Yesterday, a short paper titled “SARS-CoV-2 elimination, not mitigation, creates best outcomes for health, the economy, and civil liberties” was published in The Lancet. The authors claim, “Countries that consistently aim for elimination – i.e., maximum action to control SARS-CoV-2 and stop community transmission as quickly as possible – have generally fared better than countries that opt for mitigation – i.e., action increased in a stepwise, targeted way to reduce cases so as not to overwhelm health-care systems.”
This claim is supported by three charts, each comparing “OECD countries opting for elimination” with “OECD countries opting for mitigation” (see below). The first chart shows that “OECD countries opting for elimination” had fewer deaths per million; the second shows that they had smaller declines in GDP; and the third shows that they had less restrictive lockdowns.
The authors note, “With the proliferation of new SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, many scientists are calling for a coordinated international strategy to eliminate SARS-CoV-2.” They also note, “Countries that opt to live with the virus will likely pose a threat to other countries” whereas those “opting for elimination are likely to return to near normal”.
One might be tempted to conclude that “elimination” (or “Zero Covid” as it’s sometimes termed) is a sensible strategy going forward. However, I don’t find the authors’ analysis very convincing.
First, they don’t explain how they classified countries as either “opting for elimination” or “opting for mitigation”. For example, did they simply look at outcomes (which would be circular), or did they examine statements by politicians from the spring of last year? (E.g., “This Government will pursue an elimination strategy.”) It’s not clear.
Only five countries were classified as “opting for elimination”: Australia, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. All other OECD countries were classified as “opting for mitigation”. It may have occurred to you that the five “eliminationist” countries are not exactly representative. Four are islands and one is a peninsula (with a fairly impenetrable border to the north). Two are East Asian. And in fact, these two – Japan and South Korea – are the only East Asian countries in the OECD.
As I argued in a piece for Quillette, all the Western countries that have kept their death rates low are geographically peripheral countries that imposed strict border controls at the start (Norway and Finland, plus a few islands). Their geographic circumstances not only made border controls practical, but also gave them a head start in responding to the pandemic.
It’s very unlikely that large, highly connected countries like France, Italy or the US would have been able to contain the virus during the deadly first wave. And although Britain is an island, we probably wouldn’t have been able to either. The epidemic was already more advanced in London and other international hubs by the time most Western countries introduced lockdowns and social distancing.
In other words, “elimination” was probably never a realistic option for Britain and other large Western countries – even if it could have a passed a cost-benefit test. But what about Japan and South Korea?
Although South Korea did use a combination of early lockdowns and strict border controls to contain the virus, the same cannot be said for Japan. According to the Oxford Blavatnik School’s COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, Japan has had only two days of mandatory business closures and zero days of mandatory stay-at-home orders since the pandemic began. (And the two days of mandatory business closures were the 25th and 26th of April this year.)
Japan did introduce border controls quite early, which may have protected it during the first wave. However, these were not sufficient to prevent an epidemic from burgeoning in the winter of 2020–21. (By early February, the number of daily deaths was in the 90s.) Yet this epidemic retreated without any real lockdown measures being imposed, which suggests that some other cultural or biological factor accounts for Japan’s success.
Second, even if you believe an “elimination” strategy was feasible for Britain and other large Western countries in the early weeks of the pandemic, that ship has arguably sailed. This is particularly true for Britain, where almost 70% of adults now have COVID antibodies. In other words: while it might have been sensible to “eliminate” the virus last spring (assuming that was possible), the costs of doing so now would almost certainly outweigh the benefits.
Overall, the Lancet study does not provide a strong case for “elimination” of COVID-19. And in fact, a survey by Nature of 119 experts found that 89% believe it is “likely” or “very likely” that SARS-CoV-2 will become an endemic virus. As Michael Osterholm – an American epidemiologist – noted, “Eradicating this virus right now from the world is a lot like trying to plan the construction of a stepping-stone pathway to the Moon. It’s unrealistic.”
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Let it go. The money people let it go. Like they say millionaires don’t believe in astrology but billionaires do. Let it go. We are moving into a time in the next fifteen years which will make these discussions seem like quaint reminders of a bygone age. They call it Vargtimmen, the time of the wolf. We have the senses and the abilities to fight. If you have become too domesticated then it is sayonara baby, see you on the other side.
What are you talking about?
This foggy period over Europe is exerting huge pressures, in terms of energy consumption and hospital admissions, This is not going to decrease you will have ever increaing rain in spiring and ‘summer’. And then a transition to a cold fog in August. The western side of Europe is probably going to become a lot more unpleasant in years to come. You an go down with the ship but it is hard to go down with the ship when you are completely depleted. Make plans now if you want to live. The weather can rob you of your energies and ambition very quickly.
I’ve smoked some pretty strong weed tonight… But please elaborate..
The Hockey Stick fraud made its appearance circa 1998 by Mann – then studying for Painter and House Decorator degree. It was based on tree rings and was revealed as a fraud within months by McIntyre and McKitrick amongst many others. The algorithms simply produced a hockey stick no matter than the inputs – GBP vs USD; Car #s vs Bikes.
As Mann wrote in the climategate emails, ‘the powers that be’ want the medieval warm and little ice age periods to disappear.
Mann is no more a scientist than the midget Italian Fauci is a doctor.
https://climateaudit.org/
It took McIntyre about 5 years to expose the Hockey Stick as being statistically flawed and therefore not a true representation of global temperatures over the previous thousand years. The reason it took so long was that Mann would not release, data, computer code or methodology so that his work could be checked. —-We should ask the question WHY?
Can you imagine Einstein coming away with General relativity but not letting the scientific community have access to his work so they could check it for themselves? Yet the IPCC, desperate for anything that would show humans have warmed the planet, made it their centre piece and it was all over IPCC reports and TV news.
What is coming is way worse than their prediction in February after full coverage of the fog canopy. I don’t deal in bullshit I am here to tell you that 2025 will be very different. If you are thinking of leaving the country then you probably can’t. If you have to stay here then just keep your ears and eyes open. I can’t help you anymore because you lack the ability to take anything seriously. It is a case of bye ye and don’t ask me for assistnce when the horrorshow really begins. I recognise the sincere characters.
How do you measure the “surface temperature” of the Atlantic?
Using satellite radiometers I believe.
Interesting; thanks. I had not heard of those. It’s not clear to me how many sampling points they would use, which is where the whole “average temperature” thing falls down for me.
What I read also suggested that they have to correct for a whole bunch of stuff so the measurements are massaged. I suppose if what you are correcting for remains constant over time then the change is real even if the actual numbers might not be.
There are a number of buoy based systems doing this. The Argo System is one version, 4000 plus buoys spread across the oceans that report the range of temperatures and salinity from the surface to a depth of 2000 metres by sinking and raising the sensors. Prior to these methods, earlier methods used ship based methods, one being a bucket over the side and another being sensors on water inlets used for engine cooling. The UAH temperature data mentioned reports at different atmospheric layers, not sure it would be said to be surface level temperature.
Thanks. 4000 sounds a lot but the ocean is huge. How do they know it’s not getting colder in the places they are not measuring?
The Argo programme has really only been running 20 years with floats mainly measuring profiles down to 1000m for 9 days. But it produces a much denser grid of profiles than the older manually lowered sampling buckets. Ship seawater inlet temperature measurements are subject to draught fluctuations of 6-18m between loaded and lightship draughts. The surface 10-30m profiles have the most significant effect on weather but the total volume of the worlds oceans is about 1.4 billion cubic km. With 1 cubic km having a mass of 1 billion tonnes. So there are some real limitations on accuracy and consitency in long term large area measurement.
We are a nation of sheep and someone else owns the grass
The news media are not independent; they are a sort of bulletin board and public relations firm for the ruling class — the people who run things.
Don’t just teach your children to read….Teach them to question everything they read. Teach them to question everything.
Life gets real simple once you cut out all the bullshit you learn at school.
I’ve set my own rules to live by. The first one is; never believe anything the government says.
If you vote and you elect a dishonest, incompetent people into office who screw you over, you are responsible for what they have done.
We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves….and we’re gonna save the fucking planet? the planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system.
George Carlin (1937 – 2008).
Looks like a malevolent cabbage patch kid.
Mann has been a very lucky recipient, of a burst of worldwide madness….luckily that madness is fading.
one notable climate scientist, Michael Mann,
I think not – a thin-skinned global warming activist more like.
This is what the face of an imposter looks like
Global warming – communisms greatest scam?
Green on the outside, red on the inside.
This bloke as got a face you’d just love to slap.. a wet slap at that!