Connect with us

Healthcare

COVID19: Harvard Study Warns ‘Intermittent Periods’ Of Social Distancing Until 2022

Published

on

coronavirus social distancing CDC guidelines

A new Harvard study released Tuesday on the novel coronavirus is evoking a feeling of disbelief at the possibility that strict social distancing measures may be required to combat the disease for years to come.

Well, at least it is for me.

Look at the study below and ask yourself, can you socially distance for years in an effort to fight this virus if no vaccine or therapeutic treatment works?

The new modeling study warns that ‘intermittent’ periods of social distancing may be required until the year 2022 in the United States, in order to combat any surge in the virus that could overwhelm the health care system.

“To avoid this, prolonged or intermittent social distancing may be necessary into 2022,” states the studies abstract. “Additional interventions, including expanded critical care capacity and an effective therapeutic, would improve the success of intermittent distancing and hasten the acquisition of herd immunity. Longitudinal serological studies are urgently needed to determine the extent and duration of immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Even in the event of apparent elimination, SARS-CoV-2 surveillance should be maintained since a resurgence in contagion could be possible as late as 2024.”

The research was published Tuesday in the journal Science. It examined various scenarios for how the SARS-CoV-2 virus will spread over the next five years.

From The Study: 

Intensive testing and case-based interventions have so far formed the centerpiece of control efforts in some places, such as Singapore and Hong Kong. Many other countries are adopting measures termed “social distancing” or “physical distancing,” closing schools and workplaces and limiting the sizes of gatherings. The goal of these strategies is to reduce the peak intensity of the epidemic (“flatten the curve”), reducing the risk of overwhelming health systems and buying time to develop treatments and vaccines. For social distancing to have reversed the epidemic in China, the effective reproduction number must have declined by at least 50-60%, assuming a baseline R0 between 2 and 2.5. Through intensive control measures, Shenzhen was able to reduce the effective reproduction number by an estimated 85%. However, it is unclear how well these declines in R0 might generalize to other settings: recent data from Seattle suggests that the basic reproduction number has only declined to about 1.4, or by about 30-45% assuming a baseline R0 between 2 and 2.5 . Furthermore, social distancing measures may need to last for months to effectively control transmission and mitigate the possibility of resurgence.

To read the full Harvard study Go Here. 

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

COVID-19

Former Harvard medical professor says he was fired for opposing Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates

Published

on

Covid

“My hope is that someday, Harvard will find its way back to academic freedom and independence.” That is the heartfelt message from Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a former Harvard University professor of medicine since 2003, who recently announced publicly he was fired for “clinging to the truth” in his opposition to Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

Kulldorff posted the news on social media alongside an essay published in the City Journal last week. The epidemiologist and biostatistician also spoke with National Review about the incident. Kulldorff says he was fired by the Harvard-affiliated Mass General Brigham hospital system and put on a leave of absence by Harvard Medical School in November 2021 over his stance on Covid.

Nearly two years later, in October 2023, his leave of absence was terminated as a matter of policy, marking the end of his time at the university. Harvard severed ties with Kulldorff “all on their initiative,” he said.

The history of the medical professional’s public stance on Covid-19 vaccines and mandates is detailed by National Review:

Censorship and rejection led Kulldorff to co-author the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020 alongside Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University. Together, the three public-health scientists argued for limited and targeted Covid-19 restrictions that “protect the elderly, while letting children and young adults live close to normal lives,” as Kulldorff put it in his essay.

“The declaration made clear that no scientific consensus existed for school closures and many other lockdown measures. In response, though, the attacks intensified—and even grew slanderous,” he wrote, naming former National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins as the one who ordered a “devastating published takedown” of the declaration.

Testifying before Congress in January, Collins reaffirmed his previous statements attacking the Great Barrington Declaration.

Despite the coordinated effort against it, the document has over 939,000 signatures in favor of age-based focused protection.

The Great Barrington Declaration’s authors, who advocated the quick reopening of schools, have been vindicated by recent studies that confirm pandemic-era school closures were, in fact, detrimental to student learning. The data show that students from third through eighth grade who spent most of the 2020–21 school year in remote learning fell more than half a grade behind in math scores on average, while those who attended school in person dropped a little over a third of a grade, according to a New York Times review of existing studies. In addition to learning losses, school closures did very little to stop the spread of Covid, studies show.

Continue Reading

Trending