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Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

nature.com

61–70 of 165 posts

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#61
post #3

Alright what's the way forward then

The way forward requires coming to terms with the fact that none of this needed to happen in the first place. This disease is really just not that deadly for non-elderly and non-obese people, and we've known for a while. Every institution under the sun failed. We say we need to trust the science, but the scientists were all wrong: LANL put out a preprint paper that estimated r0 at ~7 near the beginning of the pandemi…

US deaths in 2020 jumped about 15% from 2019. Even if you think the pandemic response was a failure that somehow made it worse, you can’t also think that the crisis didn’t justify a strong reaction. That’s an enormous increase in mortality for a single year.

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#62

"vaccine hesitancy" Is that anti-vaxxers / laziness? Also, the US still has a very poorly designed system to promote herd immunity. Basically, you are charging people to contribute to herd immunity, rather than paying people to contribute to herd immunity. COVID isn't even some "perfect bug" that maximizes the strategic/policy failures of US healthcare and preys on our self-interest. It's a very very mild pandemic co…

What is your argument here? The US has a poorly designed system for herd immunity? Free shots, huge supply, most shots given in the world, one of the highest vaccination rates in the world?

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#63

"vaccine hesitancy" Is that anti-vaxxers / laziness? Also, the US still has a very poorly designed system to promote herd immunity. Basically, you are charging people to contribute to herd immunity, rather than paying people to contribute to herd immunity. COVID isn't even some "perfect bug" that maximizes the strategic/policy failures of US healthcare and preys on our self-interest. It's a very very mild pandemic co…

"Vaccine hesitancy" is the term for antivaxxers plus people who would not refuse in principle, but prefer to wait for more results, are too lazy or something like that.

The high death rate of pandemics of yore is also due to the healthcare system of yore being shit. You just couldn't properly ventilate people during the spanish flu, not to speak of ECMO or useful drugs like cortical steroids. I would guess that of those people hospitalized for COVID-19, at least half would have died back then. Of those put on a ventilator nowadays, all would have died back then. And hospitalization rates would maybe also have been higher, because where nowadays the doc sends you back to home quarantine with an asthma inhaler, back then they could just watch you suffocate...

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#65
post #36

The word for probably impossible is improbable.

There's a huge difference between "probably impossible" and "improbable".

And there's a huge difference between finite improbability and infinite improbability.

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#66
post #64

virus spread is O(n^2) vaccination is O(n) if you want to beat the virus, seems the answer is to genetically engineer a weak variant with a bigger reproduction and let it rip? common cold with the covid-19 spike protein?

I would prefer not to consent to a possibly dangerous 'weaker' version of COVID. This idea would completely take choice away and experiment on the human populace.

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#67
post #64

virus spread is O(n^2) vaccination is O(n) if you want to beat the virus, seems the answer is to genetically engineer a weak variant with a bigger reproduction and let it rip? common cold with the covid-19 spike protein?

what could possibly go wrong?

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#68

I think the biggest win will be disinfecting shopping cart handles. A few years before, I even have posts about it, how it didn't make sense that these where not disinfected during Flu season. I thought it was disgusting actually since people are handling food, between touching these handles. We will probably get some innovation in face masks too. For anyone in the construction/renovation industry having access to be…

I think facemasks are going to be the biggest change to daily life that I don't see going away.

2020 had a nearly non-existent flu season and that is likely related to all the COVID restrictions (I think facemasks being a key).

If I were to guess, I think people wearing facemasks when they are sick (or even just through flu season) is going to be a lot more common and socially acceptable from now on. Hopefully that will translate into less severe flu seasons from here on out.

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#69

I think the biggest win will be disinfecting shopping cart handles. A few years before, I even have posts about it, how it didn't make sense that these where not disinfected during Flu season. I thought it was disgusting actually since people are handling food, between touching these handles. We will probably get some innovation in face masks too. For anyone in the construction/renovation industry having access to be…

As far as Covid is concerned, surface transmission is not considered and has not been considered a major transmission pathway since May.

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/s0522-cdc-updates-co...

Re: Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

#70

First and foremost SARS-CoV-2 will never go away because it infects animals. Because it is so infectious, it will go through an entire herd or farm within days and eventually cause mutations and jump back to humans. So it will never go away and we need to prepare for it. The main goal is to make it survivable, ie. akin to the flu, and not cause hospitals to get overrun like we have seen so many times around the world…

Because it is so infectious, it will go through an entire herd or farm within days and eventually cause mutations and jump back to humans. Citation needed

Minks have already been a problem leading to Denmark culling 17 million of them alone, with the problem being present in several other countries[0].

The virus is tearing through the farms[1]:

> In Denmark, the world’s largest producer of mink pelts, authorities are struggling to control farm outbreaks, despite extensive control measures. In many affected farms, almost all animals have antibodies against the virus.

It's mutating and jumping back to people[1]:

> Fonager says researchers in Denmark have sequenced viral samples from 40 mink farms and identified some 170 coronavirus variants. He adds that in viral samples from people — representing about one-fifth of the country’s total COVID confirmed cases — they’ve found some 300 people with variants that contain mutations thought to have first emerged in mink.

> [...]

> One mink-associated mutation has spread more widely in people. The mutation, Y453F, also encodes an amino acid change in the spike protein and has been found in about 300 sequences from people in Denmark, as well as sequences from mink and people in the Netherlands. An experimental study suggests that virus variants with the Y453F mutation partially escaped detection by a commercial monoclonal antibody.

Like most things SARS-CoV-2 right now, we don't exactly have a rigorous academic study. Just rumblings. But so far there's some evidence pointing this direction.

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/animal-news/here-s-why-denmark-... [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03218-z

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