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The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

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Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what the point of such conjecture is. Of course we don't know how much immunity comes from infection, and it is quite clear from the spread of delta that we are nowhere near herd immunity in the developed world, even in places like Israel. I had a coronavirus called a cold last year; does that mean I'm immune this year? Unlikely in the long term with COVID. The entire concept of herd immunity may be a mi…

You're missing the point because the media (and their pharmaceutical advertisers) have framed everything in terms of vaccination, as if the human immune system is incapable of surviving COVID and it's variants. All viruses get less lethal as time goes on, not stronger, despite all the fear porn that has been indoctrinated into the public over the last year and a half.

> All viruses get less lethal as time goes on, not stronger.

Wrong. It's generally the case, because a virus that keeps its host walking around will tend to infect more people than a virus that sends them straight to the morgue.

SARS-Cov-2 is unusual in that it's asymptomatic infectious period is really quite long. It's straight-to-morgue capabilities could become much more prevalent with hitting its infectivity too badly.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#262
post #223

UK citizen here. I just don't think this "collapse" is the case. My gut feel is that everyone has stopped doing lateral flow tests and reporting those tests: noone wants to be isolating now the summer holidays have started, and many people are now ignoring track and trace because they're scared of the possible "pingdemic". I know many people who have stopped scanning in to venues. I reckon many suspect they may have…

It really makes me wonder why the authorities don’t do proper randomized surveys? It is obvious that the testing numbers will go up and down as the population goes scared and then goes don’t care.

there is some sort of on going testing with a set group that I've been told was randomly choosen.

My sister/ husband and neice (uk based) are currently being tested once a month since the outbreak (mid 2020 ish) and they where told that they was picked at random,

All of them have had covid - and probably would not have been discovered without this testing - since all their cases have been asymptomatic

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without time for a study, wouldn’t it make sense to assume the most common thing, that a natural infection provides more immunity than the vaccine? Taking the line of reasoning where we assume the worst case scenario until proven otherwise, would it be reasonable to assume long term medical issues from the vaccinations?

> Without time for a study, wouldn’t it make sense to assume the most common thing, that a natural infection provides more immunity than the vaccine? No, actually; the actual infection sometimes misfires, leaving dud spike proteins outside the cells. If the immune system finds those first, it'll attack the dud spike proteins instead of the still-functional spike proteins, attacking all the viruses that failed to get…

> Here's a worst-case scenario if people do get vaccinated: everyone is vaccinated, COVID-19 starts going away

How do you figure that last part?

If we're talking worst-case scenarios from mass vaccination I would think you would need to put Marek's or ADE type outcomes on the table.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#264
post #223

UK citizen here. I just don't think this "collapse" is the case. My gut feel is that everyone has stopped doing lateral flow tests and reporting those tests: noone wants to be isolating now the summer holidays have started, and many people are now ignoring track and trace because they're scared of the possible "pingdemic". I know many people who have stopped scanning in to venues. I reckon many suspect they may have…

It really makes me wonder why the authorities don’t do proper randomized surveys? It is obvious that the testing numbers will go up and down as the population goes scared and then goes don’t care.

The UK is one of the few countries in the world that does have proper randomized studies of Covid-19 prevalence, and has done since close to the start of the pandemic. Unfortunately the results lag behind the actual number of new infections by long enough that we wouldn't expect the drop in cases to cause a corresponding drop in the numbers coming of those studies just yet.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#265
post #20

This gives me hope for Canada, where I am, won't face too many issues even as we slowly start to tick up from the bottom since major reopening happened, allowing indoor dining etc. In the last week, we've passed the UK in number of fully vaccinated people, but that's going to be slowing down as we start running of people who got their first dose during the big surge in shots here. Unfortunately, at 64% of the total p…

Since when is Texas a pejorative? By itself it would be a world top-15 economy, and its pandemic performance was not an outlier or exceptional. If anything it, along with Florida, demonstrated that extremely strict lockdowns don't correlate to better outcomes. Nothing like Alberta.

> Since when is Texas a pejorative?

'Pray for rain' type politicians and Taliban style government. (Rick Perry, the Bushes, Paxton and Abbott)

Cronyism run rampant.

Some of the most corrupt corporations.

The electrical grid collapse, Refinery explosions, West Fertilizer Company explosion, Result of letting corporations 'regulate themselves'

Cowboyism/Ignorance as a virtue.

One the most polluted states.

The only reason Texas can be in the world top 15 economy is due to population and landmass size, along with its dependency on oil. But given Texas is second in state population behind California and California is #5 in the world, I'd argue it's not doing as well as it could be.

Oh, and the weather in Texas is less preferable to having a weasel clamp down on your balls.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#266
post #247

>all the more conspicuous for happening just two days after the country’s pandemic restrictions were [...] lifted Lateral flow tests just happened to run out on the day restrictions were lifted. [0] And tada numbers plummet right when gov is taking massive heat for dropping restrictions in the middle of a surge. Yes really - that is how the current UK gov rolls. The fact that the author is trying to extrapolate other…

If this were true, then the proportion of tests which are positive should remain the same or go up but it isn't, it's going down:

https://twitter.com/ThatRyanChap/status/1420407991937949699

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The herd immunity threshold changed with Delta, which I've heard has an R0 of 8-10 (compare 3.5-4.5 for the UK Alpha variant, and about 2.5 for the original strain). Instead of 60% vaccination, you'd need 90%, and will likely overshoot that. It wouldn't surprise me if the UK's cases are now dropping because they reached that threshold, but I doubt the US is there now. Probably Delta will blow through literally all th…

> It wouldn't surprise me if the UK's cases are now dropping because they reached that threshold, but I doubt the US is there now. Given the enormous US Covid outbreak, the US is likely not far away. We're at 70% adult vaccination and had a minimum of 100 million prior Covid infections. Also throw in tens of millions of people that likely have natural immunity to Covid. The biggest question with Delta is going to be…

> The great lie still [...] is that Covid is going to go away courtesy of vaccinations. The authorities have pitched that to the public from the early days of the vaccines

That is (1) outrageously hyperbolized and (2) completely wrong. Delta wasn't known to have this level of transmissibility until the last three weeks. People, experts, doctors, "authorities", whatever, you want to label them 100% believed sincerely that we were on a path to the elimination of the outbreak.

Cut the bullshit, basically. Yeah, yeah, I know it's HN and everyone wants to think they're smarter than everyone else. But you aren't. You're retconning brand new science to make prior understanding into a "big lie". That's really awful.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#269
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ONS data are you referring to? The currently published data indicates the wave has at least plateaued, as I read it, in all but the youngest age groups.

They are talking about the survey data, which doesn't rely upon the normal testing regime. They randomly contact and test individuals irrespective of their symptoms status, which is different from the normal testing regime that gets reported daily. I believe its a 20k sample size. The survey takes a lot longer time compile Most recent summary: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... Most recen…

That summary seems to show infections plateauing in every age group except school kids. (And of course, with schools breaking up since then they're probably both less likely to get infected and less likely to get tested.)

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#270

I don't see why we should care about number of cases in countries with freely available vaccines. Disease (as reflected by hospital admissions) and death are what we care about. And those numbers are continuing to trend in the right direction. The US media is just addicted to fear at this point. With a more boring/traditional president in the office and the covid panic waning, there is a news vacuum. And the media is…

Because an uptick in cases always has resulted in an uptick in hospitalizations and death.

Maybe you think things have changed (and indeed: I think vaccinations have changed the pattern of cases -> hospitalizations -> death). But ultimately: cases give us a glimpse of what is to come 3 or 4 weeks earlier.

And lo-and-behold, the Florida hospitalization counts are now kicking up dramatically. Good thing we got the news out weeks ago about Delta, so that public opinion can start changing (and now people are beginning to get vaccinated, which should lessen the number of hospitalizations).

Similarly: UK hospitalizations are in fact dropping now!! (coinciding with the drop in case counts 3 or 4 weeks earlier). So even in highly vaccinated countries like UK, case# remains our best predictor for hospitalization counts.

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USA is too late however: we let up on our vaccinations and this surge is going to catch a lot of us by surprise. Hospitals are filling up again.

The vaccinations are coming in too late to stop this current surge (July / August timeframe). But the vaccinations will help us prevent a winter surge.

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