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The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

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Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#371

Post by will4274 »

danenania wrote: post #80
Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #2

Important and underexamined question. What happened in the UK?

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…

It's not clear that even lockdowns work long term. With a single exception, all the countries that initially did well by having lockdowns early had worse later spikes because they had no herd immunity at all. And the last country is probably lying.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#372

Post by manwe150 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #366
XorNot wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ship has sailed on eradication. We're ALL going to get Delta at some point now, it's just a question under what circumstances (and whether the antivaxxers will have sufficient numbers to denial of service the healthcare system as they die).

> We're ALL going to get Delta at some point now, That's by no means certain; even ignoring the possibility of effective countermeasures, a more transmissible variant could displace it (if we’re lucky, it could also be one producing less severe disease, the way it was when Epsilon variant for a while displaced most others in California, before Delta, which is more transmissible than Epsilon, took hold.)

Tangential question: what is the mechanism by which we observe ‘displacement’ of earlier strains? Is it just the exponentially higher transmission factor of the variant that is making it relatively disappear? Or are they somehow also get out-competed directly?

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#373

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

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…

The UK Office for National Statistics actually puts out estimates for the prevalence of covid antibodies (from both vaccines and infections combined), and you are right on the money!

They estimated that as of June 14, 89.8% of the population would test positive for antibodies.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

Indeed, even with Delta’s terrifying R-value, this seems like enough to suppress the virus.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#374

Post by manwe150 »

amluto wrote: post #318
dTal wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>at least unless we get a vaccine-resistant strain. ...which will happen promptly. The selection pressures are perfect. You already have a variant with vaccine breakthrough, circulating in a partially vaccinated population.

Measles, polio, and smallpox beg to differ. The varicella vaccine is fairly new, but I haven’t heard of a vaccine-resistant strain evolving. Pertussis seems to be an odd duck, and its vaccine is not as effective as people would like. History is mixed here, but most of the mandatory vaccines seem to be extremely effective and to work well for at least decades.

Those also have low breakthrough rates (assisted by high vaccination percentages), giving it relatively no opportunity to evolve. They also had millennia to reach (and then work to maintain) peak fitness, while COVID is still encountering beneficial mutations somewhat frequently.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#375

Post by logicchains »

felipellrocha wrote: post #102
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…

> 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.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309762 Israel found that "Israelis who were vaccinated were 6.72 times more likely to get infected after the shot than after natural infection"

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#376

Post by Izkata »

newacct583 wrote: post #267
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…

> 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…

> Delta wasn't known to have this level of transmissibility until the last three weeks.

Delta was formerly known as the India(n) variant. We've known it had high transmissibility since April or May.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#377

Post by triceratops »

refurb wrote: post #335
dcolkitt wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, Florida has year round warm weather and sunshine. Not only does that sanitize viral particles, but it makes it easier to move socialization outdoors.

Yeah, no. India has proven that theory false.

India's per-capita deaths are lower than Floria. And sunlight sanitizing the air might be bunk, but being able to socialize more outdoors is very much not. India's population density is nowhere close to Florida's.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#378

Post by Izkata »

cm2187 wrote: post #290
felipellrocha wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Under 200 confirmed reinfections worldwide: https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-t...

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#379

Post by rob74 »

sumedh wrote: post #342
ipsum2 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> there's something actually happening here. because those people dont want to take the vaccines?

If somebody who refused to get vaccinated gets sick, you can say it's their fault. But some people can't get vaccinated, and for others who did get vaccinated the vaccine will have no effect - these will still be at risk until (if ever) herd immunity is reached...

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#380

Post by manwe150 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #322
nostrademons wrote: post #134

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…

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…

I don’t know any specifics about this, so this as an attempt at asking questions of what to possibly expect from those numbers. Alberta seems to be 63% vaccinated, which seems to put them well above average for the US? And it looks like those numbers are currently computed for the day before the latest surge in cases took off?

Edit: later learned the parent is talking about R0 and you are talking about Rt, so those numbers are not directly comparable anyways.

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