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On the UnHerd youtube channel, they interviewed "Swedish expert Prof. Johan Giesecke" who said (around 3 minutes in) that while there's science behind hand washing to prevent the spread of disease,

but the rest of them [measures] like border closures, school closures, social distancing there's almost no science behind most of these.

Giesecke seem to be fairly well-known, e.g. he has a WHO page which says "he was the first Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)."

So is what he saying true, especially about social distancing?

Fizz
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  • I'm still struggling with the way sceptics works, thus I make it a comment again, not an answer. Consider there is no scientific evidence on the effects of social distancing. This also means that no negative effects are known. And this means: at least it's worth trying. Of course, this try (=experiment) has to be observed very carefully because of the bad economic effects. In the end there will be two experiments: The "Swedish way" and the "social distancing" way applied in other countries. The results are still open. Unfortunately, these are the options we, as societies, are left with. – Hartmut Braun Apr 25 '20 at 07:15
  • @HartmutBraun: well, economists at least have put out [some papers](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3561560) on the economic effects of such past measures during the 1918-1919 pandemic. It might be true that the health effects of those measures may be even less well known due to record-keeping etc. (unlike economic macro-effects)... although given that this paper uses mortality as one of its variables... – Fizz Apr 25 '20 at 07:22
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    It's like this paper in the BMJ: https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094 . There is basically no medical evidence on the efficacy of parachutes, but that doesn't mean they are not effective. Having randomised control studies is good, but sometimes you just have to go with common sense. – Paul Johnson Apr 25 '20 at 10:49
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    @Paul sounds like an answer to https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1064/is-the-use-of-parachutes-supported-by-peer-reviewed-papers ! – Andrew Grimm Apr 25 '20 at 11:26
  • @PaulJohnson: he's not explicitly saying there are no RCTs (in the whole 34min interview) as the basis for "almost no science". He does say later on that distancing at best delays some deaths that eventually happen a few weeks or months later anyway in vulnerable individuals (because the virus/epidemic gets to them anyway, only with a little delay). Although admittedly we don't know exactly what he meant by "almost no science", his claim seems a bit broader, i.e. including observational studies, which makes rebuttal merely by parachute analogy inadequate. – Fizz Apr 25 '20 at 15:55
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    @Fizz But even if the epidemic would reach them with delay, that delay might have been used in the meantime to develop medication/have a free hospital bed...? – akraf Apr 25 '20 at 17:08
  • @akraf: that's where I think there can be some science-based answer (even if it's just modelling)! Giesecke says however that while that may work in China, an 18-month lockdown [needed to develop vaccine] is not feasible in the West. To some extent he seems to be correct, e.g. UK deaths [seem to] have exceeded China's and even the predictions derived from China-style lockdown, i.e. the Western-style lockdowns were predicted and then confirmed to be less efficient than China's. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47176/is-it-probable-that-the-uk-covid-19-death-count-will-eclipse-chinas – Fizz Apr 25 '20 at 17:12
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    Of course there's no science--how could there be? This is the first pandemic where social distancing was even tried as a response, it's impossible to have studied it! Also, even now we can't do a proper scientific study. – Loren Pechtel Apr 25 '20 at 21:24
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    @LorenPechtel: no it's not the first. – Fizz Apr 25 '20 at 21:31
  • @Fizz Where has it been used as a policy? – Loren Pechtel Apr 25 '20 at 21:33
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    @LorenPechtel: USA 1918-1919, see my first comment replying to Hartmut Braun. Also, more recently in the Ebloa outbreaks in Africa. These measures were not all identical, but surely something can be learned from them. – Fizz Apr 25 '20 at 21:47
  • @Fizz It's still an ongoing issue, we can't say how effective it is because we have no control. – Loren Pechtel Apr 25 '20 at 21:49
  • Is this just a duplicate of this question, but worded in reverse? [Did lockdowns limit the spread of COVID-19?](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47873/did-lockdowns-limit-the-spread-of-covid-19) – IMSoP Jun 27 '20 at 12:13
  • @IMSoP: not entirely, since this one is also about border closures, but you could say the other one is a partial duplicate. Also, the other q is newer. Also answer to that other q is "there is a mathematical model", which is not quite the same as science, which needs empirical evidence. I'm pretty sure the Swedish guy who made the claim here won't be impressed by a narrative review from an Iranian journal. – Fizz Jun 27 '20 at 13:28
  • @Fizz I don't agree that a) the term "science" excludes mathematical models; or b) that the quality of an _answer_ has anything to do with whether two _questions_ are duplicates (i.e. a better answer to one would be a better answer to the other). I also think the claims are substantially the same. I did misread the dates, though, so you're right that this could be considered the "original"; unfortunately, _merging_ questions is rare, so closing the other would leave the answer somewhat orphaned. – IMSoP Jun 27 '20 at 14:30

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