Epidemiologist: Social Distancing Guarantees Second Wave of Covid-19 | Hacker News Reader

Epidemiologist: Social Distancing Guarantees Second Wave of Covid-19

6 pointsgiardini11 comments

Dr. Knut Wittkowski: "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."

Complete interview at:

https://ratical.org/PerspectivesOnPandemic-II.html

Selections from the Interview of Dr. Wittknowski at:

https://www.thecollegefix.com/epidemiologist-coronavirus-could-be-exterminated-if-lockdowns-were-lifted/

Some quotes:

>WITTKOWSKI:"However, if we are preventing herd immunity from developing, it is almost guaranteed that we have a second wave as soon as either we stop the social distancing or the climate changes with winter coming or something like that.<"

[30:10.16] JOHN: I see. And so, to summarize, you are saying that’s going to flatten and extend the epidemic and create the second wave that we are being told to fear?

[30:21.00] WITTKOWSKI: Yes. The second wave is a direct consequence of social distancing.

Oh, it'll be more than two waves if we're lucky. See figure 4 from the the Imperial College paper[1].

Note that that paper assumes R0 of 2.2. A paper in CDC's Emerging Infectious Diseases written by researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory shows evidence that the real R0 could be as high as 5.7[2].

This guy's argument is wildly reckless, he's basically advocating for the rejected "herd immunity by infecting everyone at once" strategy that would've killed millions. He gives absolutely zero thought to the health care workers who are already dying en masse even with a quarantine strategy.

[1] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...

[2] https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article?deliv...

mullingitover says>" he's basically advocating for the rejected "herd immunity by infecting everyone at once" [a] strategy that would've killed _millions_."<

"Herd immunity" is not "rejected". For example, the Dutch and the Swedes have chosen to use it against Covid-19..

Furthermore, the total number of Covid-19 _cases_ in the USA is less than a million! to claim that the herd immunity strategy would have "killed millions" is nonsense. Deaths in USA due to Covid-19 are < 17,000 as of today, April 9, 2020.

Not true, the Dutch have been on quasi lockdown for the last 4 weeks.

Well, it _is_ true, they did and it was official:

"Dutch embrace 'herd immunity' as dire death warning prompts UK to change course"

https://pjmedia.com/trending/dutch-pm-announces-he-opts-for-...

It was a gaffe from the PM and quickly retracted, see for example: https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2020/03/mps-back-ministers-on-...

How is exponential growth in a population of 300 million nonsense?

If you take the requisite counter-measures to stop the exponential growth, why are you upset when it does actually work?

Odd

> For example, the Dutch and the Swedes have chosen to use it against Covid-19..

Let's check in with Sweden. Currently their graph is not looking great[1].

They're faring worse than their neighbors, and the government is scrambling to get a lockdown going[2].

> As of April 9, Sweden’s rate per capita of confirmed deaths from the coronavirus is higher than the rate of its fellow Scandinavian countries or the US. Hospitals are overcrowded and staff members are overworked, and the military has begun setting up field hospitals in major cities, including Stockholm, the country’s capital and the epicenter of its outbreak. The government is now seeking extraordinary powers to impose further restrictions.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands, they're extending their very real lockdown into June[3].

[1] https://mackuba.eu/corona/#sweden

[2] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/9/21213472/coronavirus-sweden-her...

[3] https://www.nst.com.my/world/world/2020/03/577616/covid-19-n...

> the total number of Covid-19 _cases_ in the USA is less than a million

But herd immunity only kicks in if a large percentage of the population (The author mentions 80%, so 240m people in the US) is infected. And he wants those 80% to be infected within 4 weeks.

Wittkowski published a paper on March 31 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.28.20036715v... in which he predicted:

> As the curve of new cases is flattening in the U.S. at about 20,000 per day [...] the number of deaths is stabilizing at about 400/d [...]. With an expected total of less than 10,000 deaths, [...]

A look at the actual numbers (WITH mitigation strategies) demonstrates that his model is wildly wrong.

Well, I think two waves that stay manageable for the healthcare system is preferable to one wave with people dying without treatment in overcrowded hospitals.

If we can build enough masks and enough hyperbolic chambers for wave 2 sure but there isn’t much effort. Vents are mostly useless and most people on vents either die immediately or have poor long term outcomes.

Social distancing just flattens the curve. Lockdown lifting necessarily implies a second wave unless Suppression is applied.

https://miro.medium.com/max/1344/1*Xey24l-zNkU8pScTu7st5A.pn...

https://medium.com/@juan_marketpayio/please-america-do-not-f...

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