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8 Dec, 16 tweets, 13 min read
1/P

Peter C Gøtzsche (@PGtzsche1) wrote the article below

He argues that COVID-19 isn't very lethal, + then draws some political conclusions.

The article is poor.

"Is the infection fatality rate for COVID-19 worse than that for influenza?"
bmj.com/content/371/bm…
2/P

Gøtzsche's basic idea is:
The proportion of SARS-CoV-2-infected people who die of the disease COVID-19 is comparable to that of flu; i.e. the infection fatality rate (IFR) for COVID-19 is not an order of magnitude larger than that of the flu.

So:
bmj.com/content/371/bm…
3/P

Gøtzsche is wrong. Study after study shows that the fatality rate for SARS-CoV-2 is about an order of magnitude larger than that of influenza; COVID-19 is way more dangerous than the flu.

So where does Gøtzsche go wrong?



link.springer.com/article/10.100…
4/P

Gøtzsche cites a dubious meta-analysis from John Ioannidis, who under-estimates SARS-CoV-2's IFR.

rapidreviewscovid19.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/p6tto8hl/r…
hildabastian.net/index.php/91






5/P

Gøtzsche calls this, "a 2020 review by John Ioannidis, which is in press in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization."

Interestingly, the World Health Organization does not agree with Gøtzsche.



October 12:
who.int/publications/m…
6/P

Gøtzsche then cites his book to say the CDC may be unreliable on influenza's IFR.

But the CDC doesn't give an influenza IFR. They give a case fatality rate (CFR), where reported cases are limited to symptomatic illnesses
cdc.gov/flu/about/burd…

See:
7/P

Influenza IFR can be calculated from the CFR, yielding an IFR of <0.1%. That extends beyond the CDC.

who.int/emergencies/di…
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…






static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1…
8/P

Gøtzsche goes on to compare *CFRs* from other pathogens to the *IFR* of SARS-CoV-2. That's misleading since IFR is less than, or equal to, CFR. In fact, IFR is almost always less than CFR, since CFR misses some infections.

institutefordiseasemodeling.github.io/nCoV-public/an…
9/P

A good illustration of this is Gøtzsche comparing SARS-CoV-2's *IFR* to a 1% *CFR* for the 2009 pandemic flu.

But the 2009 pandemic's *IFR* was around two or three orders of magnitude less
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…


From @GidMK:
medium.com/@gidmk/covid-1…
10/P

Gøtzsche cites a blood donor research to claim a SARS-CoV-2 IFR of 0.16%. That's:

- cherry-picking
- using a type of study that under-estimates IFR for multiple reasons
- citing a source that doesn't give an IFR
- the research implies a larger IFR

11/P

Evidence also does not support Gøtzsche's claim that "draconian measures" (🙄; see part 2/P) in response to COVID-19 caused poverty, not COVID-19.

For example, Sweden's less stringent response wasn't better in terms of GDP:


12/P

Gøtzsche's article is thus filled with false claims and distortions, leading to his politically-motivated conclusion.

But how could he do this? He should have the biological knowledge to see his claims are wrong.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_C._…
13/P

One plausible explanation is that Gøtzsche's ideological opposition to some policy responses to COVID-19, pushed him to contrarianism on COVID-19. His contrarian tendencies appeared before, just as with John Ioannidis:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_C._…
14/P

So the COVID-19 pandemic brought out ideologically-motivated contrarianism and denialism, just like the AIDS pandemic, anthropogenic climate change, vaccination, GMOs, etc. did.

How unfortunate.



academic.oup.com/eurpub/article…
15/P

And below is a thread in which Gøtzsche's promotes the article I criticized:

16/P

Others pointed out this contrarianism long before I did.

An early example from one of my role models:

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More from @AtomsksSanakan

Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
4 Dec
The USA's SeroHub is out. It purports to cover SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence studies in the USA.

It includes the quite bad, non-peer-reviewed Santa Clara study. So I thought I'd include some other USA studies SeroHub now leaves out.



covid19serohub.nih.gov
Re: "some other USA studies SeroHub now leaves out"

Baton Rouge, Louisiana
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

Ohio
arxiv.org/abs/2011.09033
coronavirus.ohio.gov/static/dashboa…

Washoe County, Nevada
washoecounty.us/outreach/2020/…

4 Utah counties
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
Re: "some other USA studies SeroHub now leaves out"

Maricopa County, Arizona
maricopa.gov/CivicAlerts.as…
maricopa.gov/5607/COVID-19-…

Orange County, California
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

Riverside County, California
rivcoph.org/Portals/0/Docu…

Connecticut
amjmed.com/article/S0002-…
Read 5 tweets
Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
25 Nov
It's almost 2021.
And I don't forget, even years later. 🙂



For analyzing global warming trends:
ysbl.york.ac.uk/~cowtan/applet…
psl.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/data/t…
climexp.knmi.nl/start.cgi

Judith Curry (@curryja), in 2016:
judithcurry.com/2016/03/06/end…
Someone will have a lot to answer for in 2021...

"I do receive some funding from the fossil fuel industry"
scientificamerican.com/article/climat…

"Politically I am independent, with libertarian leanings."
culturalcognition.net/blog/2014/8/19…



judithcurry.com/2011/10/27/can…
And for those wondering which dataset to use in assessing Curry's claims.



Read 4 tweets
Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
20 Nov
PaperOfTheDay

@GidMK @BillHanage

Gangelt, with:
- an IFR of ~0.4%
- 13.6% IgG+ (which they test-corrected to 14.1%)

"Infection fatality rate of SARS-CoV2 in a super-spreading event in Germany"
nature.com/articles/s4146…

However:

finddx.org/covid-19/dx-da…

medrxiv.org/content/10.110… Image
So the test correction based on FINDDx increases the Gangelt IFR by ~4, and/or renders Gangelt less relevant since corrected seroprevalence overlaps with 0%.

There are other cases in which using FINDDx decreases IFR. For example:



medrxiv.org/content/10.110… Image
Based on the above paper's FINDDx-based analysis, some of the worse offenders in terms of sensitivity (i.e. false negatives) at particular times post-infection are:

- 41%: Abbott Architect IgG
- 42%: Euroimmun IgG
- 57%: CTK Biotech IgG/IgM rapid test

Read 5 tweets
Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
8 Nov
1/S

Sweden did not lockdown in response to COVID-19. Many politically-motivated COVID-19 contrarians try to support Sweden's policy by making misleading comparisons between Sweden + other countries. This thread will address that.



Image
2/S

On average, it takes a virus less time to spread thru + kill 50% of a population of 10 people vs. 50% of a population of 10,000 people.

So smaller populations have less time for public health changes, behavior changes, etc. to limit their COVID-19 deaths per capita.
3/S

Also, on average, it takes less time for a virus to spread thru a smaller geographical area.

So microstates' combination of smaller geographical area and smaller population make them a poor, apples-to-oranges comparison to Sweden.

ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-da… Image
Read 16 tweets
Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
4 Oct
1/C

A lot of COVID-19 contrarians abuse the idea of "cross-reactivity" to make SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) look less dangerous than it really is. Many of them do this to avoid policies they dislike, like lockdowns.

So let's get into that

2/C

Some basics:

Immune cells known as T cells and B cells have receptors that recognize viruses.

Think of the receptors as a lock, + portions of the virus as a key; i.e. the lock (receptor) binds to a specific key (virus region), + not to other keys

3/C

Even if you've never been infected with a virus, bacteria, etc., you almost certainly have T + B cells that recognize it.

When you're first infected, those cells (especially B cells) take a few days to increase in number (and activity) + generate their full immune response.
Read 20 tweets
Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
4 Oct
1/G

Interesting method from @GidMK and co-authors for calculating IFR from PCR-based cases.

(IFR is the proportion of SARS-CoV-2-infected people who die COVID-19;
PCR measures viral genetic material in people;
Cases are people who were infected)

medrxiv.org/content/medrxi…
2/G

The basic idea is that some countries had relatively few infected, and tested with PCR so thoroughly, that their PCR testing got a relatively large proportion of infected people.

Iceland is used a baseline example:

medrxiv.org/content/medrxi…
3/G

Their method yields a range of IFR values consistent with those from serology [i.e. antibody testing], which provides independent validation for their method.

green: their PCR-based methods
blue: Serology-based estimates

medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
Read 9 tweets

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