The report referred to is the A Framework for Decisions in a Post-COVID World – South Africa – Report 1.2, a report we published a few days ago from the Institute for the Future of Knowledge at UJ
A very thorough and useful summary of a one-way flow of evidence: children are not super-spreaders, appear not only to suffer less severely but to be infected less commonly (or perhaps more transiently), and this all applies to children with co-morbidities too. The case for opening schools is overwhelming.
This follows a systematic review published in the Lancet in early April, concluding that “Policy makers need to be aware of the equivocal evidence when considering school closures for COVID-19, and that combinations of social distancing measures should be considered. Other less disruptive social distancing interventions in schools require further consideration if restrictive social distancing policies are implemented for long periods.”
This is the first in a series of webinars on Shaping the Post-COVID World, organised by the Institute for the Future of Knowledge on the initiative of the Vice Chancellor’s Office at the University of Johannesburg.
You need to register to watch this live, and it will be posted as a recording afterwards. Register here: https://universityofjohannesburg.us/4ir/covid-19/
Historians distinguish two ends to a pandemic: the biological end, consisting in the eradication or control of the disease, and the social end, when people stop fearing the disease and society resumes its normal shape. The “Post-COVID World” may never come from a biological perspective, and some are also saying that it may never come from a social perspective either – that the world will never be the same again. Whatever the case, it is clear that the pandemic that took us by surprise was in fact highly predictable, and indeed predicted by the World Health Organisation, the former President of the United States, and many others. It is, moreover, anything but unprecedented. Sometimes, we cannot predict; but other times, we can, but don’t. Whatever the Post-COVID World is like, our first lesson must be to think more carefully and openly about the future – starting with the Post-COVID World itself.
Our first panelist, Her Excellency Dr Joyce Banda, founded and leads the People’s Party in Malawi. She was President of Malawi 2012-2014. She is an advocate for the rights of women and children, two groups who have been disproportionately affected by the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic despite being less at risk from the disease itself. Malawi is one of the world’s poorest countries, with over half the population living in poverty and a quarter in extreme poverty (food insecurity and malnutrition), with significant dependence on foreign aid, rendering it vulnerable to global economic downturn. The human consequences of economic downturn will linger in Malawi and elsewhere long after the lockdowns in Europe and America have eased. When the world looks to the future, it must bear these consequences in mind.
Professor Johan Giesecke is an infectious disease epidemiologist, and the scientist masterminding the Swedish response. He has advocated focusing on what comes next – most strikingly, when he asked Australia whether it intended to keep its borders shut for 30 years, in the unlikely event it succeeded in eradicating the virus within them. Contrasting with the “lockdowns” implemented in many countries, the Swedish approach has been to focus on evidence-based (rather than precautionary) interventions to slow the spread of disease, and on protecting vulnerable groups. This is sometimes referred to as a “herd immunity” strategy, which is inaccurate; protecting the vulnerable is the goal, while herd immunity is a by-product of any strategy short of eradication. The Swedish approach stands in contrast to lockdowns pursued in many European countries, and is motivated in part by an eye on the medium and long term future.
Professor Sehaam Khan is a microbiologist and Dean of Health Sciences at the University of Johannesburg. Under lockdown, South African universities have moved to online delivery of teaching. Opinions differ as to how successful this is proving, and how sustainable it may be. Not all students are able to access online resources, and not all subjects are amenable to online teaching. Disciplines requiring hands-on training, including some medical disciplines and laboratory sciences, are heavily impacted by lockdown. Much more than schools, universities mix generations, and while evidence suggests that schools can be reopened without much risk, there is little evidence about universities. The sector will need to think ahead, bringing together health expertise with a deep understanding nature of the university and its and societal role, in order to emerge strong from the chaos.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8290353/ALEX-BRUMMER-Madness-45s-work-economy-burns.html – ALEX BRUMMER: ‘Just 332 under-45s have died in UK from Corona. It’s madness to keep them from work while our economy burns’
Here is the graph they present:
What is fascinating for me is the regularity with which senior people are demonstrating how hard it is to keep lockdown. This instance is of course particularly satisfying because Ferguson is the global proponent of lockdown and because this particular embarrassment demonstrates how invasive these restrictions are.
Also it has a wonderfully British flavour about it… both the outrage and the immediate resignation
‘EXCLUSIVE: Lockdown disaster dwarfs Covid-19, say SA actuaries’ https://www.businesslive.co.za/fm/features/2020-05-05-lockdown-disaster-dwarfs-covid-19-say-sa-actuaries/
It’s becoming hard to keep up with this stuff – there seem to be more and more voices suggesting that the costs of lockdown may exceed the costs of COVID-19, by some measure.
A lot depends what we compare lockdown to, and one bugbear of mine is the tendency to dichotomise the question: lockdown or bust. But the real comparison is between lockdown and some other measures, short of lockdown, but nonetheless somewhat effective. The cost/benefit ratio of these intermediate measures may be more favourable then lockdown for Low/Middle Income Countries, even if they are not in High Income Countries.
Freddie Sayers of Unherd interviews Michael Levitt (a Nobel-prize-winning non-epidemiologist) on a purely statistical observations of the pattern of the epidemic. Given that the only way we have of measuring effectiveness of government interventions is statistical, that’s interesting. The fun stuff (epidemiological and statistical) comes in deciding whether the correlation is causal. But there’s been no progress with that, in my opinion; in fact for me it is here that the epidemiological profession has disappointed me – it is at if epidemiology has forgotten everything it ever taught itself about causal inference. Against that background, this is ought to give pause for thought.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/do-lockdowns-save-many-lives-is-most-places-the-data-say-no-11587930911
I can’t vouch for the methodology here; I’m sharing for interest. To be honest I’m sceptical about evidence about effectiveness of lockdown in general – it’s going to be tough to figure out and may require a lengthy progress. Anyway, I do predict we will see more of these kinds of claims, and even if they are flimsy, so, to be frank, are many of the claims made about locking down. Perhaps the most interesting thing going on right now is that there a change in what seems obvious. Things that formerly spoke for themselves no longer do. From the perspective of someone who thinks about science, that is fascinating. It’s part of what Kuhn called paradigm shift.
CPEMPH 