https://www.barrons.com/articles/covid-cases-uk-us-today-516...
Delta surged lasted 50 days in India and 45 days in the UK. We may see something similar
That would be nice
The UK’s delta surge is collapsing
281–290 of 465 posts
Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing
#282I 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…
Hospitalizations are spiking in Florida right now, and infections are reaching all-time highs: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/florida-covid-ca...
I don't disagree that the media is fear-mongering for clicks (see inaccurate reporting of CDC report) but in this scenario, there's something actually happening here.
Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing
#283I see lots of guesses about the decline in the U.K. usually one of:
1. Schools closing (~2 weeks earlier in Scotland than England)
2. Euros [football tournament] ending (Scotland fell out ~2 weeks earlier than England)
3. Hot weather (leading to events outdoors or more ventilation or less going out or something else bad for the virus)
4. The “pingdemic” where the contact-tracing app tells many people to self-isolate
5. The end of a big burst of weddings scheduled when restrictions were due to ease
6. Herd immunity
7. Maybe lots of people went on holiday and mostly kept to themselves.
8. Some statistical anomaly hiding case numbers that are not falling (eg fewer tests->fewer total positive cases)
I don’t really believe 7 or 8 and everything else feels too unsupported. Perhaps time will tell what the cause is but I think I am weakly optimistic about current trends. We shall have to see.
Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing
#284Earlier 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.
Here's the thing: even if the virus is less lethal, if it results in more hospitalizations, we are headed for lockdown again if hospital capacity starts getting threatened: all of the routine heart attack, stroke, laceration/crush emergencies we need to deal with routinely will be unable to find adequate care if anti-vaccine holdouts are storming the hospitals for ventilators, or even just inpatient observation. And if our politicians responsibly do lock down to head this off, they probably STILL won't understand how the power was in their own hands to stop it. Businesses will shutter again, kids will miss even more school, and the hospitality industry will again stumble because people refused to understand that even a small number of non lethal hospitalizations spread over the entire population is enough to overwhelm healthcare infrastructure.
Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing
#285One would never know by reading the headline of major UK newspapers that cases are going down. When cases are up, you get alarming headlines. When cases are down, the same newspapers will find something else to be alarmed about. Thanks god there is internet, and I can follow the underlying numbers directly.
Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
The death rate in Florida is 180/100k [1]. That's pretty close to the national average. If the entire US had gone like Florida, then instead of 613k deaths, we'd have 590k. So, yes, Florida was better than average despite not having a severe lockdown. But Florida also has fairly separated populations: a lot of old people very likely to get vaccinated, and a lot of young people very likely to survive. For comparison,…
Didn't Florida just set an all-time 1 day record for new case counts last week? These numbers might shift significantly in the next month or two.
Deaths in the US (like in the UK) are barely moving unlike during the other waves b/c of elderly vaccination rates. I really doubt this will budge the aggregate fatality rates much at all.
Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing
#287Most news articles I see focus solely on the number of vaccinated people when estimating how far away countries are from herd immunity, which seems odd to me. Left out in the discussion seem to be the unvaccinated but already infected. As far as I know, prior infection confers at least some degree of immunity. It may also be the case that those inclined to be skeptical of vaccines were also the ones who exposed thems…
Further, there was an argument way back, that the number infected but symptom-free was much higher than estimated. This would be enhanced by a hypothesised variant, that is more contagious, but less harmful - it would theoretically dominate, because its spread would be unimpeded. I don't know if these arguments have been tested; nor how to test them.
Separately, the physical social graph is not uniform, but complex. There can easily be narrower channels that have a lower probability of conducting infection. Thus, the spread will slow after the easy routes have been exploited.
Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing
#288Most news articles I see focus solely on the number of vaccinated people when estimating how far away countries are from herd immunity, which seems odd to me. Left out in the discussion seem to be the unvaccinated but already infected. As far as I know, prior infection confers at least some degree of immunity. It may also be the case that those inclined to be skeptical of vaccines were also the ones who exposed thems…
Further, there was an argument way back, that the number infected but symptom-free was much higher than estimated. This would be enhanced by a hypothesised variant, that is more contagious, but less harmful - it would theoretically dominate, because its spread would be unimpeded. I don't know if these arguments have been tested; nor how to test them. Separately, the physical social graph is not uniform, but complex.…
>
Further, there was an argument way back, that the number infected but symptom-free was much higher than estimated.
This argument was made many, many times over the past year and a half by people insisting that .
Inevitably, like clockwork, the wave of COVID that would follow would dwarf the previous one.
The only thing that has broken this pattern has been mass vaccinations. It seems that high rate of antibody sero-prevalence in the population only protects you from COVID on paper.
Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
The good news for them is that it’s easier than ever for them to change their status
Other than people with compromised immune systems, or people who are trying not to spread the virus to small children for whom the vaccine isn't approved yet. I'm all for being annoyed people who could get the vaccine but decided not to, but we shouldn't throw the actual babies out with the proverbial bathwater, right?
We're not talking about literally killing them. We're talking about leaving them to their own devices. They can get vaccinated at any time. Why should the rest of us be locked down, now that we have effectively ended the overrun of hospitals?
Wasn't that what this was all about? Who cares if people get the coronavirus? All that matters is not developing severe SARS-Cov-2.
Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing
#290Most news articles I see focus solely on the number of vaccinated people when estimating how far away countries are from herd immunity, which seems odd to me. Left out in the discussion seem to be the unvaccinated but already infected. As far as I know, prior infection confers at least some degree of immunity. It may also be the case that those inclined to be skeptical of vaccines were also the ones who exposed thems…
> Left out in the discussion seem to be the unvaccinated but already infected. As far as I know, prior infection confers at least some degree of immunity. We don't know how much, though. There are cases in which vaccine performs better than a natural infection, there are cases in which the vaccine performs worse than natural infection. Without time for a study, it's impossible to know where we lie with Covid.
The number of cases of reinfections in hospitals is tiny, so the natural immunity looks like a given to me by now, you don't need a study (now it may be that re-infections are asymptomatic, but even if it is the case, that's a good enough protection).