who are more vulnerable not because of their age or underlying conditions, but because of their high levels of exposure to the virus.”

Many people will get sick or die from the impact on the economy and we can alleviate this by lifting the restrictions at this time.

The economy is indeed taking a hit. This week, the Treasury predicted that the unemployment rate could reach up to 13.5 percent if the blockade remained in four weeks.

If the blockade were extended, that figure could reach between 17.5 and 26 percent, the worst of the seven Treasury economic scenarios.

The 10 percent unemployment rate would imply that the number of unemployed would be around 275,000 people.

Treasury Secretary Caralee McLiesh said average annual GDP growth could fall as little as 0.5 percent, or as high as 23.5 percent in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021.

But he noted that the best way to protect the economy was to fight this virus, “which is why we have acted quickly and decisively to end Covid-19,” he said.

“This will give our businesses and the economy the best chance to get moving again to the other side.”

Baker said: “The smart person would anticipate the benefits of acting quickly and completely, rather than prolonged rolling lockdown purgatory.”

“The other thing, of course, is that many of the impacts on the economy are connected due to global effects like declining tourism trade or export prices in other sectors.

“The world will have a monumental recession, regardless of what we do.

“So it is not a simple matter of one or the other. And if it were, the ‘or’, a suppression strategy that could be carried out for more than a year, seems pretty terrible.”

Mortality rates differ between countries for different reasons, so we should not use Italy’s experience to justify our blockade.

There has been a lot of confusion about why death rates between certain countries differ so much.

This is due in part to factors such as the classification of deaths, for example, considering “death rates,” where doctors are confident that the virus caused death, rather than the “infection death rate.” , or test regimes, demographics, hidden deaths, or differences in official statistics.

But Baker and colleagues say they have a firm idea of ​​what the death rate would be like for New Zealand, under different scenarios.

Again, the most plausible scenario of uncontrolled spread could see around 14,400 deaths here.

That also included up to 64 percent of the sick population, up to 32,000 people who needed hospitalization, up to 8,000 who needed critical care, and up to 4,000 who needed ventilators.

On the worst day for the worst case, there would be 11,200 people who would need to be hospitalized and 2,800 who would be admitted to critical care.

“We are using fairly conservative estimates from abroad that show that about half a percent of the population will die if it is not mitigated, but the average is probably more than 1 percent if you consider that about 60 percent of the population will be affected.” , He says.

“Actually, the suppression model reduces mortality, but then you’re back in that state of purgatory.”

With just 1,400 cases, this has not been as bad for New Zealand as we were first led to believe.

Throughout the month, the number of new Covid-19 cases announced each day has regularly been below the 50 mark, possibly a small number compared to the scale and impact of the blockade.

But those numbers reflect the success of that blockade, and perhaps distract us from what the numbers might have been like if New Zealand hadn’t entered the blockade.

The Te Pūnaha Matatini model, the New Zealand Center for Research Excellence in Complex Systems and Data Analysis, indicated that the country could have been seeing 350 new cases daily this week, with an increase in numbers, without any intervention.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has similarly pointed out that New Zealand was on a similar trajectory to Spain and Italy, and her 205 cases on March 25 could have soared to more than 10,000 now.

Baker said that while such models were speculative and should be treated with caution, the blockade had certainly saved the country a much worse fate.

“Maybe if we only hit 1,500 cases, within a year, people might be saying there was nothing to worry about,” he said.

“You can apply that to almost any other preventive measure we’ve taken in public health. People who died or never got sick are invisible.”

• Covid19.govt.nz – The official government Covid-19 advisory website

Evidence of just how damaging Covid-19 could be, he added, was there in television news bulletins, with gruesome images of mass graves dug in New York City.

“There is a kind of western arrogance in arguing that the virus in China would have affected us differently. You could even say that it is an extension of the idea of ​​complacent exceptionalism.”