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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

#371

Post by timr »

reissbaker wrote: post #354
timr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have we reached "herd immunity" for syphilis? Syphilis is a bacterial infection. You can get it more than once. There is no such thing as herd immunity. > Herpes? ...is transmitted via intimate, direct contact. You don't get herpes by walking into a crowded room, and there's no way to be "immune" to herpes without also being a carrier. Herd immunity isn't a relevant concept. > Was smallpox eradicated via "herd immu…

> Syphilis is a bacterial infection "Herd immunity" applies to bacterial infections as it does to viral. All it means is that the R-value is low enough that the disease doesn't spread. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Theoretical_basi... As an example, pertussis is a bacterial infection which most US communities have herd immunity to thanks to the pertussis vaccine. > You can get it more than once. There a…

"Herd immunity" applies to bacterial infections as it does to viral.

It does not apply to Syphilis. Getting an infection today does not prevent me from getting one next month. Even if it did, it doesn't materially affect the rate at which other people get it from me...unless we are rutting like rabbits in some constant random orgy.

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

#372

Post by thebruce87m »

rayiner wrote: post #321
jfrunyon wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. First, how do YOU explain Australia having 900 deaths for 25m people, and the US having OVER FIVE HUNDRED TIMES THAT (499k) for 328m?

It’s an island and regularly shut down air travel to control infections coming in? The “lockdowns could work if we just tried” view is falsified by the situation in Germany. If Germans lack the discipline to do it, then nobody can do it. Some countries like Australia got lucky because their geography made it easy, but it’s not practical elsewhere.

Pick a country with a flat line from here: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

Northern Ireland vs Ireland is one of the interesting ones.

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

#373

Post by ryandrake »

bspammer wrote: post #353
spookthesunset wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attributing the rise and fall of it to "christmas", "super bowl", "sturgous rally" or "beachgoers" is a fools errand. It's a monument to the arrogance of humankind. I think future civilizations are going to study this period and laugh at how foolish and naive we are thinking we have any kind of real control over this virus. The idea that outside pharmaceutical interventions mankind can somehow control a respiratory v…

New Zealand has had the virus under control without pharmaceutical help for 9 months now. Many East Asian countries are doing totally fine, with extremely low case numbers and local quarantines for outbreaks. The difference is pure culture: individualism vs collectivism. In China, not wearing a mask in public makes you a pariah. There’s no such social pressure here in the west.

Not only was there no social pressure to do the right thing in the West, but there was widespread politically-charged COVID denial and downplaying, and hand-wringing about the "costs" of taking even modest steps to reduce transmission. We never really had a chance, with the amount of people actively flaunting public health guidance, downplaying the disease (just the flu, bro) and trying to sabotage efforts to contain it.

Once the disease got politicized, it was game over. One side took it seriously, therefore the other side had to not take it seriously, because heaven forbid you agree with your political opponent about something.

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

#374

Post by reissbaker »

maxerickson wrote: post #359
reissbaker wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment seems to rest upon a claim that we do not have flu vaccines. In fact, we do, and about half of all US adults are vaccinated against the flu every year — and more than half of US children are vaccinated, since the flu is more dangerous to children than adults. Do you have a specific strain of flu in mind when you claim that we have reached herd immunity "to various strains" without vaccination?

How about the 1918 influenza pandemic? There's also lots of places that don't do much flu vaccination, they don't necessarily have the same strains in circulation forever.

There's a lot we don't know about the 1918 influenza pandemic, since it was at the dawn of much of modern medical science. However, Wikipedia claims that "a 2007 analysis of medical journals from the period of the pandemic found that the viral infection was no more aggressive than previous influenza strains. Instead, malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene, all exacerbated by the recent war, promoted bacterial superinfection. This superinfection killed most of the victims, typically after a somewhat prolonged death bed." [1]

Herd "immunity" was never reached, at least not in the sense that members of the herd with weaker immune systems were protected due to the virus's inability to circulate thanks to widespread, strong immunity. According to this commonly-cited paper [2], nearly all modern cases of "Influenza A" (a specific type of flu) in humans have been from descendants and variants of the original 1918 virus. The variants temporarily disappeared from active circulation in the 1950s when they were initially outcompeted by the then-novel H2N2, but were accidentally leaked from a lab in the 1970s and have circulated in humans ever since. We are still plagued by variants of the 1918 flu today.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291398/

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

#375

Post by maxerickson »

reissbaker wrote: post #374
maxerickson wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the 1918 influenza pandemic? There's also lots of places that don't do much flu vaccination, they don't necessarily have the same strains in circulation forever.

There's a lot we don't know about the 1918 influenza pandemic, since it was at the dawn of much of modern medical science. However, Wikipedia claims that "a 2007 analysis of medical journals from the period of the pandemic found that the viral infection was no more aggressive than previous influenza strains. Instead, malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene, all exacerbated by the rec…

Variant, strain?

The links are in contradiction to each other, the second one kicking off with An estimated one third of the world's population (or ≈500 million persons) were infected and had clinically apparent illnesses (1,2) during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic. The disease was exceptionally severe. Case-fatality rates were >2.5%, compared to

I don't really care to argue about it, my initial comment was measured.

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

#378

Post by reissbaker »

maxerickson wrote: post #375
reissbaker wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot we don't know about the 1918 influenza pandemic, since it was at the dawn of much of modern medical science. However, Wikipedia claims that "a 2007 analysis of medical journals from the period of the pandemic found that the viral infection was no more aggressive than previous influenza strains. Instead, malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene, all exacerbated by the rec…

Variant, strain? The links are in contradiction to each other, the second one kicking off with An estimated one third of the world's population (or ≈500 million persons) were infected and had clinically apparent illnesses (1,2) during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic. The disease was exceptionally severe. Case-fatality rates were >2.5%, compared to I don't really care to argue about it, my initial comment was measure…

They're not in contradiction to each other, and the second link doesn't kick off with that sentence. It kicks off with:

The "Spanish" influenza pandemic of 1918–1919, which caused ≈50 million deaths worldwide, remains an ominous warning to public health. Many questions about its origins, its unusual epidemiologic features, and the basis of its pathogenicity remain unanswered.

Which... matches pretty well with the first link. Sure, the outcome of the disease was severe, but we don't know why! And recent studies imply that it was because of sociological phenomena.

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

#379

Post by aww_dang »

cgriswald wrote: post #370
aww_dang wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I attempted to cover that eventuality in my example. Let's say I am not qualified to examine the tire myself and someone who's ability I also doubted made an observation. Here's what I wouldn't do: prejudicially dismiss the tribesman's opinion, citing his lack of authority on the topic. Even if we accept the premises of an appeal to authority, it would follow that one would have to also be an authority on the to…

> Here's what I wouldn't do: prejudicially dismiss the tribesman's opinion, citing his lack of authority on the topic. Even if you wouldn't in this particular case, you can't possibly function in the world if you eschew questions of trust completely. You'd basically have to prove everything yourself. > Even if we accept the premises of an appeal to authority... An appeal to authority is claiming something is true bec…

There's a difference between dismissing someone's objection solely for lack of credentials (an appeal to authority) and valuing the opinion of an expert.

The former is absolute, the latter allows for other factors of consideration.

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

#380

Post by jfrunyon »

rayiner wrote: post #321
jfrunyon wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. First, how do YOU explain Australia having 900 deaths for 25m people, and the US having OVER FIVE HUNDRED TIMES THAT (499k) for 328m?

It’s an island and regularly shut down air travel to control infections coming in? The “lockdowns could work if we just tried” view is falsified by the situation in Germany. If Germans lack the discipline to do it, then nobody can do it. Some countries like Australia got lucky because their geography made it easy, but it’s not practical elsewhere.

I'm not sure why you think that it being an island has anything to do with anything. It doesn't. Yes, the fact that they LOCKED DOWN had a lot to do with why their infection rate is so low. That is exactly my point; thank you for acknowledging that it is correct.
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