pieterstreicher Profile picture
Dec 6, 2021 6 tweets 3 min read Read on X
1 of 6:

6 December Gauteng #Omicron update:

With only light restrictions in South Africa, the load on hospitals remain much lighter compared to Delta.

My expected peak range from 12-22 December might be too conservative.
2 of 6:

In the next 3 days, we should be able to a more accurate prediction for the peak.

Total hospital beds could be less than half of Delta levels (4,500 vs 9,200).
3 of 6:

Looking at more severe outcomes the gap is even larger.

ICU beds might peak at less than 570, almost 3x lower compared to the Delta peak.
4 of 6:

Ventilated beds only started increasing today. The peak is likely to be below 140, more than 6 x lower compared to the Delta peak.

An increase in deaths in week 48 is now evident - 3 deaths / day higher compared to the lowest point in week 45.
5 of 6:

If Gauteng peaks before 12 December, I would have to revise down all these predictions. This is now a distinct possibility and will soon become clear.

All eyes are now on the Tshwane district which will peak 5 days before Gauteng.
6 of 6:

International travel restrictions on Southern Africa need to be dropped immediately. If Omicron replaces Delta, it will reduce deaths.

While the analysis is mostly my own, it is based on data from the NICD.

nicd.ac.za/diseases-a-z-i…

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More from @pieterstreicher

Mar 6
Five years on, the countries that never locked down, don't appear to be much different in terms of pandemic excess deaths compared to neighbouring countries according to the BBC. 🤔

🧵(1/5)

bbc.com/future/article…
This is quite a departure from the June 2020 BBC article that claimed lockdowns saved millions of lives in Europe alone.

The 2020 BBC article was based on the Imperial College London paper in Nature by Flaxman et al.

(2/5)

bbc.com/news/health-52…
By 2021 subsequent reports by Imperial College London walked back these claims, conceding that in the case of London, Rt was already below 1.0 before the 23 March 2020 lockdown.

Note the difference between the 2020 ICL report (Flaxman) and the 2021 ICL report (Knock).

(3/5) Image
Image
Read 5 tweets
Nov 20, 2024
How many lives did Covid vaccines save during the pandemic?

Most studies calculate a number based on an "assumed" level of protection against death, with numbers varying from 313 per mil (Ioannidis, 2024) to 2,500 per mil (Mellis, 2022).

I propose a different method.

(1/7)
There are a handful of countries that vaccinated >90% of their populations before infection.

Their C-19 deaths per million ranged between 1,000 and 2,000 per million.

In Europe and the Americas, C-19 deaths averaged between 2,790 and 3,150 per million (700-2,200 higher).

(2/7) Image
If countries were able to delay infections until vaccination and Omicron, as Finland and Australia did, Covid deaths could have been 28% to 68% lower.

However, this benefit (700-2,200 deaths per mil) is the combined benefit of waiting for vaccination and a milder variant.

(3/7)
Read 7 tweets
Jul 19, 2024
Lockdowns – a case of scientific injustice.

Suppression as a concept did not exist before 2020.

Pre-pandemic plans did not ignore it because it planned for the wrong pandemic.

It was ignored, as without timeous vaccines, it would be futile.

#covidinquiryreport

🧵(1/11) Image
Using costly measures to delay infections, only became worthwhile considering in a scenario where a significant portion of people had the hope of getting vaccinated prior to first infection.

It is this change that lead to the abandonment of pre-pandemic plans.

(2/11)
The concepts of mitigation and suppression were defined in haste, early in 2020, and as a result were defined poorly, and remain poorly defined to this day.

(3/11) Image
Read 11 tweets
Jul 16, 2024
What was the relative mortality burden of Covid-19 for different ages during the acute phase of the pandemic (w12/2020-w11/2021) in England?

The relative burden was calculated as Covid-19 mortality as a percentage of pre-pandemic mortality.

🧵(1/5) Image
Both Covid-19 mortality and all cause mortality increase exponentially with age (straight line on log graph). However, the slope is steeper for Covid-19.

The implication is that the burden of Covid was significantly higher at the older ages.

(2/5) Image
On a linear scale, mortality levels in the younger ages are hardly visible.

However, one needs to consider that only 6% of the population is over 80 years of age, and the young have more life years to lose.

(3/5) Image
Read 5 tweets
Dec 20, 2023
Crying Wolf One Time Too Many

It is exactly 2 years ago that the UK government ignored scientists’ advice to tighten restrictions to combat Omicron.

Cabinet met on 20 December 2021 and decided to persist with Plan B despite SAGE’s apocalyptic scenario for Plan B.

(1/9) Image
Experts accused the government of ignoring the latest modelling by SAGE which pointed to between 3,000 and 10,000 hospitalisations a day, and between 600 and 6,000 deaths a day without additional restrictions.



(2/9) bmj.com/content/375/bm…
Image
Commentators described these numbers as utterly implausible.

No sense checking was done, with implied hospital fatality rates ranging from 20% to 60%, when it was already down to 16% for the Delta variant in England, and down to 9% for Omicron in South Africa.

(3/9)
Read 10 tweets
Dec 7, 2023
#CovidInquiry

Unrealistic worst case scenarios

On 7 July 2021 SAGE published daily hospital admission scenarios reaching 10,000 per day at the upper bound.

The range was so wide, it was displayed on a log scale!

Daily hospitalisations remained below 800 (grey line).

(1/7) Image
Most remaining restrictions were to be lifted on 19 July 2021, so the worst case cannot be regarded as a counterfactual scenario.

Here is the range of daily hospital admissions plotted on a normal scale to illustrate how wide the range of outcomes were.

(2/7) Image
It is hard to see how such a wide range could be of any use for hospital planning purposes. By 20 August 2021, the range spanned 2 orders of magnitude!

Imagine having to plan for a party for 1 to 100 people!

(3/7)
Read 8 tweets

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