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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

#191

Post by JamisonM »

helge9210 wrote: post #133
tinus_hn wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Israel is not a good example. Lockdown application here is very uneven. They have nothing to do with the virus and are mainly used by politicians in power to suppress secular way of life and to redistribute business opportunities.

The poster is not engaged in a good faith argument so there isn't much point in explaining these sorts of details.

My observation has been that in Canada and the UK any sort of selective or regional restrictions have been extremely ineffective and they offer evidence to people who would like to make bad-faith arguments about the power of restrictions.

My opinion is that two things appear to work to get you manageable levels of COVID-19. The first is broad restrictive measures over very large geographical areas that actually reduce time indoors with other people and compel mask use (some of the Canadian provinces did this well). The second is simply letting the epidemic reach levels that scare people into changing their behaviour (many US states).

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

#192

Post by carlmr »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #170
carlmr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If lockdowns were taken seriously from the start, it would had prevented going wild and risking new strains. I don't think a strategy that needs every country on earth to cooperate this tightly ever had a chance to work. Most countries aren't the first world, most countries don't have the resources to test and quarantine properly, most countries can't afford lockdowns. On top of that a lot of countries have much wor…

> I don't think a strategy that needs every country on earth to cooperate this tightly ever had a chance to work. It doesn't need that though. It needs countries to close the borders tightly except to countries that do cooperate, as many Asian countries have successfully done.

If your goal is to stop mutations from happening, yes, you need everyone in the world to go on full lockdown for 4 weeks. And then test everybody and quarantine until the disease is gone.

The situation right now is that you have plenty of breeding grounds for new mutations, and it only needs some minor crossing of borders for these to get through.

I would also say it's infeasible for non-island nations that need to trade with other countries to completely lock the borders.

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

#193

Post by standardUser »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #114
macintux wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why big business, who supposedly controls the world, would want lockdowns. But in any case, we clearly won't have herd immunity by April, so don't embrace conspiracy theories when lockdowns continue.

Businesses definitely have a huge impact on how democracies function. But COVID has also put ruling parties in many countries in an awkward spot where they are worried about certain vocal parts of the electorate more than the business sector. The issue is that if ruling parties ease up on restrictions, the opposition will immediately accuse them of "risking lives", "killing grandma", etc. The opposition here might be…

"the ruling party has little choice but to maintain restrictions.

I hope you reevaluate that prediction in 3 months and maybe take that opportunity to reevaluate how you view the world. Because you are make a lot of very strong, falsifiable assertions with very little evidence.

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

#194

Post by ruggeri »

theli0nheart wrote: post #141
handelaar wrote: post #111

I for one love it when mouthy oncologists get picked to talk about epedemiology in the Journal. Next week, tune in for a sculptor's hot take on the Mars lander.

This is textbook ad hominem, and I think is against HN guidelines.

The comment above is a little mean, but I don't think it's ad hominem to note the author's lack of specific qualification in epidemiology or infectious disease.

When I am a non-expert in a complicated subject, I want the advice of experts. When I go to my general practitioner, I want to know they have a certificate that says they went to medical school. When I need open-heart surgery, I want to know the doctor is a cardiothoracic surgeon.

When I read a doctor's take on coronavirus in the WSJ, it would be a plus if they were an expert in infectious disease or epidemiology. It's kind of sad that the nation's 2nd highest circulation paper can't find someone with more expertise in this area.

Amplifying non-expert advice is dangerous, just like having an orthodontist try to do heart surgery is dangerous. C.f. Scott Atlas, of course.

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

#195

Post by carlmr »

jimbokun wrote: post #156
carlmr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If lockdowns were taken seriously from the start, it would had prevented going wild and risking new strains. I don't think a strategy that needs every country on earth to cooperate this tightly ever had a chance to work. Most countries aren't the first world, most countries don't have the resources to test and quarantine properly, most countries can't afford lockdowns. On top of that a lot of countries have much wor…

> Most countries aren't the first world, most countries don't have the resources to test and quarantine properly, most countries can't afford lockdowns. The United States meets all these criteria, and has the highest number of cases and deaths in the world. (And near the top in per-capita measures, too.)

I was listing the necessary, not the sufficient criteria.

The United States could but it doesn't because the political system is too federalized for a centralized response.

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

#196

Post by acdha »

berdario wrote: post #161
acdha wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think a strategy that needs every country on earth to cooperate this tightly ever had a chance to work. It doesn’t need anything that drastic: imagine an alternate history where the Taiwanese warnings in December 2019 had been taken seriously and international travel was locked down with a mandatory three week quarantine (adjusted by the later availability of tests) on arrival. That would require no coopera…

> Taiwanese warnings The disease originated in Wuhan, mainland China, not Taiwan. The emergency was communicated in China (as well as Taiwan): http://py.cnhubei.com/py_news/2019/1231/3290.shtml Sure, listening to any official source would've been better than what happened... But shutting down travel to/from the whole of China (since otherwise you'd have to trust every passenger to declare if they had been in Wuhan) w…

> The disease originated in Wuhan, mainland China, not Taiwan.

Yes, I’m aware - try more carefully reading my comment and note that I never said otherwise. What I was referring to was Taiwan being faster to acknowledge human to human spread when the Chinese government was still in damage control mode and WHO was following their official statements saying there was no confirmation of retransmission.

This happened 2 weeks later:

https://www.who.int/csr/don/14-january-2020-novel-coronaviru...

Taiwan had begun health screenings of travelers from Wuhan on December 31st, following their request to WHO and the China CDC for more information. By the time the first case was detected 3 weeks later they’d already activated a substantial public health plan — not because they were prescient but because SARS had given key officials a strong sense of the importance of not delaying.

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

#197

Post by maxerickson »

roelschroeven wrote: post #46
cheph wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Manaus shows that pursuing herd immunity through natural infection is not a guarantee. Not a guarantee of what? Are we suggesting that we have a virus here that, unlike every previous virus, we can only reach herd immunity for with a vaccine?

For what viruses have we reached meaningful herd immunity without vaccines?

Flu, if you grant that different strains count.

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

#198

Post by carlmr »

makomk wrote: post #189
jimbokun wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most countries aren't the first world, most countries don't have the resources to test and quarantine properly, most countries can't afford lockdowns. The United States meets all these criteria, and has the highest number of cases and deaths in the world. (And near the top in per-capita measures, too.)

Of course a country with the resources to test properly has the highest number of cases and deaths in the world, because if you can't test properly you can't detect Covid-19 cases and deaths . I know the American press has fed its citizens a load of nonsense about this for nakedly partisan reasons, just like it has with every other part of the Covid-19 crisis, and it's getting tiring...

That of course is another thing to mention.

Kind of like the EU countries talking badly about England after they discovered a more infectious mutation. In Germany at the time they didn't even sequence enough viruses to detect mutations before they're widespread.

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

#199

Post by arkwin »

I was thinking the same thing, but a more conservative estimate using people who have had at least 1 dose of the vaccine or those who have recovered to calculate herd immunity.

https://github.com/Arkwin/US-COVID-Herd-Immunity-Tracker/

I update the data from the CDC website every day.

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

#200

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

standardUser wrote: post #193
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses definitely have a huge impact on how democracies function. But COVID has also put ruling parties in many countries in an awkward spot where they are worried about certain vocal parts of the electorate more than the business sector. The issue is that if ruling parties ease up on restrictions, the opposition will immediately accuse them of "risking lives", "killing grandma", etc. The opposition here might be…

"the ruling party has little choice but to maintain restrictions. I hope you reevaluate that prediction in 3 months and maybe take that opportunity to reevaluate how you view the world. Because you are make a lot of very strong, falsifiable assertions with very little evidence.

The situation in three months can change with the advent of vaccines and the Israeli study suggesting that they really do reduce transmission. But the scenario I outlined above is precisely how the struggle between ruling parties and the opposition has played out over the last several months in a number of European countries.
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