Professor Mark Woolhouse on COVID-19

Last night on Channel 4 News,  Professor Mark Woolhouse, from Edinburgh University, set out clearly, more or less the argument I have been putting forward from the beginning in relation to COVID-19, and how to respond to it.

Video Here.

Woolhouse begins, of course, by not rocking the boat, in terms of saying that the current policy of lock down isn't working and should be abandoned. But, you don't even have to read between the lines of what he then says, to see that that is the implication of what he's saying. He describes the current measures as crude, precisely because they apply to everyone, whereas COVID-19 does not affect everyone equally. He confirms that it predominantly affects the elderly, and those with other underlying medical conditions. Moreover, he also confirms the point I have made from the beginning, which is that those affected, in this 20%, are themselves highly concentrated in places like hospitals and care homes, and so its in those places that attention should be focused to ensure that both staff and patients can be properly protected and isolated from infection.

His point that COVID-19 does not affect everyone equally is precisely the point I have made from the beginning. The media, of course, focus on the tiny number of exceptions to the rule. They focus on those that are young, and apparently healthy, who have died or become seriously ill, but the facts show that these are a tiny minority. However, tragic it may be from their individual perspective, from a statistical point of view it is insignificant, and to make public policy on the basis of this statistically insignificant minority, means to put the lives and well being of millions of other people at risk, as the global economy is smashed by that policy.  The only equivalent is making economic policy on the basis of the interests of the less than 1% who own and control the majority of fictitious capital, rather than in the interests of the more than 99% who don't!

The actual facts, as opposed to the reportage of the media, shows that, in Britain, 92% of people dying from COVID-19 are aged over 60, 53% are over 80. Of the remaining 8% the vast majority have other underlying medical conditions, with less than 1% not falling into that category, and later analysis will undoubtedly identify why these individuals were vulnerable. If we look at even the Imperial data, it shows that there is a mortality rate of 9% for the over 80's, but a mortality rate of just 0.002% for the 0-9's, 0.006% for the 10-19's, 0.030% for the 20-29's, 0.080% for the 30-39's, 0.15% for the 40-49's, and 0.600% for the 50-59's. In fact, all of these rates are overstated, because they are based on reported cases, rather than actual infections.

If we take the UK, for example, it is only now just managing to perform 10,000 tests per day. If that was one test per person, it means that only 1 person in 6500 is being tested. It would take about 15 years to test the whole population. In fact, of these 10,000 tests quite a few are duplicates. That is because some tests are thought not to have taken, others are because you can test someone one day, but need to test them again another, if they may have come into contact with the infection in the intervening period. In reality, for every person tested, there are 10,000 people who are not being tested. Put, another way, for every person tested and identified as having COVID-19, there are 10,000 other people who have not been tested, and who potentially could have COVID19. But, of those tested for COVID-19, the early results showed that, of those with flu-like symptom coming into hospital, only about 10% had COVID-19, the others having some other flu-like virus. On that basis, it may be that only 10% of the 10,000 are likely to have COVID-19, but that still means that for every person tested, and found to have COVID-19, there is likely to be 1,000 people who have COVID-19, who have not been tested. In which case, the actual extent of infection is likely to be 1,000 times greater than the reported number of cases.

There are 60,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the UK. On the basis that there are 1,000 cases for everyone reported that means that 60 million people could already be infected, or nearly the entire population. But, if the ratio is even just half that, it would mean that 30 million people would already be infected, so that a good measure of herd immunity is already likely to exist, slowing the progress of further infection.