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German doctors call for an “immediate return” to lockdown to avoid third wave of Covid-19
Germany has seen a rise in cases since it began a gradual easing of coronavirus late last month, allowing schools, hairdressers to partially reopen. Intensive care doctors in Germany warned on Monday that the country would need to make an “immediate return” to partial lockdown if it is to avoid stumbling into a dangerous third wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
“From the data we currently have and with the spread of the British mutation, we would argue strongly to return immediately into a lockdown to avoid a strong third wave,” Dr Christian Karagiannidis, director of Germany's intensive care register, told broadcaster RBB.
“We won't gain much from staying open for the next one or two weeks, because that will quickly bring us to a high level and make it twice as hard to push the numbers down again,” said Dr Karagiannidis, who works for the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (Divi), which tracks intensive care capacities in German hospitals.
Germany has seen a rise in cases since it began a gradual easing of coronavirus late last month, allowing schools, hairdressers and other businesses to partially reopen.
Latest Divi figures show that Germany currently has almost 2,800 people in intensive care, but Dr Karagiannidis warned that the figure could rise to 5,000 or 6,000 if state governments do not respond to rising case numbers with stricter measures.
Last week, Germany's disease control agency head Lothar Wieler warned that the third wave had already begun.
“We must avoid the same situation we were in before Christmas, with many infections, many serious cases and many deaths,” said Professor Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute for public health.
On Monday, official figures showed that the seven-day incidence rate rose again to 83 cases per 100,000 people, way above the 50 cases mark set by the government as a threshold for any easing in restrictions.
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Read all commentsAlthough there have been numerous cases of blood clots in healthy patients after receiving the inoculation resulting in death — I agree vaccines in general are a positive thing for adults to achieve herd immunity.
Mar 17th, 2021 - 09:04 pm 0(I’m personally scheduled to receive my first Sinovac vaccine injection on the 27th.)
However, Stanford University’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told Newsweek that COVID-19 lockdowns are “the single worst public health mistake in the last 100 years.”
The medical professor warned that lockdowns are disproportionately impacting the poor and making wealth inequality worse. He also explained how the areas that imposed the most draconian lockdowns didn’t see the most success in controlling the virus.
“I stand behind my comment that the lockdowns are the single worst public health mistake in the last 100 years. We will be counting the catastrophic health and psychological harms, imposed on nearly every poor person on the face of the earth, for a generation,” said Bhattacharya.
“At the same time, they have not served to control the epidemic in the places where they have been most vigorously imposed and have — at best – protected the “non-essential” class from COVID, while exposing the essential working class to the disease. The lockdowns are trickle down epidemiology,” he added.
The professor suggested that policies should have been designed to protect the vulnerable and not used to put entire populations under de facto house arrest.
“People who are older have a much higher risk from dying from COVID than people who are younger…and that’s a really important fact because we know who his most vulnerable, it’s people that are older. So the first plank of the Great Barrington Declaration: let’s protect the vulnerable,” Bhattacharya said.
“Lockdowns themselves impose great harm on people. Lockdowns are not a natural normal way to live.”
In fact Sweden without lockdown — has relatively the same mortality rate as the UK!
¡Saludos de Chile!
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