A disease prevention chairman at Stanford University, Dr. John Ioannidis, slammed lockdown policies aimed at curtailing the Covid19 outbreak.
“Major consequences on the economy, society, and mental health have already occurred,” Ioannidis said.
“I hope they are reversible, and this depends to a large extent on whether we can avoid prolonging the draconian lockdowns and manage to deal with COVID-19 in a smart, precision-risk targeted approach rather than blindly shutting down everything.”
Ioannidis broke down the Covid19 fatality rate and pointed out that for the majority of people, the virus is not lethal.
“The death rate in a given country depends a lot on the age structure, who are the people infected, and how they are managed,” he said.
“For people younger than 45, the infection fatality rate is almost 0%. For 45 to 70, it is probably about 0.05%-0.3%. For those above 70, it escalates substantially.”
Covid19 infection are rising sharply in the U.S. but the fatality rate has fallen to a 3-month low revealing that the virus doesn’t seem to be as deadly as was originally feared.
“There are already more than 50 studies that have presented results on how many people in different countries and locations have developed antibodies to the virus,” Ioannidis said during a recent interview.
“Of course, none of these studies are perfect, but cumulatively, they provide useful composite evidence. A very crude estimate might suggest that about 150-300 million or more people have already been infected around the world, far more than the 10 million documented cases.”