1, One year ago today the Italian government made a decision to reject the pandemic preparedness plans that had been long established and began a quarantine of an entire population Lombardy. The @WHO had advised against this in October 2019 who.int/influenza/publ… 2, This set in motion a response to the Coronavirus pandemic that was to be copied by most of the world within the following month.

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1. @facebook's deletion of the GBD site is both puzzling and troubling. Our last post was a statement in favor of prioritizing the elderly for vaccination against COVID-19 infection as a tool for focused protection of this vulnerable group, along with a link to a Wall Street Journal op-ed that Prof. Sunetra Gupta and I wrote in December, which fleshed out our argument for this policy.

wsj.com/articles/how-t…

1, Government messaging has become progressively hyperbolic and confusing. Balance and perspective is in short supply. As a result, the information we receive often feels alarming and frightening. 2, Trust is a vital component of effective public messaging, erosion of it is deeply concerning.Disconnection between governments, local level management and society. Information given without context is harmful. A recent advisory report suggests
tinyurl.com/y3sslazo

1. We are all being asked to give things up to deal with this problem, but the sacrifices are not evenly distributed

Sunetra Gupta. 2. “We are seeing inequality within countries grow. You are seeing low-skilled workers being much harder hit, women being much harder hit, younger people being much harder hit than others are,”

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1. Is there a middle ground between lockdowns – with school, business and office
closures, curfews, and isolation – and a laissez-faire "let it rip" approach? gbdeclaration.org 2. In the Great Barrington Declaration, co-signed now by many thousand medical scientists and
practitioners, we laid out such a middle-ground alternative, with greatly improved focused
protection of older people and other high-risk groups.

Lockdown Harms #mentalhealth
1. UK @mentalhealth foundation November report states,there has been a slow decline in people coping with the COVID-19 restrictions and the impact this has on their mental health

tinyurl.com/yby4rkeb 2. The report states that Almost half (45%) of the UK population had felt anxious or worried in the previous two weeks. Feelings of loneliness were higher in younger people too, with 38% aged 18-24 , which has been consistently higher across all waves than the general population.

1. Lockdown Harms -#cancer

This year many countries have experienced reduced access to a fully functional healthcare system. Whilst it is difficult to forecast the harms and deaths that will result from this, we are beginning to see more data on this as we progress into 2021. 2.

It is becoming clear that one of the biggest threats to public health in the years ahead is that of cancer patients and cancer services. A report from @Carnall_Farrar - The Disruption and recovery of cancer from Covid 19.tinyurl.com/ybpp4v4k noted that

1. Negative Media coverage of C19 has fuelled hysteria and misinformation.

Help combat the negative news trend - share this positive information.

Good News about Covid19

**The case fatality rate from the virus has dropped sharply since March.**tinyurl.com/y8q3xzyx 2. **The infection survival rate is 99.95 percent for people under 70 and 95 percent for people over 70.** marktaliano.net/publication-bu…

1. The harms of lockdown are unequally distributed. Economists have found that only 37% of jobs in the US can be performed wholly on-line, and high-paying jobs are overrepresented among that set. 2. Declaring janitors, store clerks, meat packers, postal workers, and other blue-collar workers as "essential" workers in most states, regardless of whether they qualify as high COVID mortality risk, the lockdowns have failed to shield the vulnerable in these occupations.

1. We are resolute in our criticism of the #lockdown response to #Covid19

There is a growing body of evidence-based studies that show the collateral damage being caused by the current approach is causing devastating harm that will be felt for years ahead. 2.Since March 2020 #cancer screening has been suspended, routine diagnostic work deferred, and only urgent symptomatic cases prioritised for diagnostic intervention. thelancet.com/journals/lanon…