21/5/2020
Set the people free;
explaining the end of the covid epidemic
Executive abstract
In the Irish times of
23/5/20. Luke O'Neill of TCD – the Irish scientist with most
prominence on this issue – explained that 90% pf science was making
mistakes. This he spectacularly exemplified by deliberately
destroying a state-funded experiment to show off to the journalist
Jennifer O'Connell. Unfortunately, this world of mistakes and state
largesse has collided with the real world of people's livelihoods at
enormous cost to the latter. While it is indeed a mistake that
science has not yet worked out the details of how covifd-90 is
transmitted, a mistake explicable at least in part by problems with
the disciplinary formation of biologists, the primitive statistical
models used by the epidemiologists to define public policy are
currently ruining large swathes of civil society as well as the
economy. There is a way forward, one that uses the advances in time
series analysis made since WW2, one that exploits the natural
experiment resutling in the small infection rates in India and
Africa, and one that can set the Irish people free by June 2020 to
enjoy the activities that give joy and meaning to life. Proper
attention needs to be paid to the priorities in state funding of
science in ireland that have led us to this mess.
In particulat, covid-19
infrction rates show a negative exponential decline with the coming
pf spring and lengthening of days. This we have seen in Ireland and
Brtitain Yet, in apparent paradox, infection rates have been less in
the winter months of colder countries like Estonia. There are two
hypotheses that emerge. The first is that the negative exponential in
infection which we have calculated preceisly at our research group
using publicly available data is due to the rate of decay of covid-19
particularly in UV light. The second hypothesis is that infection
requires an endothermic reaction, and beneath a certain ambient
temterature it cannot occur. Whi;e we have had natural experiments
suggesting this, we need more controlled experiments.
Main text
The
panicked response to covid19 is the greatest scientific failure of
our lifetimes. We are putting our entire population under house
arrest for a disease that will from now on in mid 2020 - even with
all restrictions lifted - will kill fewer than suicide or car
accidents.
For those rare individuals
without time on their hands, here are the take-home-messages;
The new infections in Ireland from sars-cov-2 are nearing an
asymptote since sometime in late April
and the acceptable rate of 50-100 cases or so a day HPET model, is in
place since the week of 18 May;
There is no point in continuing the severity of the phased lockdown,
and a return to those activities that give joy and meaning to life
should be accelerated starting with unrestricted travel in time for
the Whit weekend and saving – inter alia- the GAA season, Willie
Clancy week, the Rose of Tralee and the Galway races by opening up in
line with the rest of the EU on June 15;
In particular, the epidemiological, immunological models are too
primitive to warrant the current and planned state actions
Specifically, it is clear that the immunologists do not even know
the basics of sampling methodology as they were until 20th may
seriously asserting the necessity of testing everybody. Somehow an
entire century in the development of the understanding of time series
has escaped the epidemiologists; and genetic determinism has
destroyed the possibility of understanding the details of
transmissions in virologists as well;
In particular, there is no explanation as to why children are less
susceptible and contagious, why Africa, Estonia, India and so on have
largely escaped, and so on
Nor is there an explanation for the fact Madagscar up to last week
has had zero deaths;
Specifically, Covid19 cannot work without a
particular metabolic context or to put it in very simple terms within
a very specific temperature range. The reason that the medical
establishment does not understand that is that it has succumbed to
genetic determinism at the cost of tens of thousands of lives and
crashing the world economy.
Here
are a few predictions that were first made in mid- April by this
author in a paper to be presented at a conference in the USA on June
22 2020;
India and Africa will continue to confound
expectations with a very low rate of infections
The distribution of infection in France
Italy and Spain will surprise epidemiologists who are still using a
1927 model . To put it in simple terms these countries even more than
is already the case in Ireland will get rid of covid19 much quicker
than they expect to as they warm up.
So
what went wrong? Let us first look at the SIR epidemiological model
whose champion, Neil Ferguson, by his behaviour in violating his own
strictures spectacularly showed that he does not believe any more
than does this writer. It was developed in 1927 and assumes a normal
or bell-shaped progress of the disease, with cholera the paradigm.
This is precisely the model that Taleb excoriates in his classic book
“The Black Swan”
as he argues it caused the 90's LTCM crash.
Power
laws, with exponential growth and decay, are more prevalent. It does
look as though covid infections converge to an asymptote with a
negative exponenetial curve of infection rates, both new and current,
at the end as is currently confounding NPHET, the body tasked with
advising the Irish government. The deaths may indeed seem to follow
a normal distribution perhaps due to mis-reporting while the tail for
infection is a negative exponential and it is the tail that should
shape the lifting of restrictions. In conjunction with our colleagues
we are currently fitting the most correct curve to the public Irish
and Spanish data. This will be again checked with respect to data
derived from the late proposal by Ireland's National virus reference
lab to sample randomly for antibodies, controlling for age and other
factors, a step that should have been taken months ago.
In
the method Ferguson promoted, either the population is exposed and
develops herd immunity when about 70% (this number keeps
changing!)have antibodies or - as happened here- we lock down so
that only a limited sample is exposed. Various estimates have been
given as to how many such lockdowns will be necessary to flatten the
curve but it does not matter
as this method cannot repeatedly be used without destroying our whole
society. The mediaeval process, so described by Nobellist Michael
Levitt, we have endured takes no account of the fact that a 2km walk
and metro ride in the city brings one in contact with thousands, and
in the countryside with single figures; the susceptibility
differences due to age, obesity; and so on.
Nor
does this model reflect the fact that, using methods like wavelets
and the Hilbert Transform we can find the instantaneous analytic
amplitude and phase of a signal like the infection rate. The curve is
not bell-shaped as the phase will show. It is clear that the R or
contagion changes but help is at hand; by using wavelet analysis, we
can find the instantaneous frequency. In fact, we can distinguish the
carrier wave (like the FM frequency of a station or the current R)
from its instantaneous modulation (resulting in the music being
played in the case of radio or the danger from covid-19 to a
specific location or age group). Specifically, at worst we should be
able to send texts out every day to citizens telling them of covid-19
hotspots to be avoided given their age and health history the next
time it hits, as it will, instead of reaching for the lockdown nuke.
Readers
have been exposed to so much nonsense not least from the current (as
distinct from previous) unelected government
that I will dare develop some of these points. There are two
meanings of the word statistics
that are germane to this discussion. The first is that a
statistic
is a parameter like a median taken from a sample. There is a
very well-attested science that can tell you within specific
confidence limits whether this sanple reflects a population, so no
need to test everybody, as the virology lab seems to have realized.
A statistic is the
use by the state of laws of large numbers that most famously resulted
in the number of undelivered letters in France converging year after
year. Almost unbelievably, modern states have conceded these data to
google and Facebook, who clearly have been bursting to tell us that,
yes, they can track everybody. In any case, citizens should not allow
the state to lock them down ever agin unless it demonstrates mastery
of modern statistical techniques.
Secondly,
and even more shockingly, the central
dogma of molecular biology forced
on all immunologists, virologists and epidemiologists as biology
students cannot countenance the fact that metabolic effects obtain in
gene expression. So, for example, the ratio of NAD+ to NADH is probed
by proteins called transcription factors and differentially affects
gene expression. Alternatively put, while Trump undoubtedly plays
with the truth, the enunciation of a finding in his presence does not
vitiate that finding. Will Bryan in such a context cited work from
Johns Hopkins explaining the anomalous lack of impact of covid-19 in
Africa, India, Estonia and so on; it is extremely heat sensitive, and
its half- life is 2 minutes in bright sunlight. While we as yet know
little about its transmission, for reasons that should now be clear
to readers, so little of it survives after 15 minutes in the outdoors
that one's chance of death by contagion is about the same as being
kicked to death by a herd of donkeys.
But
wait? Did we not, along with readers of Science and Nature in 2015,
hear that the billions invested by the Irish taxpayer in SFI made us
number 1 in the world in immunology? Where are these experts now? Or
why is it that no Irish journalist has examined the Wall street
Journals' expose of Dr Anita Jones, founder of SFI, and a board
member of INQTEL? Has the aggressive alignment of Irish science with
the goals of INQTEL - implemented at great Irish taxpayer expense
mainly by the import of foreign scientists and in one case the firing
of the chief state scientist - made us vulnerable as we have slipped
down the real international science rankings since SFI started in
2003? It was this writer's great privilege to learn the science
alluded to in this letter at UC Berkeley and Stanford. Funny how SFI
never managed to lure anybody full-time from there, Harvard, MIT and
other truly elite institutions?
Remarkably,
some of the Irish scientists are beginning to catch on, and are now
suggesting that vitamin D might help the body's immune system resist
sars-cov-2. They posit a picturesque explanation in terms of
marshalling cytokines, rather reminiscent in its vagueness of the
hand-waving when immunology experiments had casualties with the
cytokine avalanche at the testing on tgn1412. Essentially, a legacy
drug that had no effects on other mammals killed humans; such is our
knowledge of immunology! More importantly, they properly suggest
that taking the elderly out of their nursing homes into the fresh air
for 15 minutes a day to experience nature's bounty of vitamin D in
the great outdoors may help.
It
is a measure of our ignorance that there is a much simpler
explanation, and a much simpler way to avoid the killing fields of
the nursing homes. Might it not be the case that covid-19 is so
damaged by UV light that lengthening days in themselves stall the
epidemic? Conversely, keeping people indoors will perpetuate it, and
Autumn will possibly revive it. Likewise, we must be open to the
model of that the elderly currently in nursing homes may go back to
their next of kin for each recurrence. What we can't afford is the
current confusion of tongues between different specialists, a
confusion imposed by funding of scientific research
from the public purse.
Dr
Sean O Nuallain
Foundations
of Mind Summer School, University of Pisa
info@foundationsofmind.org
