Thread by @DrDomPimenta

Ivor @fatemperor has helpfully resubmitted his latest video for a second review:

Unfortunately we still found significantly misleading and pseudoscientific assertions.

Full video:

Let's pick it apart (again):
thread/

https://twitter.com/FatEmperor/status/1306237818897866753

0:06: Ivor opens with a statement about how he is only making inferences.

This seems apt:
"Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudosci…

1:48- he starts off claiming COVID-19 is now part of the 'respiratory season'. Again this isn't a defined term, but flu season peaks in Dec-Feb, and we have now seen spikes, in the US and Europe, for example, in July and August.

cdc.gov/flu/about/seas…

2:30 Back to the Gompertz Curve.

1) This isn't a Gompertz Curve (yellow), this is the 1st derivative (red).


2) Prof Michael Levitt published a pre-print fitting the Gompertz function to multiple pandemic outbreaks.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

3) I take issue that this is 'natural' or it's due to 'immunity' (see below)
THIS paper suggest the lock-down measures determine the rate of decay, and overall no. of deaths.


Sweden; (blue) partial lockdown, more deaths. Norway much better (Red) arxiv.org/pdf/2008.02475…

3:00 Ivor then denies he said 80% of the population have t-cell immunity.

Here's the direct quote: "80% are de facto immune through cross-immunity; T-cell mucosal immunity from prior coronaviruses"

1) T-Cell mucosal immunity is a specific, and very complex, thing.

2) There is no evidence of any 'cross-immunity' in this system.
There is evidence of T-cell reaction in unexposed in 20-50% of individuals (small studies).


But again, does not equal immunity. Discussed in BMJ here:
nature.com/articles/s4158…
bmj.com/content/370/bm…

3) He then doubles down and says 'mucosal' again and then 'innate' immunity, which the 'mucosal' system is part of:

The innate system has no lasting memory as such so 'cross-immunity' to anything, let alone COVID. So there is NO evidence of this.

4) This idea of only needing 10-20% infection to achieve herd immunity comes from this paper by Prof Gabriela Gomes.


It's a mathematical model, assuming 80% are EITHER not susceptible OR not EXPOSED (ie socially distanced). Again, no clinical evidence. medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

5) He then takes issue with the 'pharmaceutical' definition of herd immunity. There is only one definition:

If 80% of the population are 'immune' and equally exposed, herd immunity would already be established.

He then contradicts himself repeatedly by describing the 80% as;

-immune (protected from infection)
-resistant (difficult to treat)
-carriers (no symptoms but infectious)
AND
-"not problematically" infected (mild symptoms/infectious)

Okay, need a break (so soon). Back in a bit.

He then claims that 20% of the population is what the 'data' has shown all over:

The actual serological studies vary widely, from infection rates as low as 1% - 40%.

ecdc.europa.eu/en/covid-19/la…

5:03 - he then calls this 'empirically verified' - ?! The only actual empirical data does not support this at all and isn't verified.

5:33 "People are exposed and 60% show a T-cell reaction and they were okay afterwards"

This is just how the immune system WORKS, it does not at all guarantee lasting protection, and again we still haven't seen this anywhere in studies.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

5:53

Despite being shown data that 20-50% only have T-cell response to circulating coronaviruses we get:

"well, there's T-cell, mucosal, IgA Antibodies, often not tested for, and innate immune system"

Again, these are real words with real meaning, but this is nonsense.

Interestingly there is IgA antibody detected in patients who HAVE HAD COVID already and it may be a useful part of long-term immunity, but there is NO EVIDENCE of cross-immunity to other coronaviruses.

Also IgA Ab IS PART OF MUCOSAL immunity.

But it sounds good granted.

6:01
"These are ways to be 'de facto' immune and to not go down with the disease in any significant way"

Again, these are two VERY different things.
De facto = 'in reality' as opposed to 'in law' ?!
Immune = protected, can't then pass it on
Mild cases= infected, can pass it on

6:16
My favourite line:

"We can't have evidence for everything."

Quick break again so here's some good waiting reading material:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudosci…

6:29

"We have no idea which proteins from previous coronaviruses confer immunity"

Again this paper looked specifically at the peptides reacted to:


And it seems the reaction is different in those unexposed to COVID vs recovered patients.nature.com/articles/s4158…

7:17

"20% and a certain amount of carriers, will keep things rolling until Gompertz is fulfilled."

1) 20% + 80% immune = 100%. So where did we get carriers from?
2) Again it's dangerous to suggest 'Gompertz' implies a natural course without human intervention.

7:28

He rejects 5% of infected will require intensive care.
It's quite difficult to work out, but the Diamond Princess, avg age 68, had a 4.5% ICU rate, in a closed 100% tested pop

ICU admit threshold also varies- Italy was quite low, but UK higher.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_…

8:19

Ivor then dismisses all evidence of reduction in activity in Sweden (50% WFH, -25% in spending and 40% travel, -8% GDP, distanced secondary schools) as 'indirect vectors', and instead invites us to watch a video while we 'forget about the economy'.

I'm not making it up.

8:51
Spanish Flu. Ivor tells us that there were definitely three different viruses, and three different waves.

It's very interesting, no one knows. It's unlikely three variant mutations could occur in one year, and we only have RNA from the second wave.
wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12…

10:10
"The previous SARS had one wave essentially"

SARS outbreak in 2003 affected 8000 patients worldwide and was then contained. With human interventions.

COVID has now reached 30,000,000 patients worldwide. This isn't comparable.

who.int/ith/diseases/s…

11:20
Sigh.

You can go on Euromomo here:


If there was an unusually low period of death (ie BELOW the baseline) it would be on the graph. We don't see that.

This is excess death (blue) vs 2018 (yellow) - roughly double and year is only halfway out. euromomo.eu/graphs-and-map…

12:31
Ivor acknowledges he misattributed these graphs to 'Imperial' but then sidesteps and says this is what 'Imperial started'.

Anyway, here is the actual paper (preprint) from the graph on the right: medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

13:50
He then makes states the actual Imperial group changed the dates of their publication which (accurately) modelled Sweden on 30/3.
The paper is published here and you can see the model UPLOAD record on 29th March: imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-inf…
github.com/ImperialColleg…

It was later published in Nature in June, which is why Ivor is getting confused:



But then proposes these 'two deep level experts' 'blew this paper away'

(It's written by an economist and a psychologist and didn't get published)nature.com/articles/s4158…
unlockthelockdown.com/smoking-gun-tw…

17: 07 He then shows this graph from the Koch institute of the 'R', stating interventions like lockdown had no effect.

Here are all the interventions prior that reduced the R wave. R is also calculated from data 2 weeks prior, so latest would've been 3 at the time.

...and then he makes us watch that video (see earlier point), or maybe read some more of this:

).en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudosci…

Welcome back.
20:53 We are back to IgA/Innate/T cell immunity.

Yes they exist.
No there is no data, in Sweden or anywhere else, to support 'herd immunity' being achieved.

Quick point on Sweden, if IFR is 0.1% (as Ivor claims) and 80% of the population are immune (as Ivor claims), then in Sweden (pop. 10m) we would expect 0.1% of 2,000,000 to die: 2000.

Yet Sweden had 2.8x that. And no evidence of 20% infected either...

26:25

Ivor persists in telling us that there is a "great relationship" between previous flu and excess COVID deaths.

Here is the Stats for Dummies website explaining the R value of 0.39 is a weak relationship:
.dummies.com/education/math…

29:30

Pubs opened on the 4th July. Since the end of July cases have been rising steadily, now doubling every 8 days in the UK:

Hospitalisations haven't followed as the rise was initially concentrated in the younger age groups vs the epidemic in March.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…

But cases are now rising in the 50-59 group as well, and subsequently so are hospitalisations, tripling in the last 2 weeks, from 58 on 1/9/20 to 174 on 14/9/20.

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare

No, it isn't more testing.
Pillars 1&2 increased by 13% between August 1st 147 002 and September the 6th 166 119 , but cases increased 292%.

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/testing

And No, it isn't MORE FALSE POSITIVES either:

https://twitter.com/juniordrblog/status/1307007833200881668?s=20

32:32

Ivor claims again that healthcare workers aren't at increased risk, quoting ONS rom April.

Here is ONS report in June:
showing male health professionals overall and all nurses are at higher risk.

E Life study, 2.44x risk: ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…
elifesciences.org/articles/60675

35:06

Ivor labels this study an 'associational' study. That isn't a term for study design. Data can be observational or interventional.

It's an observational meta-analysis, literally 'decades of science' (since 2003), in the Lancet. thelancet.com/journals/lance…

Ivor rubbishes it as 'observational', without irony as he has been showing nothing but observational data, including an actual video, for hours.

It's also in the Lancet. What does he put up against it? This review, a Canadian online dentist magazine.
oralhealthgroup.com/features/face-…

Yes they took it down. And the original was written by a dentist, mostly about the evidence to protect dentists, not protect others or with specific reference to respiratory pandemics.

This IS tiring. Let's have a puppy to look at.

37:01

After dissing 'associational' studies Ivor puts up a series of graphs with lines drawn on them to illustrate how masks don't work.

Actually could argue many show very good efficacy, two weeks after implementing, Cuba, Czech Republic & Vietnam for example:

Slovakia he attributes this spike to "a second seasonal wave". Slovakia is in Central Europe. That's the Summer.

So just to recap
-The epidemic is over
-80% of us were already immune
-20% were infected in the Spring
-But there is also a 'seasonal' wave. In the summer.

39:05

Back to the 'casedemic' (not a word).

As before, hospitalisations have quadrupled. Testing increase 15% and cases 292% since August 1st.

This is a pandemic. And it always has been. Sadly.

40:24

Essentially "yes hospitalisations have doubled or tripled or whatever, but what if it's not COVID and anyway it's Autumn and anyway it's not 2018."

-hospitalisations are carefully recorded
-it is COVID
-Autumn?! I thought it was over. Or a casedemic from PCR?
-2018?!

40:40

Oh good he keeps going

"And what if it's influenza or other pathogens and what if SARSCOV2 is driving directly...."

Sorry I've lost my rag a bit now. Let me go and find it.

40:52

"People like junior doc were creating hysteria all during the summer"

-I've been a qualified doctor for nearly a decade.
-I spent the summer continuing to work in an actual COVID ICU and running a healthcare workers' charity

42:10

Ivor finishes with this graph, claiming we see coronavirus all the time. These are the common cold viruses. I'm not sure what Ivor means when he says:

'we're going to see more coronavirus in the winter'

And to be really honest I don't think he does either.

44:48

And that's it really. A textbook study in pseudoscience: contradictory, exaggerated, a lack of openness and a failure of scientific method. Also it's on Youtube.

).en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudosci…

Lastly, why am I so bothered about it?
Who does it harm?

Well that's the issue, degrading trust in public measures like masks, social distancing and lockdown, pretending it'll all be over, not only preys on all our hopes but actually reduces our ability to get out of this.

Thank you for submitting to the Journal of Twitter. It's a no from us this time.

Kind regards,
Science. /end