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We are writing this openly-published letter to express deep concerns regarding the paper recently published in JAMA Network Open: Estimation of US Children’s Educational Attainment and Years of Life Lost Associated With Primary School Closures During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.28786The paper by Christakis, Van Cleve, and Zimmerman(2020,abbrev. CVZ) is built upon multiple critically flawed assumptions, obvious misuse of the standard analytical tools, and clear mistakes in study design. Additionally, the analysis presented contains crucial mathematical and statistical errors that completely revert the main results, sufficient that if the estimates had been calculated according to the declared methodology, the results would completely contradict the stated conclusions and policy recommendations. These are not idle criticisms. This study has received enormous public attention, and its results immediately appeared in discussions of public health policies around schools worldwide. The central question is resolving an evidence base for the inevitable tradeoff between (a) the very real harms of missed education provoked by policies that decrease viral spread vs. (b) the resumption of education as a social good which increases viral spread. This is an incredibly important public health question, and it demands careful cost-benefit analysis. To that end, this paper adds no usable evidence whatsoever.

In the Covid-19 pandemic, it seems that African countries have been largely spared from the devastating effects observed elsewhere. Working and living in Guinea-Bissau, one of the poorest and most fragile countries in the world located in West Africa, we wonder: How can the world know that there are only few Covid-19 cases in a country where the health system is weak and access to Covid-19 tests very limited? How can the world know that there is a low Covid-19 mortality in a country without a reliable civil registration and vital statistic system? In this article, we explore the (too) many unknowns of Covid-19 in Guinea-Bissau. The article was chosen as the 1st place winner of the 2020 Eye on Global Health Writing Competition.

WHO fungerer som hele verdens sundhedsstyrelse, men har et budget som et middelstort schweizisk universitet. Alligevel lyder kravet, at FN’s Verdenssundhedsorganisation skal gå forrest under den pandemi, der fortsat holder verden fanget i sit greb. Professor fra SDU og overlæge Morten Sodemann har i årtier fulgt WHO og er med til at folde ud, hvad organisationen er særligt god til, og hvad der går knap så godt i en tid, hvor WHO er kommet i klemme i et storpolitisk spil mellem USA og Kina. Bliv også klogere på WHO-historien, der i høj grad er præget af danske værdier. Dine værter er Kirsten Larsen og Lasse Soll Sunde.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, several countries took the approach of tiered restrictions. The UK Government’s Winter 2020 Plan looked to take a data driven approach to decision making. They proposed a set of factors (criteria) that would be used to determine what level of restrictions of movement (Tier) should be imposed on different geographical areas in England. Restrictions were tiered from Tier-1 to Tier-4, with Tier-1 being the most relaxed set of restrictions and Tier-4 representing the most constrained level of restrictions. The set of criteria, to determine which Tier from 1 to 4 an area should be placed in were, (1) case detection rate in all age groups, (2) case detection in people aged 60 or above, (3) how quickly case rates were rising or falling, (4) ratio of positive cases in the general population, (5) pressure on the healthcare service. England is geographically made up of 9 Regions which each contains a set of Lower Tier Local Authority (LTLA) areas. Each observation in the dataset denotes information for an LTLA and date pair. For each observation, there is data relating to the values of the set of 5 criteria, for that LTLA, on that day, along with the accompanying Tier value the LTLA was in on that day. Data relating to the set of 5 criteria represent 7-day rolling averages, as a common practice, to alleviate discrepancies in the reporting velocity at different days of the week. For example, it is the case that the number of reported cases around weekends were invariably lower than the cases on other days.

WHO fungerer som hele verdens sundhedsstyrelse, men har et budget som et middelstort schweizisk universitet. Alligevel lyder kravet, at FN’s Verdenssundhedsorganisation skal gå forrest under den pandemi, der fortsat holder verden fanget i sit greb. Professor fra SDU og overlæge Morten Sodemann har i årtier fulgt WHO og er med til at folde ud, hvad organisationen er særligt god til, og hvad der går knap så godt i en tid, hvor WHO er kommet i klemme i et storpolitisk spil mellem USA og Kina. Bliv også klogere på WHO-historien, der i høj grad er præget af danske værdier. Dine værter er Kirsten Larsen og Lasse Soll Sunde.

Over the covid-19 lockdown period, Dr James Rogers worked with history teachers and academics to keep the learning going in lockdown. He now has a fantastic range of videos and podcasts available. All content is free to access and is explicitly designed to help teachers and students undertake A-Level and GCSE history revision.Podcast - Slavery and Emancipation in the United States, with Dr Cathrine Armstrong.Podcast - The History of Terrorism - The IRA, with Professor Caroline Kennedy-Pipe.Video - The Rise of Hitler - Hitler, Power, and War, with Ms Laurie Matthews.Video - The Home Front in WW2 - The Butterfly Bombing of Grimsby, with Dr James Rogers.

In the past few months more than a billion people have faced restrictions unlike any seen before. Shops are closed; the death toll is rising; people across the globe have been forced to rise to an extraordinary challenge. But it is important to remember that humans have experienced pandemics before. In this documentary Dan Snow explores some of these previous pandemics and what they can teach us about Covid-19. He talks to Dr James Rogers about what lessons we can learn from WW2.