White Paper: Covid Recovery – A Scientific Approach

About: “Our goal is to bring objectivity and balance to the discussion around management of the COVID19 Pandemic. Our values are based on the time honoured clinical mantra of ‘first, do no harm.’ We are gravely concerned with the complete absence of reasonable debate on the subject within our media. As clinicians, we see first hand the other side of the ‘daily case numbers’ update: depression, fear, isolation, unemployment, the destruction of hope etc. We are committed to proposing reasonable and workable solutions to the problems faced by our society at this time and urge avoidance of the destructive and singular path of cyclical lockdown. Directly below is our white paper, which is a medically composed paper, written and verified by doctors and medical practitioners on the effects of lockdown, and the path out of this pandemic.”

“Lockdown Interventions – are there convincing real-world benefits for morbidity / mortality? … We now have the benefit of experience and multiple published analyses reflecting real-world data and outcomes. A recent paper in The Lancet showed no correlation between lockdown measures and mortality outcomes: ‘Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people.’ Notably, a large number of published preprint analyses converge on lockdowns having a minimal beneficial effect on mortality outcomes. There is a dearth of published evidence indicating that lockdowns reduce overall mortality; a significant concern in itself, given the enormous negative impacts of lockdown. Sweden is particularly notable as a ‘control’ country which largely followed the 2019 WHO Pandemic Guidelines, rather than pursuing the very new lockdown approach. With this strategy, they experienced a similar mortality impact to other European countries, when various key factors are accounted for.”

“Lockdown Interventions – what is the evidence for costs far exceeding any benefits? It is critical that we now apply our understanding of these analyses and ask the question: Do the costs of lockdown outweigh (possibly greatly) - the benefits of lockdown? A recent paper published in the British Medical Journal concluded that lockdown interventions could increase COVID-19 mortality rates over the long term. Another analysis in preprint proposes the same unintended consequences. It is crucial that we consider these latest analyses, and face the possibility that lockdown interventions could result in more COVID-19 deaths than if we simply followed the WHO 2019 pandemic guidelines, as Sweden did.”