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Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

wsj.com

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Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#101

Post by acdha »

tinus_hn wrote: post #78
KaiserPro wrote: post #9

I mean thats a nice theory. The first broad point: infections are decreasing. I suspect that this might not always be because we are reaching "herd immunity". It could just be a side effect of stats. Also Vaccines in the USA will target the people who are likely to get tested. In the UK infections are decreasing because we are in a harsh lockdown. The vaccine show little to no effect _yet_ (unlike israel) As for the…

You claim lockdowns are effective because they are effective: if cases are going down without lockdown, it’s because of some unknown outside factor. If cases are going down with lockdown, it must be because of lockdown. Lockdown is both necessary and unnecessary.

Cases go down when the virus is spreading less. We know lockdowns are effective because that’s happened everywhere which effectively implemented them, but nobody is saying that it’s the only option: for example, if anti-maskers woke up one morning and decided to be decent people the rate would reliably slow, too. What doesn’t help is pretending that the risks aren’t real and haven’t been well-understood for roughly the last year — ask how many people would still be alive, in better health, and working if your country had simply copied the plans from Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, etc.

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#102

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

praestigiare wrote: post #89
cwhiz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lockdowns were never going to work, and any strategy that relied on them was doomed to fail. A strategy that involves convincing every country, and every little province, to destroy their local economies, all at the same time. I can’t believe it didn’t work! Maybe if we just keep trying.

Lockdowns do not destroy the economy. Anti-maskers destroy the economy, by decreasing the effectiveness of lockdowns, and making them a chronic rather than acute necessity.

The relationship between COVID and the local economy is highly country-dependent. For example, several Balkan countries’ economies are very dependent on their diasporas (and the occasional tourists) driving/flying back and spending loads of money earned in the West. This is why even now they have remained open to travelers and avoided hard lockdowns, even if COVID deaths might result.

And then there are countries where the economy is based on resource extraction. Only a relatively tiny amount of people is necessary to work the oil and gas industry, or whatever, and thinktanks have sometimes bluntly referred to all the remaining millions of people as "superfluous population". So, whether you let COVID spread or not has little overall effect on the economy.

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#103

Post by thehappypm »

NovaJehovah wrote: post #98
thehappypm wrote: post #91

I really don't think lockdowns have helped a ton in the US. Look at Florida's winter wave of Covid cases vs Massachusetts. The curves are basically identical, despite vastly different pandemic policies. In other countries yes, but in the USA, are there any real data points that can argue that states with strong lockdowns did better than states without? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/massachusetts-co... h…

Lockdowns in the US are theater. Because government can't do much to stop the main driver of the epidemic--people meeting friends and relatives behind closed doors--they ban a bunch of stuff that makes very little difference.

I agree with this 100%. The US flavor of lockdowns are just pointless when there is zero enforcement and even in the most locked down places, indoor gatherings are allowed if they're small.

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#104

Post by tinus_hn »

acdha wrote: post #87
tinus_hn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we better destroy the economy with lockdowns while waiting for vaccines that don’t work against these new strains, and then pay the price for herd immunity as well.

The economic damage is being done by the pandemic: people aren’t going to congregate when it’s risky and many businesses can’t survive without high in-person volume. Having lockdowns can get you back to the point where businesses can safely operate with community spread control measures (see e.g. Australia or Taiwan). What won’t work is attacking medical precautions or dissembling about vaccine effectiveness — and on…

Ah. The ‘it works on an isolated island with 5 million people’ fantasy.

Except it doesn’t work on continents with billions of people with multiple governments.

And then the magical mask fairytale. If only people had worn masks this would all be over. Except now it turns out people have to wear three masks on top of each other. How could that be if masks had solved all the problems? The answer is clear: they don’t.

There is no point in blameshifting to people that ‘didn’t wear the masks and didn’t lock down’.

Also it is 100% clear that tons of people can’t wait to be allowed to visit each other. Claiming ‘people aren’t going to congregate’ is simply a lie. In the Netherlands we had one test event with 1500 tickets and over 100000 people applied for a ticket. They can’t wait to congregate.

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#105

Post by violetgarden »

thehappypm wrote: post #91

I really don't think lockdowns have helped a ton in the US. Look at Florida's winter wave of Covid cases vs Massachusetts. The curves are basically identical, despite vastly different pandemic policies. In other countries yes, but in the USA, are there any real data points that can argue that states with strong lockdowns did better than states without? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/massachusetts-co... h…

Shoot, I’m so grateful to be in a state that was loose with the lockdowns. A friend in another state was frustrated that even the large parks where he lived were locked down. Even in our strictest phase, you could still go to the park and get a little relief from the confines of your home. I cannot imagine how other states are coping where things are much stricter. I am just shocked at the mental component of all this. It’s hard to articulate the way it makes you feel living through all this.

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#106

Post by julienchastang »

ttul wrote: post #92
danfo wrote: post #25

> Herd immunity has been well-documented in the Brazilian city of Manaus, where researchers in the Lancet reported the prevalence of prior Covid-19 infection to be 76%, resulting in a significant slowing of the infection. What, the linked study proves the opposite. A massive amount of death in Manaus in 2021, despite 'herd immunity' measured in October 2020. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-…

It should be noted that WSJ’s opinion section is extremely politicized. Their regular news desk is separately edited and maintains decently high journalistic standards.

This has generated tension within the WSJ itself: https://www.wsj.com/articles/wsj-journalists-ask-publisher-f...

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#107

Post by sudosysgen »

tinus_hn wrote: post #75
marcodiego wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing we can learn from Manaus is that waiting for herd immunity is a very bad idea.

Yeah, we better destroy the economy with lockdowns while waiting for vaccines that don’t work against these new strains, and then pay the price for herd immunity as well.

This is an empirically testable result.

Are regions with the harshest lockdowns doing worse economically?

A cursory analysis says no. Places like Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam, China that had very strict lockdowns are doing well economically.

Then maybe the worst is intermediate lockdowns? Also no. There are few differences between regions with essentially no lockdowns and those with moderate lockdowns, though they fare worse than strict initial lockdowns across the board.

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#108

Post by GhostVII »

tom_mellior wrote: post #64

> But the consistent and rapid decline in daily cases since Jan. 8 can be explained only by natural immunity. Why would "natural immunity" kick in this suddenly and effectively? > Behavior didn’t suddenly improve over the holidays; Americans traveled more over Christmas than they had since March. Yes, and then after the holidays they stayed home, so one or two weeks after the traveling seasons there were much fewer i…

Also we saw the post-christmas drop in multiple countries and pretty much every state, so it would have to be a pretty crazy coincidence for everyone to have gotten herd immunity at the same time.

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#109

Post by chimprich »

rawfan wrote: post #10
nostromo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why spread FUD? Both vaccines in the US seem to be effective against variants.

The British variant spreads faster than you can possibly vaccinate people. In Germany the case numbers are still going down, but if you look at the wildtype and B.1.1.7 separately, the wildtype is going down while the British variant is in full exponential growth. And that is in spite of a full nationwide hard lockdown.

> The British variant spreads faster than you can possibly vaccinate people.

This is a bit overblown.

In the UK the B 1.1.7 variant is the dominant form by far, but vaccinations are outpacing infections by a long way.

Today there were 10,641 new cases recorded, and a 7-day mean of daily vaccination doses delivered of about 350k: about 35 times the current infection rate.

Infections have been falling for weeks, albeit with quite a tight lockdown. Vaccinations have been declining slightly for the past week but expected to accelerate again soon.

Re: Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

#110

Post by tinus_hn »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #95
tinus_hn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we better destroy the economy with lockdowns while waiting for vaccines that don’t work against these new strains, and then pay the price for herd immunity as well.

Looking back at the strategies that different countries have pursued over the last year, the most effective strategy has undoubtedly been to implement a strict lockdown for several weeks, nearly completely eliminating the virus, and then following up with aggressive contact-tracing whenever any case pops up. Countries that have done this have had far fewer deaths and have suffered less economically. The alternatives…

No, the only solution that has worked is being an isolated nation and blocking international travel from the beginning.

For 90% of countries that was never an option anyway and for most of the rest that ship has long sailed.

The countries that have tried, like Israel, have seen so much success with that strategy they are now in their third lockdown. And that’s with the best vaccination numbers of the world.

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