Coronavirus - Take two - Action!

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Andrew Bostom
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Oxford Epidemiologist Dr. Sunetra Gupta advocates acquiring herd immunity to covid19, while shielding vulnerable, & not mass, draconian lockdowns, as rational means of limiting death, serious illness

One of the world’s top epidemiologists has urged Australia to abandon a lockdown strategy against coronavirus and look to the Swedish model of developing herd immunity.

Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford, says Australia is adopting a “selfish’’ and “self-congratulatory’’ approach which is misguided and will have negative long-term consequences and urged the country to look at the latest evidence to decide its tactics.

She said if the Australian government changed its approach and let the virus — which 80 to 90 per cent of the population will only get asymptomatically — spread naturally, with intense protections for those most vulnerable, it would in the long term help protect all of Australians from future viral threats and also avoid the most damaging short-term economic impacts for the underprivileged.

The most recent scientific research shows that between 30 and 81 per cent of the population has natural immunity to coronavirus because the body’s T-cells recognise the threat from having had other cold and flu viruses. Scientists believe having coronavirus causes people’s immune systems to develop antibodies and T-cell responses to future viruses.
Professor Gupta said: “One of the reasons I am not worried about this virus is a running theme in research work is how previous exposure to viruses protects you from incoming threats.”

She warned that suppression of the virus did not work and lockdown simply resulted in some parts of the population being more exposed to the virus when it next flared up.

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She said: “There is no way lockdown can eliminate the virus … and so it’s not at all surprising once you lift lockdown in areas it will flare up again. That is what we are seeing in the southern United States, and in Australia. In places where it has already swept through, a proportion of people are immune and you are not seeing it come back.’’

She said instead of lockdowns, governments should focus energies on shielding the elderly and those with comorbidities to protect them as much as possible.

Professor Gupta said countries that had closed off borders were not only ensuring populations remained exposed to the virus at some point, but long term it was unsustainable.

“You can only lock down for so long unless you choose to be in isolation for eternity so that’s not a good solution,’’ she said.
She said Australia may think it is an effective short-term strategy but there were long-term consequences.
“Being self-congratulatory, ‘we have kept it out’, is misplaced, I think.’’

Professor Gupta said Sweden’s measured social-distancing approach had offered greater protections for the entire region because Scandinavia now had high levels of immunity.

Professor Gupta said the Swedes “have done quite well in terms of deaths’’. She said Denmark and Norway, which locked down and have had lower death rates, may yet find the next wave difficult.

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