coronavirus – Professor Jem Bendell

Has asymptomatic transmission of the virus been significant to this pandemic? The published research I have read indicates that asymptomatic transmission is not significant to the reproduction rate of the Covid virus and therefore not key to the pandemic.

Why does that matter? If not enough of us can get Covid from infected people with no symptoms to significantly affect the reproduction rate of the virus, then the orthodox policy agenda does not make sense. I’ll explain more about why in a moment. But first, some context.

It feels odd, personally risky, and somewhat reckless for me to write a blog on epidemiology. What a weird situation has arisen in society so that sharing tentative analysis on public challenges involves such intense emotions and potential consequences for relationships with friends, colleagues and even future employment or income. That is a situation which I do not want to acquiesce to, as open dialogue on public issues is an aspect of contemporary society that I value deeply.

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New research confirms the role of climate change in making diseases like COVID-19, which come from wildlife, more likely, by direct and indirect effects, working in concert with other environmental damage.

Yep, shocking.

I use the words “more likely” and “like” in that sentence, reflecting scientific method and norm for communicating conclusions. In hypercomplex systems where isolating individual variables and establishing specific connections between events is difficult, that should not limit our ability to draw conclusions about probabilities, especially when they have massive implications for life on Earth.

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