Interview with UJ FM: https://www.facebook.com/UJFMRadio/videos/197495267961770 @ujfm in preparation for the webinar at 1pm today: Data and Delusion after COVID-19 https://universityofjohannesburg.us/4ir/covid-19-webinar-3/

Very enjoyable interview with Bolela Polisa at UJ FM, discussing some of the issues we might encounter in this afternoon’s webinar on Data and Delusion after COVID-19, as well as why Glenda Gray is right and what it’s like to wear a mask if you have a beard.

“the truth is that lockdown is a luxury, and it’s a luxury that the middle classes are enjoying and higher income countries are enjoying at the expense of the poor, the vulnerable and less developed countries” Sunetra Gupta @FreddieSayers @unherd

https://unherd.com/2020/05/oxford-doubles-down-sunetra-gupta-interview/

Loads of great points

  • COVID on the way out in UK
  • Antibody tests unreliable, don’t show prevalence
  • Infections rates shouldn’t even be reported; dependent on testing
  • R number depends on immunity and thus a red herring
  • Everywhere same curve: up, then gently down (resonant of Michael Levitt’s interview in the same place). Immunity explains better than a load of different explanations for all the countries with different measures.
  • And lockdown is retrogressive, not progressive; it’s dumb to bundle up the anti-lockdown people as on the right (or left I guess). It’s a luxury that the rich can afford and the poor can’t.

This Thursday at 11:30am (via Zoom) the @CHESS_DurhamUni reading group will be discussing our recent report from the IFK, ‘A Framework for Decisions in a Post-COVID World’ by @AlexBroadbent

This Thursday at 11:30am (via Zoom) the @CHESS_DurhamUni reading group will be discussing ‘A Framework for Decisions in a Post-COVID World‘ by @AlexBroadbent . . . please contact admin.chess@durham.ac.uk for the paper and joining instructions #COVID19 #socialpolicy #policymakers

Video now up – the first in our series of webinars, Reimagining the world after COVID-19, with Joyce Banda, Johan Giesecke and Sehaam Khan

This event took place on Wednesday 13 May 2020.

 

“Two months later, it has not been the worst-case scenario many envisioned,” says the New York Times (strongly pro-lockdown, as a rule). In other words: what critics of Sweden said two months ago was entirely wrong.

nyti.ms/2ZcFmmm

Let’s see whether the Swedes continue to be right, about the advantages of their strategy over a longer time frame.

Chief of Health at UNICEF Stefan Peterson @stefanswartpet tells @Telegraph what he told us weeks ago: that the lockdown will kill children and most likely more people than it saves

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/unicef-warns-lockdown-could-kill-covid-19-model-predicts-12/

It’s important to bear in mind that the appropriate comparison is not lockdown-or-bust, but lockdown vs. some more moderate and contextually feasible social distancing measures in conjunction with protection of vulnerable groups.

The documentary where he told us this to us is below.

7 minute low-res version:

 

30 minute high res version:

SA government being taken to court over lockdown

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2020-05-14-da-and-ff-to-challenge-lockdown-constitutionality/

Steenhuisen (leader of the Opposition): “The state of disaster we are currently under, governed by the Disaster Management Act, has zero provision for parliamentary oversight. Which means this secretive NCC answers to no-one. Not even a state of emergency, which is a further step up from a state of disaster, has such sweeping powers with no parliamentary oversight.”