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The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

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Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#321

Post by BeefWellington »

notJim wrote: post #183
billiam wrote: post #137

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…

> Of course we don't know how much immunity comes from infection Come on, this is silly. We haven't learned nothing over the last year. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lasting...

This is true, however those studies are for the initial SARS-COV-2 strain and doesn't make any mention of the variants.

It's also worth noting that's a study of ~200 people. Given then times we're in it's an excellent sign and possible reason for cautious optimism and I'm sure a larger scale study is much harder to pull off in the midst of the pandemic.

That said, I have yet to see a study on the rate of reinfection of any of the variants against people who had already been infected with the initial strain, and how well that is survived, etc.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#322

Post by sandworm101 »

nostrademons wrote: post #134
arbuge wrote: post #90

Most 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…

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…

Delta's R numbers are not uniform, but certainly are not 0.

Some easy-to-grab stats from Canada's worst covid province which is dealing with a Delta wave:

    Alberta provincewide: 1.48 (1.38-1.59)
    Edmonton Zone: 1.37 (1.15-1.61)
    Calgary Zone: 1.50 (1.37-1.64)
    Rest of Alberta: 1.48 (1.26-1.73)
https://www.alberta.ca/covid-19-alberta-data.aspx (Fyi, Alberta is Canada's version of West Virginia. It is the national heart of COVID resistance/denial.)

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#323

Post by shell0x »

Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #275
danenania wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh fun: the game where everyone puts their pet biases forward in an attempt to explain the behavior of a poorly understood complex system. It reminds me of the financial news. "Commodities markets are spooked as backlash to latest Justin Bieber video mounts!" In all seriousness, apart from the vaccination rate and strictly enforced lockdowns, I have yet to see an explanation for cases going up or down in a particular…

The lockdown thing doesn't work as well as you'd think either. We have nearly the world's toughest lockdown in Sydney, and weeks later the cases are higher than ever. Same thing happened here in Melbourne last year, with "officially" the toughest lockdown in the world, for 120 days. It was absolutely miserable. It eventually works - but the UK eventually saw a similar precipitous decline, along the same timeframe, wh…

The lockdown works pretty well in other countries. It's just people in Sydney being ignorant. There are still house parties and carefree people. The anti-lockdown protest didn't help, but it wasn't totally unexpected considering the incompetence of the NSW gov. A lot of Aussies don't want to get vaccinated too, which is an important part to reduce infections. I got my Pfizer shot months ago, because people either didn't turn up or cancelled.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#324

Post by adventured »

nostrademons wrote: post #220
adventured wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

U.S. is only at 50% fully-vaccinated, with several states in the high 30s to 40s. I could believe 70% with at least one shot but haven't seen any statistics to that effect; it doesn't matter much since Delta is still pretty dangerous to partially-vaccinated people. We had 35M recorded COVID cases; I'd believe about a 2:1 undercount, so about 70M total cases (~22%). Vaccines + previous cases was likely past herd immun…

It's 70% adult vaccination at one shot or more (I specified adult in my comment). That's all over US news today. The US is at 165m fully vaccinated (or 50%), most of which are of course in the adult segment.

A very large number of those adults also aren't going to need two doses to reach high levels of protection (against severe outcomes), due to prior infections. One mRNA vaccine dose + prior infection will get you there.

Combined with the recent surge in vaccinations due to Delta concerns, the US will probably see the same drop-off that Britain has by late August - early September.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#325

Post by NoPicklez »

arbuge wrote: post #90

Most 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…

Australia definitely doesn't have or has ever had herd immunity and our total cases since the beginning are only 30k. Which represents only 0.12% of our countries population.

We've faced strict lockdowns and limited access to vaccines to which makes us a ticking time bomb if we were to let current cases go rampant.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#326

Post by jokethrowaway »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #136
karol wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I never installed it for the same reason.

I wonder how much is post-Snowden distrust of government software and how much is simply not wanting to be pinged?

Definitely both.

I would install it if it meant free paid holiday from work but I'm not employed and if I were I could probably work from home.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#327

Post by perardi »

smorgusofborg wrote: post #41
ddek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tentative signs the virus has burned out, either through infections or vaccinations. The wave has been entirely confined to the younger age brackets who are far less vaccinated.[1] Being in central London right now, through anecdotal evidence I don't think we've suddenly become less sociable. - [1] UK infections grouped by age. School years 6, 7, 11, and 12 are ages 11, 12, 17, and 18 respectively. https://www.ons.go…

The Massachusetts study is rather confusing about delta and vaccination, but I think it emphasizes that demographics of who is socializing is skewed. So it might have burned out among those in the nightlife and still be highly dangerous among pensioners.

I know the demographics of who were socializing. It’s very skewed. Friends and acquaintances of mine.

I have some doubts about how generalizable the results are. A circuit party is not a produce aisle.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#328

Post by Wolfenstein98k »

neves wrote: post #98
danenania wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh fun: the game where everyone puts their pet biases forward in an attempt to explain the behavior of a poorly understood complex system. It reminds me of the financial news. "Commodities markets are spooked as backlash to latest Justin Bieber video mounts!" In all seriousness, apart from the vaccination rate and strictly enforced lockdowns, I have yet to see an explanation for cases going up or down in a particular…

There's a lot of evidence about what worked what didn't work. Dozens of countries and well organized societies responded well to the pandemic.

This is a myth. There aren't any (which are open in their figures and policies) that have done consistently well, with significant population.

Everyone had bad spikes and changes in circumstances eventually.

The US did uniquely badly in the first wave relative to Europe, and their fortunes reversed in the second wave.

Japan and Taiwan did great up front and more poorly later on.

It's not over yet, don't count anyone in or out.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#329

Post by [deleted] »

vimy wrote: post #311
cortic wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There actually is. The evolutionary selection pressure on most coronaviruses exists throughout its infectious stage. So in order to be more infectious for longer the coronavirus would become less symptomatic and so less serious. But with C19 we are aggressively isolating people with symptoms. This focuses evolutionary selection pressure on the initial infectious stage. In order to be more infectious the virus increas…

Are you saying without lockdowns it would have turned in a regular cold by now?

[deleted]

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#330

Post by ericb »

timr wrote: post #299
ericb wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the claim is that the virus can mutate, therefore, any particular outcome is equally likely? No. Did you actually read the study I linked? Outcomes that enhance transmissibility are always being selected for. Things like higher viral load in the vaccinated. That which spreads, spreads. All things being equal, pathogenicity is neutral and gets down-selected when the pathogenicity conflicts with the ability to spread…

> Did you actually read the study I linked? Yes. It makes the general argument (not specific to Covid) that is known to any evolutionary biologist: partial selective pressure causes an organism to evolve away from that pressure. It's why we tell people to take their entire course of antibiotics. It in no way implies that the organism will evolve to do anything else . You wrote this: > Additionally, we know that leaky…

I provided source evidence documenting an example of the mechanism and result of what I'm saying. Get back to me when you can provide a source example case of a virus evolving legs and doing a little dance and then we can consider the probabilities equivalent.

Until then, we both know they're not.

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