How media distorts science: Covid on surfaces

Covid hysteria has highlighted the strange human tendency to want to believe the worst. No matter how bad something is, we are fascinated by the possibility it could be even worse.

Journalists are subject to the same psychological trait, but are also driven by their job to find material that escalates the fear.

An example is news coverage on whether SARS-CoV2 transmits from surfaces.

Media looked for people to confirm the possibility, then leaped onto research that confirmed it was possible.

Look at this shocking report on Reuters that focused on a CSIRO finding that Covid particles could live for up to 28 days. The report kicks off by saying the finding underlines the need for protective measures like hand-washing. The story includes video of HAZMAT suited research personnel running tests. The pairing of these signals effectively makes a conclusion from the research that live virus on surfaces is a real way of picking up a dangerous virus.

Information in the article which should provide context that lessens fear, such as mentioning it was a controlled environment, is present, but without any similar sort of conclusion for the average reader.

This is absolutely critical to the misleading nature of the story: the presentation of fear-inducing information (the fascinating news angle) is provided with scary comment and editorialising, but information that could lessen the fear is sparse and not explained.

Unfortunately, researchers live in the same world, influenced by the fear of authorities, funders and media. So there were motives to study surface transmission, and to highlight findings that suggested it was possible.

The CSIRO made almost no attempt to put the findings in context or lessen the hyperbole.

The result of these news reports to the public (and therefore to politicians and other authorities) that inflated and distorted the findings.

To be fair, some media did report properly. For example, it turns out that the CSIRO study was done in the dark! Light is a known anti-septic. The BBC noted this, but only after some experts were brave enough to point out these sort of context-relevant facts.

No media bothered reporting real world studies that found very short life spans for virus on surfaces.

Bizarrely, a Lancet piece as early as July highlighted the exaggeration of the risk. Emanuel Goldman concluded:

the chance of transmission through inanimate surfaces is very small, and only in instances where an infected person coughs or sneezes on the surface, and someone else touches that surface soon after the cough or sneeze (within 1–2 h). I do not disagree with erring on the side of caution, but this can go to extremes not justified by the data. Although periodically disinfecting surfaces and use of gloves are reasonable precautions especially in hospitals, I believe that fomites that have not been in contact with an infected carrier for many hours do not pose a measurable risk of transmission in non-hospital settings. A more balanced perspective is needed to curb excesses that become counterproductive.

By the November and December of 2020, the truth began to be properly reported. https://www.nytimes.com/…/world/asia/covid-cleaning.html.

It’s unclear what was going on that led to a media willingness to report this. Perhaps it might have been that there were sufficient other vectors for transmission that could be worried about. Certainly the mask issue was rampant at that time, with media backing up the official masking policies.

This coincided with another conclusive study in the Lancet. https://www.thelancet.com/…/PIIS2213-2600(20…/fulltext

Yet even in March 2021 the surface myth was persisting. Companies and organisations boasted of “deep cleaning” their premises in Auckland, NZ when the city locked down after covid cases were found and their movements tracked.

Even when being ‘critical’, media conformed to the surface-danger narrative. A New Zealand Herald story quoted a microbiologist warning that deep cleans were unlikely to get rid of the virus from the surface. Never mind that lots of research had already shown that the virus particles were unlikely to alive, or lead to infection, in the first place.

So it’s clear that media have not reported Covid information accurately or in context, fueling the Covid hysteria in 2020. They have been enabled in this by academics and researchers who either already distorted in their research, or found it difficult to convey the detail, or were drawn and mesmerized by the publicity into focusing on messages that made things look worse.

To top it off, most of us were almost gleeful to see the news, and convey to others: we thought it was bad, but it’s even worse than that!

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Determining cause of death in the age of covid-19

Simon Thornley

28 Feb 2021

New Zealand descends into another lockdown abyss just as I am now questioning the very foundations of the covid story.

Recently, I have pointed to evidence that covid was around in Europe before Wuhan. Since we were apparently living with covid in Europe without excess mortality or catastrophe, this seems at face value to suggest that we had lived with the virus and can do so again.

Another matter is that we have shifted how we define virus related factors, and this is causing us to believe SARS-CoV-2 is more serious than it is. Definitions are a cornerstone of epidemiology and the collection of scientific data. Death seems to be a clear-cut event in a person’s life but determining the cause of death is a surprisingly difficult process.

As Dennis De Nuto so beautifully illustrated in the Ocker flick, “The Castle”, definitions matter. Responding to the judge with “it’s the vibe, your honour” when alleging a constitutional law breach doesn’t quite cut it. While there is almost always uncertainty about causes of death and classification, this uncertainty has been stretched to breaking point in New Zealand’s covid-19 saga. The most recent death is illustrative.

We learned that an individual had been in quarantine. They were then transferred to North Shore Hospital for a serious non-covid illness and later tested positive for covid. The patient later died. A few days later, the death was considered another official NZ covid death. On the face of it, without further information, this does not indicate to me a death caused by infection with SARS-CoV-2. At no point in the article are we told that the individual had the disease that the virus is alleged to cause: a lung infection. When the reporter quizzed the Director General, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, for justification of the Ministry’s classification the response was revealing: ‘…we have been very inclusive in our approach of categorising deaths as covid-19-related…”. He went on to explain, “You might recall when we had a number of deaths last year sadly related to aged residential care. A number of those people had actually not been swabbed because of the nature of their conditions but they were categorised as probable cases because of their symptoms…”

We have learned two important things from these statements. In the first case, if you want to classify as a covid death you do not need evidence of a lung infection. In the second, when referring to the rest home deaths, you do not even need a positive PCR test. There was no further evidence related to autopsy or other clinical findings or investigations.

The next revelation came in how this decision making was justified. Bloomfield’s response was “Most countries are doing this, for example in the UK they categorise everyone who dies within 28 days of being hospitalised with covid-19 as … a COVID-19-related death.” Essentially, everyone else is doing it, so… why not?

It would be weird and totally unhelpful if this was the approach to any other disease. It’s even worse for Covid because we are now in Auckland’s fourth lockdown – justified based on saving lives from infection. It is now questionable that New Zealand’s covid-19 deaths would have lived longer without the infection. The absence of the virus clearly would be unlikely to have saved the latest death who was hospitalized with a “serious non-covid illness” and then tested positive. Not without further supporting information, which if present, has been withheld from the public domain.

Since it is also now stated that not all deaths tested positive, it is hard to be certain that the absence of the virus would have saved other ‘apparent’ covid deaths. Indeed, according to a June 2020 OIA request, five of the 21 deaths (at the time) reported tested either negative or had not been tested. This is important, since covid-19 is not a disease with specific signs and symptoms, it is unclear that the absence of the virus would have saved these negative or untested cases.

This now leaves the covid deaths who tested positive. We are simply not given enough clinical information to know whether these lives would be saved without the virus on board. What we do know is that 16/22 deaths at June 2020 occurred in rest home residents, and that 8/14 deaths until April occurred in residents of a specialized dementia unit. We also know that the age distribution of these deaths is no different from background. This is further evidence that the absence of SARS-CoV-2 would not have altered the survival of these people.

In Italy, the place that scared many of us into thinking the worst about covid-19, it has now been proved that covid deaths were systematically exaggerated. The same is likely in the United States.

The one country that bucks the trend and uses a strict definition of a covid-19 death is Singapore. It also happens to have 29 deaths from 59,925 cases at the time of writing, with a case-fatality ratio of 0.05%, less than for seasonal influenza. It may be definitions, rather than lockdown protocols, that means the virus has had little effect there. Rather ironically, lockdown enthusiasts in New Zealand have championed Singapore for its societal restrictions, but they have not championed its use of covid-related definitions.

It looks increasingly as if covid-19 is a kind of chimera, largely created by our own modern fears.

This is bizarre, as Auckland moves into its next lockdown, estimated to cost our economy half a billion dollars per week, and as the queues in food banks are expected to grow, with the lives of our poorest communities most affected.

We must scrutinise not only whether our strategy hell bent on elimination of this virus is worthwhile, but whether it’s even based on reality.

What is the end game for New Zealand with covid-19?

Simon Thornley

22/2/2021

A New Zealand household case of the UK variant triggered another short lockdown in New Zealand. This will have prompted many of us to wonder “when will covid end?” The answer requires considering that we won’t eliminate the virus, and nor do we need to.

I was recently invited by a Canadian group to debate the motion that all countries should aim for “zero covid”. My opponent, health economist, Dr Stephen Duckett waxed lyrical about the virtues of the zero covid, since he was at liberty to attend the Australian Open tennis tournament.

He talked about the relative freedom of elimination compared to the UK and US which were enduring constant restrictions and high rates of infection. The podcast was freshly posted when Victoria went back into lockdown, as did the chances of Stephen seeing Novac Djokovic play live. I briefly felt self-satisfied that it wasn’t New Zealand, but within days it was. Auckland was back into level 3.

People may rightly hope that vaccines will be the answer. After two doses, the Pfizer vaccine was  claimed to reduce infection rates by 95%, with 8/21,720 cases in the vaccinated and 162/21,728 in the placebo. The rate at which these vaccines has been developed is a testament to human determination and skill.

However, we must also ask, why do most vaccines take ten years to develop and have we cut any corners? It is now clear that we simply do not know what the long-term benefits and safety profile of the vaccine will be. In South Africa, a trial of the once claimed 70% effective Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was rendered ineffective due to the emergence of the new variant with 19/748 in the vaccinated group infected, compared to 20/714 in the placebo.

Unanswered questions now are how effective the Pfizer vaccine is in the elderly, since in those aged 75 years or more there was only a total of five cases, with all occurring in the placebo group. While this is promising, it would be useful to have more definitive evidence about the elderly, since they are the target population for preventing fatalities from covid. There is little evidence on the ability of the vaccine to prevent their hospitalisation and death, which are surely the events we are hoping to prevent.

Since respiratory viruses frequently mutate, vaccine efficacy is unlikely to persist. We have seen this already with the Oxford vaccine, and the covid-19 end game remains unclear. As we’ve experienced, long periods without a community case are inevitably punctuated by community spread from the virus. As others have stated, it is a “tricky virus”. Indeed SARS-CoV-2 has been found in cats and dogs. The latest case indicates the limits of human understanding of transmission as we scratch our head about the source.

With all this uncertainty, unexpected good news has emerged, but you are unlikely to read about it in the newspaper. Hospital mortality in New York has dropped by a staggering 70%, comparing rates in March 2020 to August of the same year. While this suggests the introduction of new treatments, it is actually likely to be the opposite, in that less aggressive use of ventilators were likely to have improved survival in hard hit areas. Doctors in Toronto, like the public, were gripped with fear, initially quick to reach for the endotracheal tube, and have now realized the virus is not as deadly as they feared and become less trigger happy in reaching for the ventilator. The same pattern is replicated in both Italy and the UK. The finding of widespread covid-19 positive antibodies in Italy in September 2019 and a positive waste water test in Barcelona in March 2019, support the conclusion that it has been the response to the virus that has led to spikes in fatality.

What does this mean? We have all been gripped with fear from the virus. The government, as well as some doctors, have assumed that extreme caution will inevitably guide the best response. I believe this is well intentioned. However, this has led to preventable fatalities in some intensive care units, and to extreme public policy responses, that have prioritized the battle with this virus over all other health concerns.

Intensive care doctors had to learn that being cautious did not necessarily save lives, and instead led to harm. We need to learn the same about lockdowns and vaccines instead of naturally acquired immunity.

The concerns of livelihoods from small businesses, fiscal responsibility and mounting government debt have fallen into the background. Civil liberties and our way of life have faced the greatest restrictions since World War 2. Like doctors, our public policy makers need to dial back the fear, and contain the unintended consequences created by unnecessary, myopic, and destructive goals, such as the pursuit of national elimination of SARS-CoV-2.

New Zealand ends elimination strategy

In a speech to her Party Conference today, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has effectively ended the nation’s elimination strategy.

Early into the pandemic the Government shifted from policies that might ‘flatten the curve’ of the virus impact, to ones such as “lockdown” which might eliminate the virus in New Zealand. Jacinda Ardern said the strategy was to eliminate the virus. Media named the architect of the strategy as Michael Baker of Otago University. His plan was supported by other academics such as Rod Jackson and Siouxsie Wiles.

Covid Plan B said elimination of the virus from the country was not possible in the long term, and the cost of attempting it – on health, society and economy – was too high. In any case, elimination was not warranted because population health impacts of the virus were comparatively small.

Ardern’s words today acknowledge that Sars-CoV-2 will not be eliminated. Her description of the new goal is similar to those of us who have advocated learning to ‘live with the virus’. The Government’s answer now is a seasonal vaccination programme.

Ardern said that 2021 would be “the year of the vaccine… for the world”. “Our goal has to be though, to get the management of covid-19 to a similar place as we do seasonally with the flu. It won’t be a disease that we will see simply disappear after one round of vaccine across our population. Our goal has to be to put it in a place where as we do every year with a flu vaccination programme that we roll out a vaccine programme and maintain a level of normality in between time.”

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/124012148/jacinda-ardern-declares-2021-the-year-of-the-vaccine

Michael Baker’s mysterious data

The architect of NZ’s elimination strategy for Covid19, Michael Baker, criticised former “Bachelor” star Naz Khanjani for implying her mild experience of Covid19 was the typical experience.

He said her comments were “dangerous” misinformation, and a “fallacy”. Yet a reality TV star show had it right – her experience is very, very, typical.

So we have some questions for Prof. Baker from the strange statistics he gave to the media.

  • If his 1% mortality figure is correct, then why is the WHO publishing statistics indicating that the median is 5 times lower?

https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf

Is he saying the WHO and Ioannidis is wrong?

The 1% figure provided by Baker led Prof. Rod Jackson to predict 60,000 deaths in Sweden.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/rod-jackson-has-sweden-made-a-fatal-mistake-with-covid-19-coronavirus/RUR7CV376CXFC4Q2M7J7YAYW6M/

Currently, there are about 9,300 deaths in Sweden, again indicating that the figure is grossly inflated.

  • If Baker is right and the virus is 20x more deadly than the flu, how can it be that Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Malta, Norway, and Northern Ireland have had no increase in overall mortality, despite widespread exposure to the virus?

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

Also, if the virus is 20x more deadly than the flu, then why are the observed deaths in New Zealand occurring with an age profile that is the same as natural death occurring in past years? Surely, if the virus were so deadly, it would shorten lives, as the 1918 flu epidemic did?

https://www.covidplanb.co.nz/our-posts/is-new-zealands-covid-19-story-past-its-use-by-date/

  • Does Baker consider that part of the chaos happening overseas is due to the policies enacted, and not the virus itself?

https://collateralglobal.org/

Ivermectin now a proven Covid treatment

A WHO-commissioned meta-analysis of Ivermectin shows that using this generic medicine in hospitals leads to a 83% reduction in covid mortality (95% CI 65%-92%). See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOAh7GtvcOs
The WHO is understood to be waiting for the results this month from three trials before issuing a recommendation.
The position of NZ’s Ministry of Health cautioning against using Ivermectin has not changed since April 2020, despite a consistent growth in studies showing effectiveness.
On the basis of the studies to date, Covid Plan B urges the Ministry of Health to immediately delete its nine-month old caution against using Ivermectin to treat Covid19. A new formal position can be release following advice from the WHO.
Internationally, front line doctors have been frustrated and even abused by authorities and politicians in their efforts trying to make people aware of the effectiveness of Ivermectin. https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Testimony-Kory-2020-12-08.pdf
Covid Plan B contrasts the MOH warning against studies that emerged in favour of Ivermectin, with its decision to buy respirators at the start of the pandemic without clear evidence of their effectiveness. It now appears that respirators harmed some Covid19 patients.
Panic from politicians and policy makers has driven over-reactions and bad decisions. Acting without evidence has caused more harm than good.

Debate of 2020: Thornley vs Baker on Covid19 response

Finally, the debate New Zealand should have had in March 2020. Simon Thornley and Michael Baker discuss using elimination and lockdowns against Covid19.

We correct NZHerald story about NZ Journal of Primary Health Care

Our letter to the NZHerald regarding the recent story on our NZ Journal of Primary Health Care (https://www.publish.csiro.au/hc/Fulltext/HC20132).
Vaccine caution
We recently wrote a scientific article in a leading medical journal which featured prominently in a Herald news report.
Our article was not “rebuked” by the scientific adviser of the Ministry of Health. As part of the usual scholarly review process, the editor of the journal asked the ministry for comment. When one group raises questions about the work done by another, the latter is always given an opportunity to respond.
The article and the response are available for any reader.
The article seriously mischaracterises our views about Covid-19 vaccines. Our letter urges caution about the speed of the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine, since historic vaccines for respiratory viruses, such as swine flu, have been associated with adverse effects. The associate editor of the British Medical Journal, Peter Doshi, has raised questions about the efficacy of current vaccines. None of them yet have evidence of success in reducing severe infection (hospital admission, ICU, or death) or interrupting transmission (person-to-person spread). At least, the trials could not test for these, given the compressed time-frame.
Developing and distributing these vaccines to seven billion people of the world is a non-trivial task.
This does not make the vaccines useless but does raise legitimate questions about basing our border policy on the effectiveness and wide availability of vaccines.
Finally, we caution against the types of ad hominem attacks reflected in this article. This is not the way to undertake either good science or good policy.
Simon Thornley, Ananish Chaudhuri, Gerhard Sundborn, Grant Schofield, Auckland.

The fallacy of Covid19 ‘fact checking’

Covid Plan B was ‘fact checked’ as ‘misleading’ for publishing on Facebook our article which used the existing conventional standard of statistical interpretation to find that a Danish study on mask wearing meant there was no significant benefit to wearing a mask against Covid19.

This so-called ‘fact check’ used a non-conventional approach which would mean that any study showing no significant effect of the studied intervention would mean the intervention does work.

This is clearly astounding. It reverses decades of scientific interpretation. It defies common-sense. But that is what ‘fact checking’ has become in the Covid19 era: a means of upholding the establishment policy position (using non-scientist media staffers).

It is not a means of checking facts. It is a means of denying them.

We outlined this deeply worrying development in an article in the British Medical Journal. Danish mask study: masks, media, fact checkers, and the interpretation of scientific evidence | The BMJ

Should we abandon convention altogether? If we did, we may eventually promote ineffective treatments. As an example, electrostimulation, laser therapy, and acupuncture are not generally thought to improve smoking cessation success, yet several promising pooled effects were calculated in a meta-analysis, although the majority were not“statistically significant.”

The tone of the“fact checking”piece that apparently supports mass masking as having a“small protective effect”over a conventional interpretation  as“misleading”turns usual scientific practice on its head. Pointingto observational evidence to contradict trial results is another subversion of usual epidemiological practice. While this may seem trivial, it is a subtle distortion of results and the politicisation of evidence in the covid-19 era.

Full PDF here: bmj.m4919.full

 

Danish mask study result; no statistical difference from not wearing one

Only two days after the NZ government announced mandatory mask wearing rules the much awaited Danish mask study was published, and it is conclusive; masks give no statistically significant protection from Covid19.

Here’s the study: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817

Results:

A total of 3030 participants were randomly assigned to the recommendation to wear masks, and 2994 were assigned to control; 4862 completed the study. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 occurred in 42 participants recommended masks (1.8%) and 53 control participants (2.1%). The between-group difference was −0.3 percentage point (95% CI, −1.2 to 0.4 percentage point; P = 0.38) (odds ratio, 0.82 [CI, 0.54 to 1.23]; P = 0.33). Multiple imputation accounting for loss to follow-up yielded similar results. Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection.

Conclusion:

The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use. The data were compatible with lesser degrees of self-protection.

Below is our Euler diagram summarising the findings of the Danish mask trial.

The small difference in event proportions, with a slightly higher proportion in the control group, was not distinguishable from a chance finding (“not statistically significant” is the boffin term).

This is probably the best evidence we have up to now, which is disappointing for advocates of mask use to prevent covid-19 infection. This evidence is consistent with previous trials which found no effect in trials designed to assess the effect of masks to prevent the community transmission of influenza.