It looks like a clickbait headline but it is one that is right, you don't see that often.
The Doctors Covid Collective (including 1672 verified medics) posted an article on their website with the headline: "Delta variant on the rise. No need to panic."
Pressure on hospitals next autumn?
In the article, the collective doctors united attention to the capacity problem in healthcare. They say:
Every winter there is a flu peak that puts healthcare to the test. The cause of this is the capacity problem and not the severity of the annual seasonal viruses.
The Doctors' Collective forgets something essential
What they don't name is the cause of the misery surrounding the annual flu wave. Until now, our virologists have had no idea how respiratory viruses spread every year. This has been revealed by corona. They have accepted the transmission issue, in my view rather nonchalantly, as a fact of life. No one made a problem of the annual flu explosion. Over the past year, this knowledge gap has undeniably been exposed.
Thanks to Corona and all the scientific attention it has attracted, we now know exactly how it is. The advancing insight has made a huge intermediate sprint. With that, the virologists have fallen through the ice quite a bit due to corona with their group think, tunnel vision and old-fashioned doctor arrogance. That is why I make a suggestion below for an extra heading in the piece of the doctors' collective:
No more pressure on healthcare in the autumn!
The doctors' collective sees the capacity problem as the cause of the pressure on healthcare and that is a typical healthcare perspective – apparently you can't escape that. Healthcare workers seem to forget that this shortage of capacity is because many people are suddenly infected at the same time. We now finally know why. For decades, health institutes and virologists have allowed thousands of people to die from flu every autumn without taking action. That can be done better from now on.
Thanks to all the corona research, this virus (whether or not grown in the lab and therefore easily traceable) has taught us how respiratory viruses spread. So we can now also estimate in advance how many people will die next year without having to wait where and when an annual excess mortality peak will occur. Until now, these annual mortality peaks were never included in the mortality estimate. After all, mortality is always 'more than expected': excess mortality. That is all different now because it is easier to control, so it is also easier to estimate. Now we know how people can easily protect themselves.
Usually this sentence is used in the passive voice: "how people can be protected". It is much more important that people themselves know how to protect themselves: with fresh air. Then you have already flattened the most important peak. Yet the cabinet continues to propagate false security, such as "airing your house for 15 minutes a day". So I don't have a clue. This is how you recognize the quality of the medical advisors.
The medical advisors of someone who claims "Fifteen minutes a day of airing is sufficient" against a virus that has just been placed on the A-List should, as far as I'm concerned, be sent out of the country with tar and feathers.
Self-protection first: more about CO2 meters
The doctors' collective's article was a much-needed antidote to the chicken-without-stubborn fear-mongering everywhere. The Delta variant is placed in context. They clearly explain that a more contagious virus is almost always a good sign because it is less dangerous or becomes "endemic", just like the common cold. Not that a cold makes me so happy now, but okay.
A very deadly virus will quickly make its hosts (= 'hosts' but included) sick and get rid of them, which reduces the number of infections and therefore rapid spread. If you are new to this, please read the article.
Tomas Pueyo (die van Hammer & Dance) ontkent dit principe trouwens en thus leads to ominous scenarios. If one thing has become clear this crisis: doomsday scenarios never come true. Not even those of Geert Vandenbossche and Mike Yeadon.
There is talk that the British variant already had a lower IFR (approx. 0.05%) and that the Delta variant is even lower (approx. 0.01%). I will mention the (not yet peer reviewed) numbers anyway. The doctors are quite rightly more cautious. I have not yet seen any data that contradicts these figures, but that will have to come. After all, people want to attribute the falling disease and mortality to vaccinations. This means that Delta must remain extremely dangerous with a high IFR. The vaccinations are then the protective factor that brings down the IFR. At the same time, you see everywhere that Delta no longer cares so much about the vaccinations... A difficult situation.
