Johan Giesecke, an advisor to the Director General of the WHO, former Chief Scientist of the EU Centre for Disease Control, and former state epidemiologist of Sweden, returned to UnHerd yesterday to resume his discussion with editor Freddie Sayers, adjourned a year ago. He was one of the first major figures to come out against lockdowns last spring, saying they are not evidence-based, the correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only, and the Imperial College modelling was “not very good”.
While he admits he made some mistakes, he believes that history will judge him kindly, and says: “I think I got most of the things right, actually.”
He gives a solid defence of the outcome in Sweden, ably batting away the “neighbour argument” that says Sweden failed because Norway and Finland did better.
The differences between Sweden and its neighbours are much bigger than people realise from the outside – different systems, different cultural traditions…If you compare Sweden to other European countries [such as the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium] it’s the other way round. On the ranking of excess mortality, Sweden is somewhere in the middle or below the middle of European countries. So I think it’s really Norway and Finland that are the outliers more than Sweden. … They’re more sparsely populated. There are less people per square kilometre in these two countries. There are also much fewer people who were born outside Europe living in these two countries.
He is also rightly dismissive of the charge that Sweden is currently the worst for infections in Europe. While positive cases are up, so is testing, and besides on the most important metric, excess deaths, Sweden has been far below average since the start of February.
Giesecke is direct in his unflattering comparison of the UK’s outcome with Sweden’s:
They’re very similar. And yet one of the countries has had three severe lockdowns and the other has only had voluntary or mostly voluntary measures. That tells us something I think. That lockdowns may not be a very useful tool in the long run.
He admits that he misjudged how quickly vaccines would become available, and is now quite the enthusiast. He has had the AstraZeneca jab and wants everyone to have it: “If we really want to get down to small numbers – we won’t eradicate it, but to small numbers – then I think even children should be vaccinated… I can’t see why not.” He sees vaccines as providing a way out:
If you are vaccinated with two doses and wait the right number of weeks, then… you should be able to live like you did before the pandemic. This disease is sometimes seen as something supernatural, mystical, mythical – but it’s a viral disease like all other diseases. More dangerous than some of them, but it’s not unique, Covid. So a proper vaccine used correctly protects you and means that you don’t infect other people as well…. No vaccine is 100% effective, but we don’t have this discussion about any other vaccine.
He is full of praise for the Swedish approach, and in that his liberal motivations are clear.
Look at the good things with the Swedish system…. One is the schools: we are not destroying the future for classes of children. Another is that Sweden kept to its international agreements — for example in the EU you are not supposed to close your borders with other countries, but that has happened in several countries in Europe. We have made it possible for small businesses like cafes or bicycle shops to survive the pandemic. We have kept democracy. We have trusted people. I think there are a number of benefits from not having a severe lockdown and more of them will come as we do research on this in the future.
He is dismayed by how readily people surrendered their liberty – even in Sweden. A new law has recently been passed giving the Government the power to lock down in the future if it deems it necessary.
People were willing to give up more freedom than I thought they would. It worries me — there are many democratic rules and freedoms that have been curtailed. I think that may be one of the dangerous results of this pandemic.
There is a new law — a pandemic law — which gives the Government more power than it had before, and curtails part of the freedom of the Swedish population… It’s shifted power away from parliament to some extent, which is a new thing in Sweden at least in peacetime.
During the interview Giesecke makes a number of concessions, some of which are more understandable than others. He accepts his predictions about population antibody prevalence were too high, which is fair enough. But he still appears to regard antibodies as the definitive indicator of spread, despite the considerable evidence that a significant proportion of people are exposed or infected but do not develop antibodies because they fight it off with other parts of their immune system, such as T cells. He also seems oddly unfamiliar with the scientific literature on the ineffectiveness of lockdowns, appearing to accept that they may make a difference.
One of the things I got wrong a year ago is the rate of spread of this disease. I thought it would spread quicker. And I also thought it would be more similar in different countries. We can see now that there are big differences in the rates of spread in between countries. It may have to do with lockdown, it may have to do with cultural things in these countries. But there is a big difference between countries.
He also argues that Sweden effectively did lock down, just voluntarily, saying the country had “severe restrictions”.
Sweden has had rather severe restrictions, but we based them on voluntary participation by the inhabitants instead of using laws and police. A lot of people in the world seem to think that Sweden did nothing about the Covid pandemic. That’s wrong. The entire population changed their way of living and it had profound effects on daily life for millions of Swedes, even though you weren’t fined if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. So I would still advocate the Swedish model, even knowing all that.
The problem with this argument is that it essentially accepts the lockdowner position, that “severe” lockdowns are necessary and effective, and that the only reason Sweden could get away without one is because they did it without being forced to. It also suggests going back to normal will be fraught with risk of resurgence. These ideas are not supported by evidence, such as the evidence from US states that reopened last year and stayed open throughout the winter.
Giesecke also seems to concede Sayers’s bizarre claim that Neil Ferguson’s forecasts – of up to 510,000 deaths in the UK from an unmitigated epidemic, 250,000 from a mitigated epidemic and 20,000 with a suppression strategy – were accurate. “You may be right,” he says. “There is quite a difference between half a million and 130,000 – but, yep.”
There certainly is a difference between between 510,000 and 130,000 – a multiple of four in fact – and it’s mathematically illiterate for Sayers to suggest otherwise. Unless, of course, you assume that the lockdowns have prevented hundreds of thousands more deaths. Which lockdowners do believe, naturally, as a fundamental article of faith, despite the clear evidence from places like South Dakota and Florida that did not lock down that they are mistaken. Indeed, Ferguson’s modelling was applied to Sweden by a team at Uppsala University and the predictions were laughably wrong – they predicted 96,000 deaths by the end of June if Sweden stuck with its current policy; the actual figure was 5,333. Sayers makes no mention of this modelling embarrassment, and Giesecke does not draw his attention to it.
But perhaps Giesecke was just being polite to an interviewer who, for all his admirable open-mindedness in who he is willing to interview, does not seem to have developed antibodies to the evidence-free lockdowner ideology. Sayers even claims at one point that the Infection Fatality Rate for the UK and Sweden is as high as 0.9%. A recent meta-analysis by Professor John Ioannidis concluded that the IFR in Europe is more like 0.3%-0.4% (0.15% globally). Sayers doesn’t say where he gets the 0.9% figure from.
The interview is well worth watching in full.
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I don’t know who the lady is in the first picture but I bet those glasses she is wearing are top quality frames and lenses made with precision machines. That haircut looks expensive too, done with top quality scissors. I don’t know much about the manufacture of cosmetics other than they do get manufactured. She is not smeared in whatever people used to put on their faces before cosmetics, or wearing an animal skin or leaves or whatever. Don’t know about her state of health but bet she’s had scans from high-tech machines.
That is absolutely the first thing that came into my mind – they look like pretty high end glasses, but presumably even low end glasses cannot be produced under “deindustrialised” conditions, she is also wearing a printed top that looks suspiciously industrially produced as well, has a nice haircut like you say (under her future plans, presumably it would have to be grown long or hacked at roughly with a flint knife); and I am willing to bet ten squillion pounds that she currently has more than 50 square metres of space to call home. These people should be forced to live as they are advocating for several years with no exceptions (if she gets ill, for example, she can’t take industrially produced medicines – a bit of herbal medicine is all that’s permitted) then see how they like it. Although doubtless some of them WOULD like it, of course.
Absolutely. You can bet that when she envisages the glorious future, she doesn’t imagine she will live in a mud hut, scavenging and foraging for survival. Oh, no, she will be part of the elite, shielded from these uncomfortable conditions, but of course that’s the least she deserves for sacrificing her life for the salvation of mankind (oops, sorry, humankind).
Oh yes there will be exceptions of course, for the important rulers. Just like we are seeing already, when they tell us to stop flying cattle class once a year for a nice holiday but insist that they need to take private jets everywhere for “security” or “timetabling” reasons.
I wonder if any of them have ever set out exactly how they see this working. Would love to see it – hard to think that is would be in any way plausible or coherent. You can focus what you put effort into in order to prioritise what you feel is of most value (THEY decide this, of course) but you can’t turn the clock back across the board without huge knock on effects that they are unlikely to feel happy with if affected personally.
I think the really scary bit is they may actually believe what they say…
I find it hard to fathom. I would like to have a serious discussion with someone like her, but my experiences trying to have such discussions with covidians were fruitless – they won’t engage – and I suspect ecoloons would be the same.
Bye bye radio and chemo therapy, x-rays, scans of any sort and any types of joint replacement. Welcome to a painful old age.
This would suit them (as long as it only applied to other people of course) as an easy way to ensure depopulation (of other people).
Without the fossil fuels industry modern make-up would not exist. The ladies would be back to sticks of charcoal, gravy browning and white lead.
Indeed. It’s hard to imagine they actually believe this crap. It’s probably as MajorMajor says above – they don’t think it applies to them. Trouble is that a lot of modern comforts are only really viable if made at scale for a mass market.
“Green intellectual” now there’s a contradiction in terms!
‘Demanding, via political fiat, that your automobile industry begin producing a totally different product in the course of the next decade, is not all that different from abolishing your automobile industry.’
The genius of the self licking lollipop.
This doesn’t end well.
Wars never do.
The genius of the self licking lollipop.
A superb summary.
‘Green Intellectual’ is an oxymoron.
These people are actively destroying society with an insatiable callousness. They are absolute monsters. But who is promoting them, who is always providing them a public platform and why?
All western societies are going down the same road to hell and they are all doing their utmost to drag the rest of the world down with them too.
Emphasis on ‘moron’.
‘Intellectual’….a person who can’t plant a flower, fix a roof, or unfold a folded box.
Useless.
Maybe this tard can lead by example.
Everything made with hydrocarbons – leave them, strip them off, run naked to the woods and survive with Gaia.
Problem solved.
All revolutions are sponsored by powerful individuals. Are these people their useful idiots?
The collective death-wish is strong with these people.
Aren’t these ideas just a little bit similar to Pol Pot’s?
State ownership, rationing, abolishing money, restrictions on property, etc, etc…
So my suspicion is that this is just another educated intellectual who has fallen in love with the idea of communism, except this time the liberation of the masses will be done for environmental reasons.
The outcome would of course be the same.
Aren’t these ideas just a little bit similar to Pol Pot’s?
Pol-Pot – preceded by Mao, preceded by Lenin. For example: in 1921, after four years of Lenin’s government, the Russian economy was less than 20% what is was in 1913.
Exactly.
The end result of all these ideas is always, always the same. Totalitarianism, political terror, mass starvation, forced labour camps.
And the madleft tell us that they are the wise ones!
You need to move up the food chain to find the real psychopaths.
Yes, after murdering all the oil well owners in Baku – except for Alfred Nobel’s brother who was saved by his workers – oil exports slumped so Lenin was forced to beg the western oil companies to step in to revive production and income.
The whole of the green eco lunacy industry is based on the Club of Rome 1972 statement – mankind is the virus and climate (Co2) is the means to control that virus.
All about depopulation and control.
On what basis, and on who’s say so, is she an intellectual? Really?
No, she is an intellectual in the sense that she is well educated, articulate and intelligent.
The problem is that this is not enough.
Lenin was also extremely well educated too. But their educated mind has been captured by a fundamentally evil idea.
Perhaps the way to look at it is to view them as high priests of an evil cult. You can’t be a high priest if you are dumb, certain human qualities are necessary. But the cult you are serving is still evil.
Or, another way to understand is: the devil is not stupid.
No, she is an intellectual in the sense that she is well educated, articulate and intelligent.
Let’s see:
The central elements of the economy would have to be rationed. First of all, living space, because cement emits endless amounts of CO2. Actually, new construction would have to be banned outright and living space rationed to 50 square metres per capita. That should actually be enough for everyone. Then meat would have to be rationed, because meat production emits enormous amounts of CO2.
Assuming the translation is accurate, these are two factually dubious statements even when considering climate politics standards. The reason we’re supposed to decarbonise energy generation first and foremost is not that most of the CO₂ emitted as side-effect of economic activities comes really from construction and husbandry. The repetiveness (emits endless amounts of CO₂ … emits enormous amounts of CO₂) is very poor style people who had any (German) education worth anything would have been taught to avoid. The hysterical tone is a sign of someone getting carried away by his own emotions, another mark of the poorly educated who never learnt how to structure their thoughts instead of just letting them rush on like a waterfall.
This person who self-identifies as human being despite not everyone will want to agree with that is certainly neither well-educated nor intelligent nor articulate. Just another post-menopausal green autocunt who excellently networks in her chosen social environment and has no skills beyond that. Narcisstic, shallow, domineering and with an almost psychopathic lack of empathy for others.
Your final paragraph sums up Kneel to a tee.
They’re probably lab-grown somewhere.
How deranged do you have to be to count as an intellectual these days
“Leading green intellectual.”
The epitome of an oxymoron.
The fannification of the workplace continues at pace.
With predictably disastrous results.
We all look back prior to 1989 at the truly awful life East Germans, Russians etc had before the Berlin Wall came down. But what emerged was an even bigger communist monster called GREEN. It hijacked the environment for its purpose and has brainwashed the last couple of generations of young people who truly believe that without massive government intervention, central planning of every aspect of people’s lives that billions of people will die in a climate apocalypse and that all scientists agree this to be so. Young people so easily manipulated now clamour for their own impoverishment then head off home with their placards to their cosy house, laptop, fridge, satellite television, all courtesy of the very fuels they think they want rid of, without realising that without those fuels they would be back in the Stoneage, where no doubt they would have something different on their placards. —–“WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF STONES”.
Well their plan to destroy Germany is working very well. Manufacturing is heading for the exit if it hasn’t gone bankrupt. Retail chains are closing down. Construction is in a total mess. Inward investment is cratering. Educated people are leaving in droves. And of course those with wealth will be gone as there are plenty of other countries that will welcome their contribution to the economy – obviously not the UK of Two Tier and Thieves.
Ulrike Herrmann is seriously deranged, and her (honest) supporters are seriously deluded. Her dishonest supporters will be figuring out how they can gain from this madness. The rest of us must resist these people, all of them.
Basically she wants a society like pre-WW1 Russia …. peasant farmers, tied to the land.
Or post WW1 under Stalin.
The trouble with 50 square metres per person is that residential properties rarely approach this now. They are either too big or too small. Unless you have a rebuilding program of 50 square metres dwellings and compel people to move as their life circumstances change, the provision of these dwellings means pulling down what already exists and building new. Even with low environmental cost building that’s a huge environmental cost for very little environmental gain.
Lunacy.
I think you’re underestimating the unorginality and callousness of this far/ hard left columnist revolutionary: 50m² is the limit of what the German welfare state will pay for for people who are long-term unemployed or otherwise dependent on it¹ which is doubtlessly where she got the number from. Why would any of these … excess human beings deserve more than that?
¹ About 50% of the people permanently living off welfare in Germany are “refugees” and other unemployable/ not-looking-for-work foreigners.
Ulrike Herrmann is a leading Green intellectual? Well, she’s certainly not clever. Her opinions would have been kept more discreet if she had written them in her books rather than allow herself to be filmed/recorded spouting this drivel. At least in her book people would have to read past the first page to find these ideas – which would filter out all but the most afflicted insomniac.
These people have to be stopped by any means necessary, and I mean ‘any’.
Surely you don’t mean… ridicule?
Soapbox, ballot box, jury box…
Greens – Reds who Hate the Countryside
“…as long as we continue to screw up our economy, they’re the only ones who are really winning.”
Perhaps, but there are plenty of examples in history where it’s not good to be on the receiving end of large groups of poor, hungry and angry people. What is also not good is when those poor and hungry people know who made them poor and hungry because the architects of this poverty have been loudly telling the world everything they are doing and want to do.
Well finally the lunatics are spewing their rhetoric forth, all part of the WEF/WHO’s plans, and we are called “right wing” for opposing this, One can only assume this only applys to us “lower” classes, and not the “elite”, she needs help from professionals clearly if she believes this really will happen.
How can we argue against these people ,or better still stop them gaining more ground?.
These people take the veritable biscuit. They lack basic education on economics, powers of imagination and critical thought. They think they will save the planet but such policies mean the end of civilisation, bedlam and scorched earth with no trees standing and just about every living thing eaten by those not killed by their fellow younger and stronger fellow human beings (they, like most of us, forget that dying at the hands of other humans is a perfectly natural death).
This woman originally started in apprenticeship in banking she then broke off to get degrees in philosophy and history. She is obviously lacking education, but not for want of opportunities, more, because she’s naturally immune to learning beyond the biannual exercises in rote memorization students usually apply to get past the next round of tests.
Since this happened a long time ago, her mind has meanwhile again broken free of any factual knowledge inadvertenty gained in this way and reverted back to the excitable female teenager she never meant to stop being.
Surely “green intellectual” is an oxymoron?