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Open letter - Docs4opendebate

Covid
#1

Continuing the discussion from Dr. says: There is no second wave; nor will there be one:

This link has already been posted, by @RhisiartGwilym (with a tip of the hat to Willem at The Lifeboat News yesterday), but I think it deserves a thread of its own, because it is long and well-written, bringing together a lot of arguments and references:

Open letter from medical doctors and health professionals to all belgian authorities and all belgian media.

September 5th 2020

I have no comment to make myself. Iā€™m baffled by the whole thing, I canā€™t keep up with it, I have no idea what to think, and I continue to find COVID-19 itself bloody scary, apart from all the politics. The nearest I shall come to commenting, at least for now, is to selectively quote one particular passage, which I find compelling, even in (or perhaps because of!) my confused state:

Emergency law versus Human Rights

The general principle of good governance calls for the proportionality of government decisions to be weighed up in the light of the Higher Legal Standards: any interference by government must comply with the fundamental rights as protected in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Interference by public authorities is only permitted in crisis situations. In other words, discretionary decisions must be proportionate to an absolute necessity.

The measures currently taken concern interference in the exercise of, among other things, the right to respect of private and family life, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association, the right to education, etc., and must therefore comply with fundamental rights as protected by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
For example, in accordance with Article 8(2) of the ECHR, interference with the right to private and family life is permissible only if the measures are necessary in the interests of national security, public safety, the economic well-being of the country, the protection of public order and the prevention of criminal offences, the protection of health or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others, the regulatory text on which the interference is based must be sufficiently clear, foreseeable and proportionate to the objectives pursued.45

The predicted pandemic of millions of deaths seemed to respond to these crisis conditions, leading to the establishment of an emergency government. Now that the objective facts show something completely different, the condition of inability to act otherwise (no time to evaluate thoroughly if there is an emergency) is no longer in place. Covid-19 is not a cold virus, but a well treatable condition with a mortality rate comparable to the seasonal flu. In other words, there is no longer an insurmountable obstacle to public health.

There is no state of emergency.

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#2

Thanks for posting, Twirlip. You might be ā€˜confusedā€™ but you picked out the best place to start :slightly_smiling_face:

Emergency law versus Human Rights. Proportionality, fundamental human rights, ECHR (while itā€™s still relevant to us in the UK) and ā€œis it an absolute necessity?ā€. Good that someone is raising these questions; I wish it was the leader of the opposition here, or one of these top medical advisers :no_mouth:.

I.e., if rights are being harmed, under human rights law measures have to be necessary - one practical weakness in this kind of rights legislation is that outside of a court, there is no clear test to say that the human rights are being breached. They are, of course, being breached big time - but governments can still claim all the requirements for justification under this law are met, using all the spin and political and scientific manipulation that has set the narrative so far. Weā€™re facing the biggest threat since WWII, the story begins, and thereā€™s no alternative, andā€¦

A joined up challenge would try to show the latest measures are not necessary or proportionate (as there are other methods of dealing with the perceived threat), and therefore they breach the ECHR.

The paper attempts to do that. Thereā€™s quite a bit about better strategies like identifying and protecting vulnerable groups, and consideration of " Consequences of social isolation on physical and mental health ". All good and well, worth looking at these Iā€™m sure.

However, the paper actually has a very big card to play. At the bottom of your quote it says (my emphasis):

" Covid-19 is not a cold virus, but a well treatable condition with a mortality rate comparable to the seasonal flu. In other words, there is no longer an insurmountable obstacle to public health."

The authors refer to compelling new evidence that the condition is treatable with HCQ.
Itā€™s kind of buried in a couple of layers of references:

ā€œThe definitive evidence comes from the epidemiological follow-up in Switzerland: mortality rates compared with and without this therapy .23ā€

Ref 23 contains two of these graphs, where something telling is obviously meant to be happening, that I always feel is obvious to everyone else but me, with the explanation in Flemish (I presume). The link there is to Francesoir which thankfully explains it in English: following the fake Lancet study, HCQ treatment was withdrawn in Switzerland and France, then restarted after a couple of weeks or so, the paper having been withdrawn.

Itā€™s worth noting that the measure used, of deaths divided by recoveries seems well suited to a treatment that is claimed to be almost a cure.

The result is startling - in both countries, the measure of deaths they look at (relative to recoveries) shot up two weeks following the cessation of HCQ , and then came back down about the same time after HCQ resumption .

A test confirms the obvious, ie itā€™s statistically (highly) significant. The stop-starting of the HCQ treatment was followed by an eye-catching jump and then fall at about the right times.

The ā€˜treatmentā€™ aspect is part of a raft of challenges; in the first paragraph they criticize the " totally disproportionate" crisis management and call for open debate and a return to normal democratic governance and legal structures and ā€œrestoration of all our civil libertiesā€.

With the treatment evidence to question the alleged emergency, I think all this amounts to a decent challenge overall. :grimacing:

#3

Thanks @Twirlip - just getting round to reading this now. A very interesting piece. I feel much as you do - pretty confused about the whole thing. There are some very good points made by the more sceptical people, but at the same time, I feel like itā€™s just too early to dismiss the possibility of a true second wave of the disease, and all the heartbreak that would come with that.

I agree with @Evvy_dense - the conversation around balancing basic rights against the possible danger of the virus is a crucial one. The problem is that competing agendas make the conversation a very difficult one to have honestly. Again - one of the reasons for this site, in fact, is to recognise that these conversations in the public domain are not neutral.

Anyway. As more actual data come to light, two things seem to be emerging:

  • it seems to be the case that the fatality rate is dropping substantially from the 3% initial estimate to the 0.9% Imperial College estimate to about 0.3% as mentioned by Patrick Vallance in the most recent public address.
  • HCQ, vitamin D, Ivermectin and Dexamethosone all seem to be cheap and effective ways of treating the illness.

So, lower than first thought fatality rates, and cheap, easy access treatments. It does feel like the emergency is gradually disappearingā€¦