A refrigerated truck is used as a morgue at The Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York during the Covid-19 pandemic in April, 2020. Photo: Vanessa Carvalho / Brazil Photo Press via AFP
An American doctor believes more than 800,000 Americans would be alive today, if the US had taken New Zealand's Covid approach.
Jonathan Howard, who is the chief of neurology at Bellevue Hospital in New York, said he was angry that influential health professionals minimised the seriousness of the virus.
"We want them infected," was the call of then presidential science adviser Paul Alexander.
It's also the title of Howard's new book, which tells the story of how some medical and public health professionals came to become anti-vaccine and pro herd immunity.
He told Kim Hill on Saturday Morning there was a deluge of mis-information from prominent US doctors, some of whom wanted to actually spread the virus.
"Famous doctors from our top universities went on television and told people that Covid was just going away, that it was just the flu, that young people under the age of 65 have essentially no risk," he said.
"And not only were there not attempts to limit the virus, these were loud influential voices who wanted to spread it.
"You can read quotes from our former Covid advisor, Donald Trump's former Covid advisor, celebrating rising cases, saying this is a good thing when cases rise, which is shocking and astonishing."
While Howard said there were obvious differences between the two countries, many lives could have been saved if the US had taken a similar approach to New Zealand.
"If we had limited infections until we had vaccinated the vast majority of our population, we would have potentially had hundreds of thousands of people still alive today, there's no question about that."
Jonathan Howard MD and his new book, We Want them Infected. Photo: Jonathan Howard MD
However, our zero-Covid strategy wasn't without its critics, with Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya writing that it had "cost New Zealand dearly".
"I think that the fact that most of your grandparents are still alive means that zero Covid did not cost you dearly," Howard said in response.
"I don't discount that, there were real costs of the lockdowns, I don't know anyone who argues otherwise and I want to be very clear that I was protected from those costs, meaning I am very fortunate to be employed, I worked throughout the pandemic, I was never lonely, I don't have my own business."
But Howard said he didn't think that the alternative - letting the virus spread freely - would have yielded a better outcome.
He said that when forklifts were needed to move bodies into giant refrigerated trucks in New York, it was fantasy to imagine the city could have operated as normal during the pandemic.
"You talk about deferred healthcare - every single healthcare worker was working with Covid patients, our hospitals were overflowing," he said.
"So when I hear people lament they missed cancer screenings, who would have done those screenings? Would elderly patients have left their house to go to crowded waiting rooms to get a mammogram for example? I don't think so.
"I think that the fantasy is that things could have just been normal if only if it hadn't been for overly cautious politicians."
By comparison, New Zealand did well, Howard said.
"I look at the numbers, I look at your death rate with great jealousy." he said.
"And I think for long periods of time your economy was more open than ours was because we had to keep locking down, just because there were overwhelming outbreaks of the virus."
Howard said the fact many older New Zealanders were still alive compared with the US statistics, showed the success of this country's Covid strategy.
