Thread by @akoz33

I avoided so far the subject of lockdowns, masks, social distancing etc, as means of dealing with covid-19 essentially because I did not know myself the best approach to this kind of pandemic and didn’t believe that anyone else knew either. I have even unfollowed some people

simply for being excessively confident that they knew and for being too ready to assume that those who disagreed with them were idiots or heartless grandma killers (or were guided by some nefarious self-interest - some people are simply unable to imagine anyone disagreeing with

them for any other reason).I have also listened to some world class virologists and epidemiologists arguing for completely opposite approaches. The tendency to blame governments one didn’t like for other reasons could be seen basically everywhere but the governments were usually

following advice and often were just as unsure as the experts. Some of them seemed to have done extremly well at one point (Central European governments at the beginning of the pandemic) only to seemingly perform disastrously during the second or third wave. Some governments,

like the Japanese, were praised by foreigners simply because the results appeared to be better than in other countries, even though their policies were generally very different from those advocated by the very same people who praised them (for example Japan had performed very

few tests and has still not started mass vaccination). While foreigners were praising the Japanese government, the Japanese people were critical, although they didn’t themselves have a clear idea what they wanted done.
Various Twitter “experts” declared that “populist”

governments were sure to perform worst and by the same token US states Gover end by pro-Trump Republicans were bound to do much worse than those governed by progressive Democrats. California was at the beginning an examplar of success but now it is clear that it has performed no

better or worse than Trumpian Florida at a much greater economic cost. One can go on and on.
While things are far from clear yet, I think I can say now a bit more. I have no doubt that in the first stage of the pandemic a lockdown was the right response. That is because at that

point very little was known about the virus and even its mortality rate could only be very roughly estimated. The only knowledge available was from China and it was both sketchy and there was no doubt that China was not telling the full truth, which left the possibility that the

disease could have much worse than it turned out to be - perhaps comparable to SARS I or MERS. In such a situation a temporarily lockdown was the only sensible choice, with the aim to obtain as much knowledge about the nature of the disease before deciding on how to proceed.

Obtaining this knowledge was a matter of great urgency. Nr thing soon became clear - in many people the disease took a very mild form, but in a minority it was very serious and even deadly. Understanding why this was so became imperative- this had to be one of the things

researchers needed to concentrate on. I think in this area as much has been done as one could have hoped for and today , while the understanding is not perfect, it’s has played a big role in improving treatment and identifying the most vulnerable groups. One of the persons who

played an impressive role was the Yale professor Akiko Iwasaki. You can hear her talk here:

It’s the first one. It’s a little technical but understandable.
The other, perhaps even more important issue was understanding as soon as possible how the virus

transmitted. But much less has been done in this crucial area. Early in the epidemic I suggested here that this knowledge could only be obtained by experiments in a controlled setting on volunteers. Since we already knew that healthy young people were less vulnerable - some

would certainly be willing to take part, if given sufficient incentive. In this way one could settle many crucial questions the answers to which we still don’t know with a great degree of confidence, such as whether one can be infected by a totally asymptomatic virus carrier,

how long one had to be in contact with an infected person and at what distance, how much difference masks really made etc. Deciding these issues early on in controlled tests could have changed the whole approach to the pandemic. However, only now this idea is about to be carried

out.
Another huge failure was the failure to even consider an approach that could have saved many thousands of life - the use of Oral Polio Vaccine as a short term protection. This idea, advocated by one of the world’s most distinguished virologists Robert Gallo, who first proved

that the HIV virus was responsible for AIDS and Konstantin Chumakov, about whom I have written many times, wax given respectful hearing: including an article in Science, in anew York Times, Washington Post and many other places. Nobody disputed the Gallo-Chumakov claim that

the polio vaccine (that carried no risk at all to anyone who had been vaccinated against polio and a very tiny risk to those who weren’t) would have provided short lived (between one to three months) protection against COVID. The vaccine is very cheap, readily available and

comes in the form of a pill that one simply swallows- no need for injections. Yet in spite of the fact that no arguments were offered against, no money was offered for the necessary trials in the United States. Small scale tests have been going on in some other countries and

apparently the results are encouraging. Chumakov says that there is a good chance the idea will be used during the next big epidemic with still unknown virus. But he also admits that there is a lack of interest in using such a cheap and old technology which does not offer much

chance of profit, academic glory or advancement of research. The world is not necessarily rational in these matters says Chumakov (Director of Vaccine Research at FDA).