What Palù (Aifa) thinks of Covid, vaccines, lockdowns and more
Here is the thought of the professor and former president of the Italian and European Society of Virology, Giorgio Palù, new president of the Italian drug agency (Aifa), on Covid, vaccines, lockdowns and more
The appointment of Giorgio Palù as the new president of the Italian Medicines Agency (Aifa) is destined to be discussed. Not for the expert's curriculum, mind you, but for the strong declarations of the character, now even a bit televised, released on a daily basis. In fact, the words he scanned from the columns of Corriere della Sera about the lockdown still echo in everyone's head, according to the professor, the result of collective hysteria. But there is no lack of lashing declarations, according to critics on the verge of denial (and in fact he has been accused on several occasions of being so), so on the basis of some of his latest utterances let's try to really understand what Palù-thought is.
WHAT PALÙ DEL LOCKDOWN THINK
The future number 1 of Aifa, former president of the Italian and European Society of Virology, interviewed by Corsera , on 24 October said clearly what he thought of the line followed by Giuseppe Conte and Roberto Speranza : "I am opposed as a citizen to a new lockdown because it would be suicide for our economy; as a scientist because it would penalize the education of young people, and as a doctor because it would mean that sick people, suffering from other pathologies, especially tumors, would not have access to treatment. All this in the face of a disease, Covid-19, which, all in all, has a low lethality. We must put a stop to this hysteria ”.
WHAT PALÙ THINKS ABOUT ASYMPTOMATICS
On the same occasion Palù also pronounced clear words on another discussed topic: asymptomatic patients. Should they be considered sick and, therefore, locked in the house or not? “There is a lot of alarmism. There is no doubt that we are facing a second wave, but the circulation of the virus has never stopped, even if in July the cases seemed to have disappeared, thanks to the warm season, the open air, the ultraviolet rays that kill the virus. Then there was the return from vacation, the reopening of many activities and, above all, the return to school ”, said Palù. “We are talking about 'cases' – explained the virologist – meaning people who are positive for the swab. Of these, 95% have no symptoms and therefore cannot be defined as ill ”. Even this statement of his did not fail to cause a stir and immediately the online newspaper Open by Enrico Mentana published in response a f act checking done by David Puente to deny the words of the virologist.
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE CIVIL PROTECTION BULLETINS
But those are not the only pebbles that Palù has taken off his shoes. The new president AIFA impallinò also the way in which the government, through the Civil Defense, decided to manage the advance of media communication Covid-19, using the known daily bulletins (which in periods highlight emphasized by evening lectures Press ): “What really matters is knowing how many people arrive in intensive care. In any case, this virus has a relatively low lethality, it can kill, but it is not the plague ”. Indirectly Palù also made it clear where the executive was wrong in managing the second wave. For the virologist, in fact, the current surge we are starting to leave behind is due “certainly to the reopening of schools. The problem is not the school itself, but the public transport on which eight million students have begun to travel. Keeping schools open is, however, essential ".
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF GETTING FREE OF COVID
For Palù, “we will not get rid of the virus”. These are his precise, feral words, "but – he reassured him – we will not succumb". "We will adapt to him or vice versa" – he said in a recent interview in which he explained why Covid will not disappear by magic: "The history of pandemics teaches us. The H1N1 still circulates: it returned in '77. H3N2 as well: in '68 it caused a million deaths. They are seasonal viruses, they are no longer pandemic but still occur. Influenza, in Italy, affects about 10 million people every year and causes 10 thousand deaths: have we forgotten that? ".
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE LETHALITY OF COVID
On the same occasion, always on Libero , Palù reiterated what he thinks of the lethality of the Coronavirus: “We have to take back the world: Covid-19 is more virulent than a normal flu, of course. It has a higher lethality, but it is not in the least comparable to that caused by other viruses. Then I want to add another element, which I am sorry to mention, pains, but it is objective, and I will limit myself to this: the average age of deaths is 81 years, exactly the average life span of an Italian adult male. And those who die, unfortunately, have 2-3 comorbidities. I repeat: we will not get rid of it because the virus will most likely become endogenous to the human species, it will have internal origin ”.
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE MUTATION OF COVID
“The virus – he recently explained – being able to replicate only inside our cells, if it kills the host, he too dies. Covid has mutated, in Italy there is a strain similar to the Spanish one, but the mutation of the "s" protein differentiates it from the prototype released from Wuhan. It has made it more contagious but not more virulent, it seems the evolution of a virus destined to remain in the human species and that will live with the host as happened for many others. The biological clock of the genome says Covid-19 has been running since September. He has adapted to man. This virus is not Sars, it is not Mers, it is not smallpox, which have had a mortality rate of even more than 30%. Covid has an average lethality of 0.4% ».
WHAT PALÙ DEL VACCINO THINKS
Particularly interesting, especially for the role it will play, is Palù – thought on vaccines : “There is a lot of talk about the vaccine, but there is already a treatment based on monoclonal antibodies . Regeneron is a combination of three monoclonals that cured Trump in 48 hours. Berlusconi recovered with Remdesivir, heparin and cortisone. The problem with monoclonals at the moment is that they are not produced in large quantities, but they have shown that this virus gives immunity. It is not HIV, we also underline this ”.
WHAT PALÙ OF THE THIRD WAVE THINKS
Finally, here is what he said to Maurizio Belpietro's newspaper regarding the possibility of a third wave: “Those who say it do so without any basis. This is the first pandemic generated by a Coronavirus. Sars and Mers came from the bat via the dromedary and from the palm owl and quickly faded because they had a very high mortality, from 10 to 36%. In our case, however, we should limit ourselves to saying that we know we do not know, as Socrates stated. All the respiratory virus pandemics that gave acute forms passed in a couple of years: smallpox, the Spanish in 18, the Asian in 57, the Hong Kong flu in '68, in 2009 the swine variant H1N1. However, from a semantic point of view, even talking about the second wave is incorrect, because the only ones to reset the first wave were the Chinese. In the rest of the world we can speak of a second phase. In terms of symptoms, mode of transmission, morbidity and lethality, this virus is much more like the flu, which has a summer mitigation and an autumn-winter flare-up. It has seasonal characteristics ”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/che-cosa-pensa-palu-di-covid-vaccini-lockdown-e-non-solo/ on Thu, 03 Dec 2020 13:58:59 +0000.