Covid, seasonality denial is unscientific. Prof Silvestri’s post
All the sins of the deniers of the seasons according to Guido Silvestri, pathologist, immunologist and virologist, professor & chair at Emory University in Atlanta
The effect of seasonality on the spread of Covid-19 is there for all to see, yet some "differently experts" persist in denying it. On the one hand, this is not surprising: these days there are those who deny the effectiveness of vaccines, those who deny that neutralizing antibodies block the virus, and those who even deny that Sars-CoV-2 exists. On social media now everything and the opposite of everything is denied. But Covid's seasonality denial, as well as totally unscientific, is stupid and dangerous.
Seasonality denial is unscientific because the seasonality of respiratory viruses (including endemic human coronaviruses) in temperate climate regions is a phenomenon known for centuries and perfectly explainable from an immunological and virological point of view, starting from the fact that people spend more time outdoors and live more spaced apart. As for those who "but what about India and the Amazon?", Let us remind them, for the umpteenth time, with extreme patience, that they are tropical or sub-tropical climates. The "protective" effect of summer in Europe and North America was seen everywhere, regardless of the restrictions used (in Sweden exactly as in Italy, oh yeah), with the only exception, coincidentally, of the South of the United States, Florida first of all, where the climate is in fact not temperate but sub-tropical.
The denial of seasonality is stupid because it is based on "a priori" reasoning, of a dogmatic-fideistic or pseudo-pragmatic type. The "dogmatic-fideistic" denial is that of those "closurists" whose revealed truth is that only lockdowns can stop Covid (and nothing else), and therefore any other observation or consideration must be denied ipso facto. These are subjects who, if you allow me the easy joke, have put their brains in lockdown, and the only wish we can give them is that of a prompt reopening. The "pseudo-pragmatic" denial is instead a well-intentioned (but wrong!) Response to the no-vaxx disguised as "logic geniuses" who say: Covid cases now drop only for the season and therefore vaccines are useless (spoiler alert: cases are now falling both for the season and for vaccines, and on the other hand with 18% of the vaccinated population how could poor vaccines do it alone?). I repeat: I understand good intentions, but saying one nonsense to fight another is never a good idea.
The denial of seasonality, however, as we said before, is not only stupid but also potentially dangerous. First of all because if, at the time of the reopening, this factor is not taken into account, as unfortunately happened both in 2020 and in 2021, we find ourselves making the festival of forecasts as catastrophic as they are wrong (on those made between 21 April 2021, reopening of schools, and on 26 April 2021, partial reopening of Italy, we could make an anthology or rather a bestiary). [And here a big thank you to Draghi and the CTS for not having listened to certain cassandras.] For months we have observed how the continuous jet catastrophism in the end creates only unnecessary anxiety, and God knows how much it is not needed, or, to the on the contrary, paradoxical and exasperated reactions based on “virus denial”.
Above all, the denial of seasonality is dangerous because it distracts from the fact that, with the arrival of the bad season (starting from October / November in the Northern hemisphere) the spread of Covid becomes easier and more dangerous, and therefore any containment measures ( from tracking to masks, from reduction of gatherings to curfews) must be modulated accordingly. But even more dangerous – and this is really the sticking point, in my opinion – would be to think that vaccines already work in giving herd immunity when the percentages of vaccinated people are still relatively low (like current ones). This attitude would lead to relax the vaccination campaign, when instead we have to push everyone to vaccinate like crazy, from now until October, in Italy as well as in Europe and North America, taking full advantage of the summer truce, to get to that quota, which many place around 70-80%, which will really allow to stop the spread of Sars-CoV-2.
PS: I realize that these lines will not be used to convince the “unconvincible” deniers, but I really hope they are useful to those who still manage to use their brains.
(post extracted from Facebook)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/covid-il-negazionismo-della-stagionalita-e-non-scientifico-il-post-del-prof-silvestri/ on Mon, 07 Jun 2021 05:56:29 +0000.