Going outdoors is what stops every respiratory disease’

A veteran scholar of epidemiology has warned that the ongoing lockdowns throughout the United States and the rest of the world are almost certainly just prolonging the coronavirus outbreak rather than doing anything to truly mitigate it.

Knut Wittkowski, previously the longtime head of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at the Rockefeller University in New York City, said in an interview with the Press and the Public Project that the coronavirus could be “exterminated” if we permitted most people to lead normal lives and sheltered the most vulnerable parts of society until the danger had passed.

“[W]hat people are trying to do is flatten the curve. I don’t really know why. But, what happens is if you flatten the curve, you also prolong, to widen it, and it takes more time. And I don’t see a good reason for a respiratory disease to stay in the population longer than necessary,” he said.

“With all respiratory diseases, the only thing that stops the disease is herd immunity. About 80% of the people need to have had contact with the virus, and the majority of them won’t even have recognized that they were infected, or they had very, very mild symptoms, especially if they are children. So, it’s very important to keep the schools open and kids mingling to spread the virus to get herd immunity as fast as possible, and then the elderly people, who should be separated, and the nursing homes should be closed during that time, can come back and meet their children and grandchildren after about 4 weeks when the virus has been exterminated,” he added.

Wittkowski argued that the standard cycle of respiratory diseases is a two-week outbreak, including a peak, after which “it’s gone.” He pointed out that even in a regime of “social distancing,” the virus will still find ways to spread, just more slowly:

You cannot stop the spread of a respiratory disease within a family, and you cannot stop it from spreading with neighbors, with people who are delivering, who are physicians—anybody. People are social, and even in times of social distancing, they have contacts, and any of those contacts could spread the disease. It will go slowly, and so it will not build up herd immunity, but it will happen. And it will go on forever unless we let it go.

Asked about Anthony Fauci, the White House medical expert who for weeks has been predicting significant numbers of COVID-19 deaths in America as well as major ongoing disruptions to daily life possibly for years, Wittkowski replied: “Well, I’m not paid by the government, so I’m entitled to actually do science.”

I was at the Rockefeller University for 20 years, Head of the Department of Biostatistics Epidemiology and Research Design, and before that, I worked for 15 years with Klaus Dietz, one of the leading epidemiologists in the world in the German town of Tubingen in the Eberhard Karls University.

As with every respiratory disease, we should protect the elderly and fragile because when they get pneumonia, they have a high risk of dying of the pneumonia. So that is one of the key issues that we should keep in mind. On the other hand, children do very well with these diseases. They’re evolutionarily designed to be exposed to all sorts of viruses during their lifetime, and so they should keep going to school and infecting each other. Then, that contributes to herd immunity, which means after about four weeks at the most, the elderly people could start joining their family because then the virus would have been extinguished.

With all respiratory diseases, the only thing that stops the disease is herd immunity. About 80% of the people need to have had contact with the virus, and the majority of them won’t even have recognized that they were infected, or they had very, very mild symptoms, especially if they are children. So, it’s very important to keep the schools open and kids mingling to spread the virus to get herd immunity as fast as possible, and then the elderly people, who should be separated, and the nursing homes should be closed during that time, can come back and meet their children and grandchildren after about 4 weeks when the virus has been exterminated.

…what people are trying to do is flatten the curve. I don’t really know why. But, what happens is if you flatten the curve, you also prolong, to widen it, and it takes more time. And I don’t see a good reason for a respiratory disease to stay in the population longer than necessary.

We had two other SARS viruses before, Or, coronaviruses. It’s not the first coronavirus that comes out, and it won’t be the last. And for all respiratory diseases, we have the same type of an epidemic. If you leave it alone, it comes for two weeks, it peaks, and it goes for two weeks and it’s gone.

There are no more new cases in China and in South Korea. The number of new cases in Europe is already beginning to decline. The virus came later to the US, so here we see a bit of an incline, maybe, and leveling off within the next couple of days. And if we see that the cases are not increasing dramatically, that means that the number of new infections has already declined substantially and peaked about a week ago.

The epidemic has ended there, yes. Because otherwise, we would see people emerging – and even in China, it’s today very difficult to keep information under the hood. If there were lots of cases in hospitals, if the hospitals that they built, the temporary hospitals, were still full, we would hear that. This could not be suppressed.

…I’m not paid by the government, so I’m entitled to actually do science. If the government, if there had been no intervention, the epidemic would have been over, like every other respiratory disease epidemic.

We have, right now, let’s take realistic numbers in the United Sates: we have about 25,000 cases every day, that is probably the upper limit – make it 30,000 – who knows? But let’s talk about 25,000. 2% of them will actually have symptoms – that is 500 cases a day. Maybe a third or a fifth – let’s say half of them – will need to be hospitalized. That’s 250 patients a day. If they have been hospitalized for about 10 days, that means that we will have – our hospital system will have to deal with 2,500 patients every day for a certain period of time – that could be 3 or 4 weeks, and then the number will dramatically decrease again and the whole epidemic will be over.

Social distancing definitely is good. It prevented the sky from falling down.

**ADMITS HE’S BEING IRONIC**

I don’t know where these numbers are coming from – they’re totally unrealistic. There are no indications that this flu is fundamentally different from every other flu. We know what happened in China, we know what happened in South Korea, we know what happened, or is happening, in Europe. There are no indications that anything is different from a regular flu. Maybe it’s a bit worse than other flus – could be? ​ For a respiratory disease, the flu ends during springtime, that people spend more time outdoors because outdoors, the viruses cannot easily spread. That is a form of containment, spending more time outdoors.

I looked into the claim that people make that, in China and South Korea, the social distancing had successfully helped to control the epidemic. I looked at the dates when people actually started social distancing. In China, the epidemic peaked on February 1st to February 5th, in that period. But the schools were not closed until February the 20th – that was 2 weeks later. In South Korea, we have a similar pattern. In Daegu, or however that city is being pronounced, where the Church of Shincheonji had that outbreak. The self-quarantine was ordered only on February the 23rd, but the peak in that city happened; the national distancing was not advised until February the 29th, so that’s a week later, when the national peak happened. So, both in China and in South Korea, social distancing started only long after the number of infections had already started to decline, and therefore had very little impact on the epidemic. That means they had already reached herd immunity or were about to reach herd immunity. They were very close. But by installing the social distancing, they prevented it to actually getting to the final point, and this is why we are still seeing new cases in South Korea, several weeks after the peak.

You cannot stop the spread of a respiratory disease within a family, and you cannot stop it from spreading with neighbors, with people who are delivering, who are physicians – anybody. People are social, and even in times of social distancing, they have contacts, and any of those contacts could spread the disease. It will go slowly, and so it will not build up herd immunity, but it will happen. And it will go on forever unless we let it go.

I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t know what other people think.

I’m a scientist. We can see that in China, in Korea, the epidemic went down, and the epidemic did exactly what every other epidemic did, and it’s not that 400% of all people died. Maybe it’s 3 rather than 1% – maybe! But nothing is fundamentally different from the flus that we have seen before. Every couple of years there is a flu that is a bit worse than the other flus were, and it goes away in exactly the way the other flus went away, and this one behaves exactly the same way. The epidemic has ended in China, at least, in the provinces where it was. It has ended in South Korea. In Europe, it’s declining and will be ending anytime soon. Could be a bit longer than typically, because of the containment, which flattened and prolonged the epidemic. And so, if we really — that’s really good if we want to be affected by it as long as it gets. And in the United States we are doing the same thing. We are prolonging the epidemic to flatten the curve. But eventually, it will end.

Read the interview transcript here.

SOURCE .

MORE: Researchers find ‘no additional decline’ in coronavirus infection rate from lockdowns

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[MY NOTES: Again, this was LONG. But for us to really understand WHAT we are up against, and to decipher truth from fiction we had to have a deep, broad, and solid bedrock of reliable, verifiable facts and evidence on which to base it. Now for my conclusion.]

Trump is in trouble. Even BEFORE/WITHOUT the coronavirus…Trump was and IS in trouble. He, his family, and cohorts are in deep legal trouble. They are also in deep financial trouble. Trump got smeared in the first debate against Biden. A mere three days later he’s “sick”. I am NOT alone in thinking he is once again lying, trying to scam and pull a con so as to escape justice, save face, and skip town. IF that is not the correct scenario the other one before us is worse. Trump has already repeatedly said he will NOT commit to a peaceful transfer of power. AND on live tv during the first debate Trump called upon Fascists, White Supremacists, and other Alt-Right to conduct civil war level violence should he lose. Neither of these is acceptable. NOT even a rabid Far-Left, Big-Government Marxist-Socialist like FDR thought of doing this!! NOR did Clinton. NOR did Obama. What Trump is threatening in the latter scenario smacks of a despot and dictator! This is the behaviour of a TRAITOR. Now, you can have your dinner, watch the evening news, check out the late shows, and laugh it off like nothing is happening…it wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark.