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Updating Herd Immunity Models for the US: Implications for the Covid-19 Response

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Re: Updating Herd Immunity Models for the US: Implications for the Covid-19 Response

#51

Post by war1025 »

watwut wrote: post #47
war1025 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then add on how many people show symptoms but its not severe enough to get tested. Earlier this week we took my son in because: 1. Our neighbors have recently recovered from Coronavirus 2. Our son had a cold / fever around the same time lasting several days 3. He had several days of diarrhea after the cold symptoms subsided I talked to my coworker whose wife is a doctor and he relayed the symptoms to her and she sa…

> Also I've lost faith in the "we're not doing enough testing" argument since we went and tried to get tested and they turned us away. That does not imply that there is enough testing. That just implies that your doctor or health care system is unwilling to test someone in your circumstances. "Not doing enough testing" is not referring to just test kids not being available, it is also referring to health system polic…

I guess to clarify, it has been my impression that the healthcare industry are the people telling us we are not doing enough testing.

We attempted to get tested and they said no, not worth the bother.

That seems contradictory to me.

Re: Updating Herd Immunity Models for the US: Implications for the Covid-19 Response

#52

Post by dboreham »

jayd16 wrote: post #49
jackpeterfletch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fag packet math, so I'll spare any exact figures. But if the second wave data for the UK is anything to go by, confirmed cases vs actual cases was at _least_ 5x for the first wave. There obivously are other factors, but with increased testing that multiplier only climbs, bringing herd immunity numbers actually within reasonable grasp. I strongly suspect there have been similar effects in the US.

>This is fag packet math Is this what they call napkin math in the UK? Back of the cigarette pack math?

To be consistent I think it should be "fag packet maths".

Re: Updating Herd Immunity Models for the US: Implications for the Covid-19 Response

#53

Post by learc83 »

war1025 wrote: post #51
watwut wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also I've lost faith in the "we're not doing enough testing" argument since we went and tried to get tested and they turned us away. That does not imply that there is enough testing. That just implies that your doctor or health care system is unwilling to test someone in your circumstances. "Not doing enough testing" is not referring to just test kids not being available, it is also referring to health system polic…

I guess to clarify, it has been my impression that the healthcare industry are the people telling us we are not doing enough testing. We attempted to get tested and they said no, not worth the bother. That seems contradictory to me.

It depends on where you are. If you have a low enough case count and a well functioning health department that is doing contact tracing, then it's helpful to confirm that your kid is positive.

If you're in an area where neither of those things apply then, for a child a test isn't going to change anything. It's not going to change their treatment. If it's positive they'll tell you to isolate, but if it's negative, there's a high enough false negative rate, and there are enough cases that it's still very likely they have it, so you'll still want to treat it like they do.

Re: Updating Herd Immunity Models for the US: Implications for the Covid-19 Response

#54

Post by hondo77 »

jayd16 wrote: post #49
jackpeterfletch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fag packet math, so I'll spare any exact figures. But if the second wave data for the UK is anything to go by, confirmed cases vs actual cases was at _least_ 5x for the first wave. There obivously are other factors, but with increased testing that multiplier only climbs, bringing herd immunity numbers actually within reasonable grasp. I strongly suspect there have been similar effects in the US.

>This is fag packet math Is this what they call napkin math in the UK? Back of the cigarette pack math?

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-of-the-envelope_calculati...: In British English, a similar idiom is "back of a fag packet".

Re: Updating Herd Immunity Models for the US: Implications for the Covid-19 Response

#55

Post by pbhjpbhj »

bigbubba wrote: post #39
jackpeterfletch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fag packet math, so I'll spare any exact figures. But if the second wave data for the UK is anything to go by, confirmed cases vs actual cases was at _least_ 5x for the first wave. There obivously are other factors, but with increased testing that multiplier only climbs, bringing herd immunity numbers actually within reasonable grasp. I strongly suspect there have been similar effects in the US.

(People scribble on cigarette packages? Aren't those waxed cardboard or something? I wouldn't expect a pen to work well on those.)

FWIW they almost certainly didn't write on a cigarette package in this instance ;o)

It's just the name of that type of maths because people used to use whatever small, available, piece of paper was around - so cigarette packs some time ago (you definitely could write on them with a ballpoint pen (ie un bic).

Getting tangential, napkins to me in the UK have always been cloth, and we have serviettes (a French word, meaning sheet IIRC) made of paper to wipe our mouths with.

Our language gets more and more influenced by USA "English" usage, so perhaps youth would just call it a napkin. People do say 'paper napkin' but without the qualifier it's a fancy piece of cloth [to me].

Re: Updating Herd Immunity Models for the US: Implications for the Covid-19 Response

#56

Post by reallydontask »

war1025 wrote: post #51
watwut wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also I've lost faith in the "we're not doing enough testing" argument since we went and tried to get tested and they turned us away. That does not imply that there is enough testing. That just implies that your doctor or health care system is unwilling to test someone in your circumstances. "Not doing enough testing" is not referring to just test kids not being available, it is also referring to health system polic…

I guess to clarify, it has been my impression that the healthcare industry are the people telling us we are not doing enough testing. We attempted to get tested and they said no, not worth the bother. That seems contradictory to me.

>That seems contradictory to me.

Not necessarily, it could mean that the people that need to get tested aren't all getting tested.

Re: Updating Herd Immunity Models for the US: Implications for the Covid-19 Response

#57

Post by hcknwscommenter »

war1025 wrote: post #51
watwut wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also I've lost faith in the "we're not doing enough testing" argument since we went and tried to get tested and they turned us away. That does not imply that there is enough testing. That just implies that your doctor or health care system is unwilling to test someone in your circumstances. "Not doing enough testing" is not referring to just test kids not being available, it is also referring to health system polic…

I guess to clarify, it has been my impression that the healthcare industry are the people telling us we are not doing enough testing. We attempted to get tested and they said no, not worth the bother. That seems contradictory to me.

The healthcare industry (and the CDC) and (almost?) every qualified expert is arguing that we are not doing enough testing. And we aren't. Part of the reason we are not doing enough testing is that we simply don't have the capacity and Dr.s' are being told that capacity is restricted and tests should be carefully considered on a case by case basis. The above is non-uniformly distributed in that there are some areas of the country where there is sufficient capacity and others where capacity is woefully deficient. Some sort of competent federal leadership on testing capacity/distribution would help tremendously.

Re: Updating Herd Immunity Models for the US: Implications for the Covid-19 Response

#58

Post by hcknwscommenter »

hammock wrote: post #23
hammock wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we could get to 2MM faster if we opened everything up for the less-vulnerable populations (i.e. everyone under 50 without obesity or heart conditions) for whom the survival rate is above 99.99%. You might then be looking at 500k a day rather than 50k.

Why the massive downvotes?

Because no demographic has been demonstrated to have a 99.99% survival rate?

Re: Updating Herd Immunity Models for the US: Implications for the Covid-19 Response

#59

Post by jacquesm »

jupp0r wrote: post #48
jacquesm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> R0, which is a constant inherent to the virus strain I think you just devalued your argument. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/25/1/17-1901_article

Thanks for pointing that out, I corrected the post. It wasn't really important to my point though, which is that we might have enough immunity to let the infections die without football games, while we still have growth with football games.

It would have been more effective if you left it at that. I'm trying very hard to bow out of HN discussions on COVID, you were making a good point in a bad way and it would be a waste to see it lost. Thank you for the correction.

Re: Updating Herd Immunity Models for the US: Implications for the Covid-19 Response

#60

Post by [deleted] »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #28
StevePerkins wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the common perception on HN, Reddit, etc is that COVID spread in the U.S. is primary a matter of conservative people flouting its seriousness. I understand the satisfying appeal of that picture. However, I'm looking at my local health department's ZIP-code-by-ZIP-code infection map of the metro area. And it seems almost entirely correlated with poverty, not privilege. Infection spread seems mostly due to "ess…

Yes, you'd say that the Red areas are on aggregate older, poorer and less likely to work from home. That said, at my regional college in the Deep South, case numbers have dropped noticeably since the beginning of term - instead of 30 cases every day we have now ten, and there have been remarkably few outbreaks at frathouses, all that despite no organized testing.

[deleted]
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