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16 Feb, 27 tweets, 25 min read
1/Y

Ivor Cummins (@FatEmperor) lists articles he claims shows lockdowns are not effective. The Great Barrington Declaration exploited this list.

This thread will debunk Cummins' claim, while giving some further context.

thefatemperor.com/published-pape…

2/Y

Potholer54 made a video rebutting Cummins' points, @theresphysics corrected Cummins' misrepresentation of his research, and @dr_barrett made a rebuttal thread as well:






3/Y

Cummins responded to @dr_barrett's thread with a video that is... ridiculous:


There's a comment thread rebutting Cummin's response video:


I'll summarize some of the thread's points here.

4/Y

Cummins screws up on endogeneity, by not fully accounting for the fact that lockdowns often occur because COVID-19 deaths/day and cases/day are increasing.

@zorinaq explained this, as have others:
archive.is/JjhaE#selectio…



5/Y

Plenty of papers show lockdowns work. Strangely, Cummins evades them and instead includes many non-peer-reviewed sources in his list. Cummins also pretends a paper was published in the Lancet, when it actually wasn't.



6/Y

Cummins video then descends into conspiracism about Dr. Ken Rice (@theresphysics), who's research Cummins misrepresents.

Dr. Rice's research actually shows caution is needed coming out of lockdown:




7/Y

Next, Cummins discusses a 2009 article from Dr. Marc Lipsitch (@mlipsitch). The paper is not about lockdowns being ineffective against COVID-19:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Cummins knows this, so he's being deceptive when he includes in a list entitled:
thefatemperor.com/published-pape…
8/Y

Things get ludicrous when Cummins discusses Belarus at the 10 minute mark in his video.

To Cummins followers:

Many of you like to think you and Cummins are skeptical truth-seekers, who don't fall for disinformation.
So how did you fall for this?

9/Y

For context:

Belarus is a repressive dictatorship. Many repressive regimes likely fake their COVID-19 statistics to make it look like they're succeeding. So I've been skeptical of Belarus' COVID-19 statistics for months.



10/Y

But Cummins uncritically accepts Belarus' COVID-19 statistics, since they fit his narrative (Belarus didn't lockdown and its reported stats look fine).

Cummins cites the non-peer-reviewed press piece below to do that. That piece ends as follows:

bmj.com/content/370/bm…
11/Y

So if Cummins read his source, then he should look up excess deaths for Belarus. Yet he probably didn't

But if he's going to a cite a non-peer-reviewed source on this, then I will as well from @hippopedoid on excess deaths:



medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
12/Y

So Belarus' COVID-19 statistics are likely fake, using the metric from Cummins' source. He uses them anyway.

@GidMK, would it make sense to check if the final digits for their numbers are random?


data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=de…

belarusfeed.com/un-demographic…
13/Y

At this point, sensible people would not trust Cummins, since (at best) he was gullible + biased enough to fall for obvious disinformation.

...Oh, but it gets worse. 🤦‍♂️

Cummins then cites a non-peer-reviewed analysis from PANDA. Yes, *that* PANDA.

14/Y

Cummins moves from relying on obvious disinformation from repressive regimes, to relying on vaccine denialists. 🙄

He tries to elevate PANDA by citing the prestige of its scientific advisory board. That's a bad idea:



15/Y

The next paper Cummins cites shouldn't be on the list, since it never shows lockdowns are ineffective for COVID-19. So Cummins again deceives when he includes it.

The study's authors, though, correct contrarians who misrepresent their work:

16/Y

Then Cummins tries to defend his "dry tinder" nonsense by citing an article that contradicts his idea. See @dr_barrett's thread on this.

Also, Cummins contradicts the article when he uses it to claim lockdowns don't work.



17/Y

Cummins tries to re-write history by pretending he didn't use the "dry tinder" idea to deny that Sweden would suffer a strong second wave.

He must think his followers really are that gullible. 😑




ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-da…
18/Y

Cummins' "dry tinder" idea failed in not only Sweden, but also the UK + Ireland, since they had 2nd waves:
ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-da…

He failed on Nordic countries in general:





19/Y

Cummins ends his video with more of his confusion on endogeneity (see part 4/Y), causation, etc.

If you make it that far into his video + still believe what he has to say, then I really don't know how to help you. 🤷‍♂️



20/Y

I'll conclude, at least for awhile,, with this:

It is sometimes difficult to distinguish Ivor Cummins (@FatEmperor) from an agent of Belarus' repressive government.

That is not a joke. 😑




21/Y

Other issues with Cummins' list that weren't covered by Potholer54 or @dr_barrett:
web.archive.org/web/2021021618…

I'm saying this as an immunologist:
Article #3 on the list is incompetent + dangerous



Take the below quote from #3:
web.archive.org/web/2021012522…
22/Y

Interventions began before cases/day decreased:
p 28: web.archive.org/web/2020100105…
ourworldindata.org/policy-respons…
ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-da…

RKI accepts non-pharmaceutical interventions limit spread:
8:58 - 10:10 :
web.archive.org/web/2020122321…

web.archive.org/web/2020110101…
23/Y

The Diamond Princess didn't illustrate herd immunity, since it had additional behavior changes + mitigation that limited transmission (ex: additional isolation + quarantining)
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Other ships had higher infection rates:
24/Y

Article #3 (posted June 23) gave dangerous, magical thinking; the herd immunity threshold is not low + non-vaccine mediated herd immunity will not save one from using lockdowns





ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-da…
25/Y

Article #27 screwed up on the "endogeneity" point from part 4/Y, and cherry-picked a small number of countries to reach its pre-determined conclusion
web.archive.org/web/2021021618…



26/Y

The Great Barrington Declaration, the right-wing think tank AIER, Anders Tegnell...

Seriously, is there anyone who incorrectly downplayed COVID-19, but didn't cite Ivor Cummins as credible? 🤦‍♂️





svd.se/tegnells-forkl…
27/Y

Strangely, Ivor Cummins (@FatEmperor) responded to this thread when:

1) he's blocked me when I previously debunked him, so knows I won't see his response


2) he relies on the very video debunked on this thread

🤷‍♂️

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More from @AtomsksSanakan

Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
6 Feb
1/K

A list of those who so under-estimated the fatality rate of COVID-19, that they *require more people be infected than actually exist.*

(it's amazing there are enough people to include in a list like this 🤷‍♂️)

Sunetra Gupta

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths…

2/K

Re: "A list of those who so under-estimated the fatality rate of COVID-19, that they *require more people be infected than actually exist.*"

Nic Lewis

~0.12% of Sweden has now died of COVID-19:
ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-da…
covid19.who.int

judithcurry.com/2020/06/28/the…
3/K

Re: "A list of those who so under-estimated the fatality rate of COVID-19, that they *require more people be infected than actually exist.*"

Michael Levitt

archive.is/3IpJF

Read 12 tweets
Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
5 Feb
1/J

Wanted to address some issues in the thread below from another immunologist.

Should be a nice change-of-pace from dealing with obvious nonsense from disingenuous denialists.



2/J

Serology isn't missing many asymptomatic + pauci-symptomatic infections, once one adjusts for sensitivity based on calibration (long-term sensitivity is better for anti-spike vs. anti-nucleocapsid)



jvi.asm.org/content/95/3/e…

immunology.sciencemag.org/content/5/54/e…
3/J

You're not going to get places with >55% seroprevalence with high specificity tests, if you're missing a lot of infections.



66% - 70%: medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
74%: icddrb.org/news-and-event…

academic.oup.com/ofid/advance-a…

ins.gov.co/BibliotecaDigi…
Read 9 tweets
Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
3 Feb
1/B

Some sources on this for those curious about how long antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 persist after infection.

I'll focus on longitudinal studies that test and re-test the same infected people.

2/B

Also, I'll focus on studies that did representative sampling of the general population.
So no sampling just hospital patients, blood donors, healthcare workers, etc.

St. Petersburg, Russia:

medrxiv.org/content/10.110…



eusp.org/en/news/over-1… Image
3/B

Great Britain (England + Scotland + Wales):



ukbiobank.ac.uk/media/x0nd5sul…

gov.uk/government/pub… Image
Read 8 tweets
Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
23 Dec 20
1/X
Those behind the Great Barrington Declaration mention herd immunity as a way to address COVID-19.

So I'll discuss it. After all, noting herd immunity (in response to vaccine deniers) is 1 main reason I started on Twitter.



gbdeclaration.org Image
2/X
Suppose u want to know how many people would die from COVID-19 under *baseline conditions*.

So basically: treat COVID-19 like another typical disease, with business-as-usual and acting the same as this time last year without the pandemic.

3/X
Re: "how many people would die from COVID-19 under *baseline conditions*"

One can figure that out using:
- the number of people who would get infected
- how many of those infected people die of COVID-19

A separate thread on the latter point:
Read 43 tweets
Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
22 Dec 20
1/
Many COVID-19 contrarians, including those behind the Great Barrington Declaration, *still* cite John Ioannidis' inaccurate estimate of SARS-CoV-2's fatality rate.

So let's go over how atrocious Ioannidis' paper is.



web.archive.org/web/2020111809… Image
2/
Background:

When a virus infects u, your body increases production of proteins known as antibodies, which are usually specific to that virus.

So measuring antibodies lets u estimate who was infected, and from that the infection fatality rate (IFR).

institutefordiseasemodeling.github.io/nCoV-public/an… Image
3/

Ioannidis uses antibody (a.k.a. seroprevalence) studies to estimate the number of people infected with the virus SARS-CoV-2. He then calculates IFR by dividing the number of COVID-19 deaths by the number of infected people.

Ioannidis does this badly:
medrxiv.org/content/10.110… Image
Read 51 tweets
Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
8 Dec 20
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…
Read 16 tweets

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