Professor John Mathews, esteemed epidemiologist & honorary professor at the University of Melbourne,who was the deputy chief medical officer during SARS and pandemic influenza planning in 2003, said with regards to all this talk of "herd immunity" the devil was in the detail.
Trust #Metta, that is "epidemiologist speak" for, "We have no fucking idea, anything could happen, and probably will, it usually does; we will have to count the bodies afterwards and subtract them from the survivors, then make a tentative summary of what that all meant."
@threadreaderapp Threadreader unroll please...
What he actually said. Quoted in AFR: "we can’t prove it one way or another".
“If closing the schools took the children out of the equation that would be good, but of course, it doesn’t. That would be magical thinking.
“If closing the schools took the children out of the equation that would be good, but of course, it doesn’t. That would be magical thinking.
“The exact benefits are difficult to determine, as it depends upon what the children would be doing instead, if schools were closed. The children won’t necessarily self-isolate."
“So, the precise outcome depends upon the detail of who infects whom when the schools are closed and we don’t have enough information about that in the Australian context." AFR.
