Chart: Decline of Transmissibility of Delta Variant over time compared to Alpha Variant

 The chart below showing the decline in transmissibility (secondary attack rates) of the Alpha and Delta Variants is based on data taken from the series of Variant of Concern Technical Briefings issued by UK Public Health England from Dec 2020 to no. 17 on 25 June 2021.

These Briefing may be accessed here: 

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-novel-sars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201

Briefing 17 provides up to date CFR's for each variant. It may be accessed here:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/996740/Variants_of_Concern_VOC_Technical_Briefing_17.pdf

The Secondary Attack Rate as reported in each of the briefings for each variant was recorded and the data charted. Three Briefings did not include a report of Secondary Attack Rates. In these instances, for charting purposes, the values were interpolated from the prior and succeeding values. Interpolated values are identified in bold italic.

The CFR data was also added to the chart

 

 Reviewing the data and the chart:

• Both variants' transmissibility decline over time.
• The Delta variant was never as transmissible as the Alpha variant at its maximum last December.
• The Alpha variant has declined from 15.1% in December to 7.9% now. This is an average decline of 1.2% per month.
• The Delta variant was between 12% and 13.5% in May. It is now 10.7%, a decline of at least 2% in a month.
• Delta's transmissibility today is approximately the same as Alpha's transmissibility in early/mid-April.
• Delta's CFR is 0.3%, one sixth of Alpha's 1.9%
  

Bottom Line:

The Dread Deadly Untreatable Everyone Must Be Crap In Your Pants Scared of Delta Variant is no such thing.

Objective review of the data reveals the doomnfearmongering over the Delta variant is unfounded.

Why can't these people follow the Science, as they tell us to?

Absence of Cost/benefit analysis of NPHET recommendations - email to TD's and Senators

 

Dear TD’s and Senators, 

In regards to recent suggestions that Covid restrictions (mandatory Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPI)) may be further extended if recommended by NPHET, I believe it is necessary to remind you of its very limited Terms of Reference. 

https://www.gov.ie/en/collection/691330-national-public-health-emergency-team-covid-19-coronavirus/#terms-of-reference 

NPHET’s Terms of Reference are limited to matters relating to “the overall national response to Coronavirus”.  

NPHET is not required to, and so does not, assess the wider social, economic, public and mental health consequences of its recommendations. This assessment is the responsibility of others. Sixteen months into the epidemic, it is still not clear to whom this hugely important responsibility has been assigned.  

It cannot possibly be that nobody is responsible for this assessment. In the absence of explicit delegation to a nominated agency or agencies, by default, it remains inescapably yours as TD’s and Senators, delegates of the people and responsible to the people for the actions or inactions of the State. 

Nevertheless, there is unanimity that the social, economic, public and mental health effects of the mandatory NPI restrictions imposed on NPHET recommendation have been enormous, though as yet unquantified. 

Importantly, despite the unquestioned magnitude of the burdens and harms consequent to the mandatory NPI restrictions, there has not yet been any cost/benefit analysis performed in order to verify whether the mandatory restrictions had in fact had a net benefit over and above the enormous social, economic, public and mental health costs. 

In the absence of a specific cost/benefit analysis for Ireland, it is necessary to look overseas. The matter of the efficacy of mandatory NPI’s and their cost/benefit ratio has been the subject of extensive international research. 

Please find listed below forty-one (41) peer reviewed papers examining this matter that have been published. Of these forty-one (41) papers, thirty-nine (39) concluded that mandatory restrictions had no measurable effect over voluntary actions by the public. Thus, the overwhelming consensus of this research evaluating the efficacy of mandatory restrictions in many countries including Ireland is they had no measurable positive effect. In other words, their cost/benefit ratio is BILLIONS : 0.

A Canadian economist, Douglas W. Allen of Simon Fraser University, Canada summarises his paper in its Abstract: 

An examination of over 80 Covid-19 studies reveals that many relied on assumptions that were false, and which tended to over-estimate the benefits and under-estimate the costs of lockdown.  As a result, most of the early cost/benefit studies arrived at conclusions that were refuted later by data, and which rendered their cost/benefit findings incorrect.  Research done over the past six months has shown that lockdowns have had, at best, a marginal effect on the number of Covid-19deaths.   Generally speaking, the ineffectiveness of lockdown stems from voluntary changes in behavior.  Lockdown jurisdictions were not able to prevent non-compliance, and non-lockdown jurisdictions benefited from voluntary changes in behavior that mimicked lockdowns.   The limited effectiveness of lockdowns explains why, after one year, the unconditional cumulative deaths per million, and the pattern of daily deaths per million, is not negatively correlated with the stringency of lockdown across countries.   Using a cost/benefit method proposed by Professor Bryan Caplan, and using two extreme assumptions of lockdown effectiveness, the cost/benefit ratio of lockdowns in Canada, in terms of life-years saved, is between 3.6–282.  That is, it is possible that lockdown will go down as one of the greatest peacetime policy failures in Canada’s history 

There is every reason to believe his conclusions would be equally applicable to Ireland. 

In conclusion, the weight of research evidence globally is that mandatory restrictions have had no measurable beneficial or positive effect. There is little or no reason to believe that Ireland is an exception to this global research, certainly, none of the papers that included Ireland in their evaluation identified it as an exception.  

In the absence of a cost/benefit analysis with transparent methodology clearly demonstrating a positive cost benefit balance for extending mandatory restrictions, it is unconscionable that they should be extended on a mandatory basis. To do so would be to impose certain costs for almost certainly zero benefit. 

All mandatory restrictions should be immediately converted to advisory recommendations. NPHET should continue to make its recommendations, but it should be up to each person to act in accordance with their personal risk assessment. 

You are supposed to be leaders. It is time to stand up and be counted. Hold the Government accountable. Demand a clear cost/benefit analysis. End mandatory restrictions, convert them to advisory recommendations. Failure in this regard is dereliction of duty and would render you unfit for public office. 

 

Yours Sincerely 

 

 

Evaluations of Covid mandatory measures.
1	Covid-19 Mortality: A Matter of Vulnerability Among Nations Facing Limited Margins of Adaptation
	Quentin De Larochelambert, Andy Marc, Juliana Antero, Eric Le Bourg and Jean-François Toussaint
	https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339/full
2	Assessing mandatory stay‐at‐home and business closure effects on the spread of COVID‐19
	Eran Bendavid, Christopher Oh, Jay Bhattacharya, John P. A. Ioannidis
	https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484
3	Stay-at-home policy is a case of exception fallacy: an internet-based ecological study
	Savaris,Pumi, Dalzochio, Kunst
	https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84092-1
4	COVID-19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink
	Ari Joffe
	https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.625778/full
5	School closures and SARS-CoV-2. Evidence from Sweden’s partial school closure
	Jonas Vlachos, Edvin Hertegård,e Helena Svaleryd
	https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.13.20211359v3
6	Did Lockdown Work? An Economist’s Cross-Country Comparison
	Christian Bjornskov
	https://academic.oup.com/cesifo/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cesifo/ifab003/6199605
7	A country level analysis measuring the impact of government actions, country preparedness and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes
	Rabail Chaudhry,     George Dranitsaris,     Talha Mubashir,    Justyna Bartoszko,    Sheila Riazi
	https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30208-X/fulltext
8	Was R < 1 before the English lockdowns? On modelling mechanistic detail, causality and inference about Covid-19
	S. N. Wood, E. C. Wit
	https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.03.21251112v2.full
9	Covid Lockdown Cost/Benefits:A Critical Assessment of the Literature
	Douglas W. Allen
	http://www.sfu.ca/~allen/LockdownReport.pdf?
10	SARS-CoV-2 Transmission among Marine Recruits during Quarantine
	Andrew G. Letizia, M.D., Irene Ramos, Ph.D., Ajay Obla, Ph.D., Carl Goforth, Ph.D., Dawn L. Weir, Ph.D., Yongchao Ge, Ph.D., Marcas M. Bamman, Ph.D., Jayeeta Dutta, M.B.A., Ethan Ellis, B.S., Luis Estrella, Ph.D., Mary-Catherine George, Ph.D., Ana S. Gonzalez-Reiche, Ph.D., William D. Graham, Ph.D., Adriana van de Guchte, M.S., Ramiro Gutierrez, M.D., Franca Jones, Ph.D., Aspasia Kalomoiri, Ph.D., Rhonda Lizewski, M.D., Stephen Lizewski, Ph.D., Jan Marayag, B.A., Nada Marjanovic, M.S., Eugene V. Millar, Ph.D., Venugopalan D. Nair, Ph.D., German Nudelman, Ph.D., Edgar Nunez, A.S., Brian L. Pike, Ph.D., Chad Porter, Ph.D., James Regeimbal, Ph.D., Stas Rirak, M.S., Ernesto Santa Ana, A.S., Rachel S.G. Sealfon, Ph.D., Robert Sebra, Ph.D., Mark P. Simons, Ph.D., Alessandra Soares-Schanoski, Ph.D., Victor Sugiharto, Ph.D., Michael Termini, M.D., Sindhu Vangeti, Ph.D., Carlos Williams, M.D., Olga G. Troyanskaya, Ph.D., Harm van Bakel, Ph.D., and Stuart C. Sealfon, M.D.
	https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2029717
11	The lockdown effect: A counterfactual for Sweden
	Benjamin Born ,    Alexander M. Dietrich ,    Gernot J. Müller
	https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0249732
12	COVID-19 pandemic-related lockdown: response time is more important than its strictness
	Gil Loewenthal, Shiran Abadi, Oren Avram, Keren Halabi, Noa Ecker, Natan Nagar, Itay Mayrose, Tal Pupko
	https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.11.20128520v1.full
13	Lockdown Effects on Sars-CoV-2 Transmission – The evidence from Northern Jutland
	Kasper Planeta Kepp, e Christian Bjørnskov
	https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.28.20248936v1.full
14	Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic
	Thomas Meunier
	https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717v1
15	Inferring the effectiveness of government interventions against COVID-19
	Jan M. Brauner, Sören Mindermann, Mrinank Sharma, David Johnston,  John Salvatier,  Tomáš Gavenčiak, Anna B. Stephenson,  Gavin Leech,  George Altman, Vladimir Mikulik, Alexander John Norman,  Joshua Teperowski Monrad,  Tamay Besiroglu,  Hong Ge,  Meghan A. Hartwick, Yee Whye Teh,  Leonid Chindelevitch, Yarin Gal,  Jan Kulveit
	https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6531/eabd9338/tab-pdf
16	Was Germany’s Corona Lockdown Necessary?
	Christof Kuhbandner, Stefan Homburg, Harald Walach, Stefan Hockertz
	https://advance.sagepub.com/articles/preprint/Comment_on_Dehning_et_al_Science_15_May_2020_eabb9789_Inferring_change_points_in_the_spread_of_COVID-19_reveals_the_effectiveness_of_interventions_/12362645
17	Inferring UK COVID-19 fatal infection trajectories from daily mortality data: were infections already in decline before the UK lockdowns?
	Simon N. Wood
	https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.02090
18	Estimating the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in Europe
	Seth Flaxman, Swapnil Mishra, Axel Gandy, H. Juliette T. Unwin, Thomas A. Mellan, Helen Coupland, Charles Whittaker, Harrison Zhu, Tresnia Berah, Jeffrey W. Eaton, Mélodie Monod, Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, Azra C. Ghani, Christl A. Donnelly, Steven Riley, Michaela A. C. Vollmer, Neil M. Ferguson, Lucy C. Okell & Samir Bhatt
	https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2405-7
19	Comment on Flaxman et al. (2020, Nature, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2405-7): The 1illusory effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in Europe
	Stefan Homburg1, Christof Kuhbandner
	https://advance.sagepub.com/articles/preprint/Comment_on_Flaxman_et_al_2020_The_illusory_effects_of_non-pharmaceutical_interventions_on_COVID-19_in_Europe/12479987
20	Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions against COVID-19 in Europe: A quasi-experimental study
	Paul R Hunter, Felipe J Colón-González, Julii Brainard, Steven Rushton
	https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.20088260v2
21	Trajectory of COVID-19 epidemic in Europe
	Marco Colombo, Joseph Mellor, Helen M Colhoun, M Gabriela M Gomes, Paul M McKeigue
	https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.26.20202267v1
22	Effect of school closures on mortality from coronavirus disease 2019: old and new predictions
	Ken Rices,  Ben Wynne,  Victoria Martins,  Graeme J Ackland
	https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3588
23	Modeling social distancing strategies to prevent SARS-CoV2 spread in Israel- A Cost-effectiveness analysis
	Amir Shlomai, Ari Leshno, View ORCID ProfileElla H. Sklan, View ORCID ProfileMoshe Leshno
	https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.30.20047860v3
24	Smart Thinking, Lockdown and COVID-19: Implications for Public Policy
	Morris Altman
	https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3607803
25	SARS-CoV-2 waves in Europe: A 2-stratum SEIRS model solution
	Levan Djaparidze, Federico Lois
	https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.09.20210146v2
26	Four Stylized Facts about COVID-19
	Andrew Atkeson, Karen Kopecky & Tao Zha
	https://www.nber.org/papers/w27719
27	Association between living with children and outcomes from COVID-19: an OpenSAFELY cohort study of 12 million adults in England
	Harriet Forbes, Caroline E Morton, Seb Bacon, View ORCID ProfileHelen I McDonald, Caroline Minassian, Jeremy P Brown, View ORCID ProfileChristopher T Rentsch, View ORCID ProfileRohini Mathur, Anna Schultze, Nicholas J DeVito, View ORCID ProfileBrian MacKenna, William J Hulme, Richard Croker, Alex J Walker, Elizabeth J Williamson, Chris Bates, Amir Mehrkar, View ORCID ProfileHelen J Curtis, David Evans, Kevin Wing, Peter Inglesby, Henry Drysdale, Angel YS Wong, Jonathan Cockburn, Robert McManus, John Parry, Frank Hester, Sam Harper, Ian J Douglas, Liam Smeeth, Stephen JW Evans, Krishnan Bhaskaran, View ORCID ProfileRosalind M Eggo, View ORCID ProfileBen Goldacre, Laurie A Tomlinson
	https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.01.20222315v1
28	Exploring inter-country coronavirus mortality
	Trevor Nell, Ian McGorian, Nick Hudson
	https://pandata.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Exploring-inter-country-variation.pdf
29	Lockdowns and Closures vs COVID –19: COVID Wins
	Surjit S Bhalla
	http://ssbhalla.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Lockdowns-Closures-vs.-COVID19-Covid-Wins-Nov-4.pdf
30	Government mandated lockdowns do not reduce Covid-19 deaths: implications for evaluating the stringent New Zealand response
	John Gibson
	https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00779954.2020.1844786
31	Predicting the Trajectory of Any COVID19 Epidemic From the Best Straight Line
	View ORCID ProfileMichael Levitt, Andrea Scaiewicz, Francesco Zonta
	https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.26.20140814v2
32	Potential lessons from the Taiwan and New Zealand health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic
	Dr Jennifer Summers, Dr Hao-Yuan Cheng, Professor Hsien-Ho Lin, Dr Lucy Telfar Barnard, Dr Amanda Kvalsvig, Professor Nick Wilson, Professor Michael G Baker
	https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanwpc/article/PIIS2666-6065(20)30044-4/fulltext
33	Commentary on : Potential lessons from the Taiwan and New Zealand health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic
	Amelia Janaskie
	https://www.aier.org/article/the-mystery-of-taiwan/
34	Effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19: A Tale of Three Models
	Vincent Chin, John P.A. Ioannidis, Martin A. Tanner, Sally Cripps
	https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.22.20160341v3
35	A First Literature Review: Lockdowns Only Had a Small Effect on COVID-19
	Jonas Herby
	https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3764553
36	COVID-19 Lockdown Policies: An Interdisciplinary Review
	Oliver Robinson
	https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3782395
37	The effect of interventions on COVID-19
	Kristian Soltesz, Fredrik Gustafsson, Toomas Timpka, Joakim Jaldén, Carl Jidling, Albin Heimerson, Thomas B. Schön, Armin Spreco, Joakim Ekberg, Örjan Dahlström, Fredrik Bagge Carlson, Anna Jöud & Bo Bernhardsson
	https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3025-y
38	Evaluating the effects of shelter-in-place policies during the COVID-19 pandemic
	View ORCID ProfileChristopher R. Berry, Anthony Fowler, Tamara Glazer, Samantha Handel-Meyer, and Alec MacMillen
	https://www.pnas.org/content/118/15/e2019706118
39	Longitudinal variability in mortality predicts Covid-19 deaths
	Jon O. Lundberg, Hugo Zeberg
	https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.25.20248853v1.full-text
40	Evaluating the effects of shelter-in-place policiesduring the COVID-19 pandemic
	Christopher R. Berrya, Anthony Fowlera, Tamara Glazera, Samantha Handel-Meyera, and Alec MacMillen
	https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/15/e2019706118.full.pdf
41	SARS-CoV-2 elimination, not mitigation, creates best outcomes for health, the economy, and civil liberties
	Miquel Oliu-Barton, *Bary S R Pradelski, Philippe Aghion, Patrick Artus, Ilona Kickbusch, Jeffrey V Lazarus, Devi Sridhar, Samantha Vanderslot
	https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00978-8/fulltext