Dr John Ioannidis is Stanford University’s Rehnborg Chair in Disease Prevention, Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Population Health, and (by courtesy) of Biomedical Data Science, and of Statistics; co-Director, Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS).
His research findings on the Coronavirus-19 pandemic to date demonstrate that the infection fatality rate for this virus is about the same as for seasonal flu.
“We realized that the number of infected people is somewhere between 50 and 85 times more, compared to what we thought… compared to what had been documented. Immediately, that means that the infection fatality rate… the probability of dying if you are infected [with coronavirus] diminishes by 50 to 85 fold because the denominator in the calculation becomes 50 to 85 fold bigger. If you take these numbers into account, they suggest that the infection fatality rate for this new coronavirus is likely to be in the same ballpark as seasonal influenza. Of course, there is still a little bit of uncertainty about the exact number, but it’s clearly very different compared to the original thoughts or speculation or preliminary data that suggested a much much higher infection fatality rate.” (Ioannidis, 4/20/2020)
In this April 20 2020 video, Dr Ioannidis discusses the results of his three preliminary studies, including his latest that shows a drastically reduced infection fatality rate. In the video, he also talks about the worrisome effects of the lock down, Sweden’s approach to the pandemic, data from Italy, the ups and downs of testing and the feasibility of ‘contact tracing’.
If you’re interested and have a lot of time on your hands, you can also watch the previous interviews with Dr Ioannidis presenting his Perspectives on the Pandemic:
Episode 1: https://youtu.be/d6MZy-2fcBw Episode 2: https://youtu.be/lGC5sGdz4kg Episode 3: https://youtu.be/VK0Wtjh3HVA
These are links to his studies:
(4/14/2020). COVID-19 Antibody Seroprevalence in Santa Clara County, California. See: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1
(4/14/2020). Population-level COVID-19 mortality risk for non-elderly individuals overall and for non-elderly individuals without underlying diseases in pandemic epicenters. See: http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20200414-populationlevel-covid19-mortality-risk-for-nonelderly-individuals-overall-and-for-nonelderly-individuals-without-unde
(4/7/2020). What Other Countries Can Learn From Italy During the COVID-19 Pandemic. See: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2764369
REFERENCES
The Vaccine Reaction. (4/27/2020). PERSPECTIVES ON THE PANDEMIC | Dr. John Ioannidis. 4/20/2020 interview; video published 4/27/2020. See: https://thevaccinereaction.org/2020/04/perspectives-on-the-pandemic-dr-john-ioannidis/ © Copyright 2020. Joan Rothchild Hardin. All Rights Reserved.
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