"Sir David John Spiegelhalter OBE FRS [..] is a British statistician and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. From 2007 to 2018 he was Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk in the Statistical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge [..] He is currently Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication in the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge"[0] He was invited to join SAGE[1] in April 2020 as a "scientific expert"[2]
I'm afraid at this point I'm obliged to quote Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?"
Even if we assume that this paid blog is a legitimate alternative to peer reviewed research (it is not), the first article you cite starts with the below disclaimer, which seems to refute your claim.
> Note added 2nd May 2020. Some people seem to be interpreting this article as suggesting that COVID does not add to one’s normal risk. I should make it clear that I am suggesting that it roughly doubles your risk of dying this year.
The author, who you seem to consider an authority, has also written an entire book on COVID statistics. It's central theme seems to be contrary to your point.
The book is titled "Covid by Numbers: Making Sense of the Pandemic with Data". I've only skimmed it, but it seems to be well regarded.
> a legitimate alternative to peer reviewed research
I'm not sure that peer-reviewed research deserves to be put on a pedestal. I've worked in a research lab, I have a couple of [tedious and uninteresting] published papers. It's not a holy grail. We still employ humans to do this stuff, and they come with flaws. We also need funding for this stuff, and with it comes with warped incentives.
> the first article you cite starts with the below disclaimer, which seems to refute your claim
Why would it refute the claim?
If you double a very tiny risk, to all intents and purposes it may still be "very tiny", and irrelevant compared to other more significant risks (such as the increased risk of dying due to not having been able to attend your screening appointment because all non-critical healthcare in your area has been cancelled to "save lives", while achieving the opposite).
We can and should trust doctors at an individual level, but at planet scale we need to listen to statisticians too. That didn't happen during the pandemic.
It's pretty unfortunate if a "cure" ends up killing more people than the disease... and yes, there were people mentioning this concern already in early 2020, but apparently no-one was listening:
"A fierce debate is under way between those who believe that the current lockdowns in place across much of the world are an overreaction, and those who believe it would be barbaric to do anything other than try to avoid as many coronavirus deaths as possible. Those in the first camp [..] point out things like [..] the collateral damage from the lockdowns will end up causing more harm than coronavirus itself; and that the amount of money we are effectively spending on saving each life is completely out of whack with what we would normally consider reasonable."
> "I appreciate Covid is still a threat to some elderly and/or sick people. To the majority of us, it isn't ... and wasn't ... ever "
The fact that it doubled everyone's risk of dying disproves that.
I understand that it's unlikely for a young, healthy person to die in any given year but they should still wear seatbelts, or stop smoking if doing those things doubles their likelihood of death.
>I'm not sure that peer-reviewed research deserves to be put on a pedestal.
I'm unaware of any better alternative. Twitter and blog posts certainly aren't it.
>It's pretty unfortunate if a "cure" ends up killing more people than the disease
It would be pretty bold to make that claim. Do you have any reliable source to indicate that it was? I'm aware that many people speculated to that effect, often loudly. I've never seen any evidence though.
That said, the fact that this is Financial Times article kind of gives it away. It's reasonable (if a bit monstrous) to say that you think your income is more important than other peoples lives, but if that's what you mean you should state it plainly.
> We can and should trust doctors at an individual level, but at planet scale we need to listen to statisticians too.
I'm not sure I would agree with that statement. Statistics are like bikinis. What they display is important, but what they conceal is vital. To me, statements like this feel like another way of saying "There are things more important than human life."
> The fact that it doubled everyone's risk of dying disproves that.
It really doesn't.
> It would be pretty bold to make that claim. Do you have any reliable source to indicate that it was?
"Pandemics kill people in two ways, said Chris Whitty at the start of the Covid outbreak: directly and indirectly, via disruption.
He was making the case for caution amidst strong public demand for lockdown, stressing the tradeoffs.
While Covid deaths were counted daily, the longer-term effects would take years to come through. The only real way of counting this would be to look at ‘excess deaths’, i.e. how many more people die every month (or year) compared to normal.
That data is now coming through."[0]
EDIT - adding:
"COVID-19 lockdowns were “a global policy failure of gigantic proportions,” according to this peer-reviewed new academic study. The draconian policy failed to significantly reduce deaths while imposing substantial social, cultural, and economic costs.
“This study is the first all-encompassing evaluation of the research on the effectiveness of mandatory restrictions on mortality,” according to one of the study’s co-authors, Dr. Lars Jonung, professor emeritus at the Knut Wicksell Centre for Financial Studies at Sweden’s Lund University, “It demonstrates that lockdowns were a failed promise. They had negligible health effects but disastrous economic, social and political costs to society. Most likely lockdowns represent the biggest policy mistake in modern times.” "
and
"The Herby-Jonung-Hanke meta-analysis found that lockdowns, as reported in studies based on stringency indices in the spring of 2020, reduced mortality by 3.2 per cent when compared to less strict lockdown policies adopted by the likes of Sweden
This means lockdowns prevented 1,700 deaths in England and Wales, 6,000 deaths across Europe, and 4,000 deaths in the United States."
and
"The research concludes that, unless substantial alternative evidence emerges, lockdowns should be ‘rejected out of hand’ to control future pandemics."
I think we may just have different assumptions buried in the heart of our respective worldviews.
To me it is axiomatic that the value of a human life is not something that can be measured in dollars. All lives that can be saved, should be saved unless doing so would cost more lives.
To the "Institute of Economic Affairs" it's probably axiomatic that a humans only value is in their economic worth. The elderly that died therefore had little value in the first place. Their loss would mean little to that worldview.
When I see statements from the article like the ones below I see it as absolute proof that we made the right decisions, or at least something close to the right decisions. When the authors saw it they concluded that these lives were too expensive. A concept I find completely alien.
>Shelter-in-place (stay at home) orders in Europe and the United States reduced COVID mortality by between 1.4 and 4.1 per cent;
>Business closures reduced mortality by 7.5 per cent;
>Gathering limits likely increased COVID mortality by almost six per cent;
>Mask mandates, which most countries avoided in Spring 2020, reduced mortality by 18.7 per cent, particularly mandates in workplaces; and
>School closures resulted in a between 2.5 per cent and 6.2 per cent mortality reduction.
> If you were put in charge, how would you formulate policy for managing a resource-constrained health system?
I would delegate those decisions to healthcare subject matter experts. I'm not qualified to make those sorts of decisions. Neither are politicians, economists, or statisticians on their own.
It is a big, complicated subject and just being generally clever isn't enough to qualify someone for that type of thing.
> Have you seen the excess deaths data for Europe 2020-2022?
I had not, and it's concerning.
I don't think it automatically counts as proof that covid interventions did more harm than the disease though. For example, I've seen other papers that suggest excess deaths are actually proof that covid deaths were wildly underreported, especially early on.
That and the paper you linked earlier are certainly enough to suggest we need more research to determine which interventions worked, and which didn't, with greater certainty. This won't be the last pandemic.
I may fully read the book by the statistician you cited earlier. I think he touches on the subject of those excess deaths a bit.
> I would delegate those decisions to healthcare subject matter experts. I'm not qualified to make those sorts of decisions. Neither are politicians, economists, or statisticians on their own.
Like the UK NHS's NICE?
"The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is responsible for conducting health technology assessment (HTA) on behalf of the National Health Service (NHS). In seeking to justify its recommendations to the NHS about which technologies to fund, NICE claims to adopt two complementary ethical frameworks, one procedural—accountability for reasonableness (AfR)—and one substantive—an ‘ethics of opportunity costs’ (EOC) that rests primarily on the notion of allocative efficiency."[0]
"NICE’s use of ICERs, quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) and the cost-effectiveness threshold as its preferred tools for decision-making, with some allowance for relevant social and ethical values, has been consistent since the institute’s inception"[0]
and as Karol Sikora said: "QALY [is] not a perfect metric, but it’s the best we’ve got"
"[NICE] guidelines are based on the best available evidence. Our recommendations are put together by experts, people using services, carers and the public"[1][2]
Sounds not unlike what you suggested ... and yet they've consistently used 'value for money' measures such as QALY.
Systems like this are necessary primarily because these programs are given lower priority than other government spending. If I were in charge the queen would've been buried in a pine box, and the money wasted on her funeral would've gone towards life saving medical treatments.
Any system that prioritizes anything above human health is fundamentally broken, and that's not the SME's fault.
That said, the world is finite and tough decisions do still need to be made. In those cases I would defer to the SME's. If they still thought a system like the above was necessary after being fully funded I would accept that, despite it being distasteful to me.
Cause of deaths is not described. If vaccines works, why productive population still dies in high numbers during winters? Why elders are dying in same numbers?
Covid is not threat for healthy 15-44y individuals. Do we have overcrowded hospitals full of people hooked to oxygen? Did you recently hear about unexpected deaths, rapid cancers, increased suicides or myocarditis among productive generation?
Per statistic in my country, there was 0.16% deaths to my age (mid 30's) with positive PCR test during death (not necessary mean it was cause of death, there was confirmed cases when cause of death was car crash).
I personally don't know anyone, who was healthy and suddenly die because of covid and neither does anyone I ask. Most victims of covid have another comorbidities.
However I know many people (7) injured (including my family) by vaccination and 2 dead. I consulted this anecdotal evidence with my doctor and he observed similar event on his patients (around 2000 people).
- Both count as a serious threat to me.
If people that you disagree with count serious threat for you, you should probably find serious help.
> However I know many people (7) injured (including my family) by vaccination and 2 dead. I consulted this anecdotal evidence with my doctor and he observed similar event on his patients (around 2000 people).
Here's the thing... I don't believe you. It's not personal, it's just that you are making claims that are contrary to the evidence and have nothing to back them except an anonymous anecdote on the internet.
If deaths were occuring at that rate it would be devastating and obvious. Nobody could begin to hide it. What you describe are far worse outcomes than COVID itself, but we don't have enough corpses for it to have actually happened. Additionally the timing doesn't work out.
As of March 2023 13 BILLION covid vaccine doses had been given. If it had the same mortality rate as COVID itself (39 per 100,000/ the vaccine would have killed an additional 5,070,000 people, but it didn't. There aren't that many dead, and that's ignoring the disabled completely.
Sooo... If it did have side effects they were less dangerous than the disease itself. It's just math, and not even tough math.
I believe that you believe it, and I can respect that it is important to you, but I prefer science and the consensus among scientists and doctors is that you are wildly off base.
> If people that you disagree with count serious threat for you, you should probably find serious help.
I think I didn't say that clearly. I was saying that the virus doubling the risk of death and making people stupid is a serious threat.
That said, vaccine scepticism has killed a lot of people. So yes, it is a threat to all mankind.
Just answer honestly few questions. How many healthy people that died because of covid do you know personaly? How many vaccinated individuals that got covid do you personally know? Ask this questions among your family and friends and discuss it openly.
I don't know where are you from, but you can check statistics about mortality by age in your country.
Speaking about side effects of vaccines, there are plenty studies monitoring it. If you believe in science as you wrote, read it carefuly:
- Massari M. et al: Postmarketing active surveillance of myokarditis and pericarditis following vaccination with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in persons aged 12 to 39 years in Italy: A multi-database, self-controlled case series study
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34849657/
No, I am, first, being supportive of your repeated edits to uncover important details. No trolling -- thank you to dig into those references. Second, I was offering a sarcastic remark about other pseudo-medical topics that are frequently debated on this board. All kinds of Internet randos come out from the woodwork when "inflamation" or "natural foods" are discussed here. This place is great to discuss tech, but the discussions around legal, medicine, and economics are pathetic. All kinds of people trying to apply their nerd programmer knowledge to fields about which they know little.
*EDIT* Did you just cite a twitter post that links to some dudes blog as if it were a reliable source of medical information?
* EDIT to the EDIT * Did you notice that this dudes blog is PAID, and requires a subscription to access?