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Opinion: We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April

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

#41

Post by logicchains »

phnofive wrote: post #23
threr234324 wrote: post #18

I wonder if Humanity will shut itself out of existence if we start counting every single pathology on that affects Humans on big banners and "social-media-fy" it. I mean, there were 3x more deaths by overdose in SF than by Covid. There are 2x more deaths in India by TB, and a lot more from malnutrition and poverty. Why are the Americans doing this propaganda op ? Ionnidis' latest paper even points to lockdowns not be…

Excess deaths are measurably up from this pathology, and we can continue working on those problems too. Unfortunately, there’s little overlap between preventions or treatments for drug addiction and infectious disease.

>Unfortunately, there’s little overlap between preventions or treatments for drug addiction and infectious disease.

The point is that "treating" a pandemic with lockdowns causes increased depression and drug addiction.

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

#42

Post by timr »

reissbaker wrote: post #35
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?

> Unlike every previous virus Have we reached "herd immunity" for syphilis? Herpes? Was smallpox eradicated via "herd immunity" that wasn't reached via a vaccine? Polio? It is extremely common for viruses to not be eradicated unless there is a vaccine. Even vaccines are not guaranteed to be enough, e.g. with most influenza strains, although flu vaccines have managed to keep the death toll low enough for us to move on…

> 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 immunity" that wasn't reached via a vaccine?

Smallpox was eradicated by herd immunity that was achieved via a mixture of natural and vaccine-induced immunity. Initially, a large portion of the population was immune due to natural infection. Over time, vaccinations were targeted to local outbreaks.

> Polio?

We have not eradicated polio. In some (now 3) countries, polio is endemic, and outbreaks are self-regulated by herd immunity.

Herd immunity does not mean that a disease is eliminated. It means that the spread of the disease is naturally controlled.

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

#43

Post by sgt101 »

The claim made by the author is that IFR is 0.23, 500k are dead therefore 200m have had it.

On the other hand if IFR were 0.69 then the picture would be rather different - 73m. Some estimates (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/207273/covid-19-deaths-infec...) put IFR as high as 1.79 which would mean 30m infected so far.

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

#44

Post by Animats »

The argument: In large part because natural immunity from prior infection is far more common than can be measured by testing. Testing has been capturing only from 10% to 25% of infections, depending on when during the pandemic someone got the virus. Applying a time-weighted case capture average of 1 in 6.5 to the cumulative 28 million confirmed cases would mean about 55% of Americans have natural immunity.

That's far higher than what the CDC measures. They have actual data on whether people show antibodies.[1] Their main data source is from random blood samples processed by commercial labs where the samples were taken for some other purpose. The trouble is, the blood lab data runs way behind; the latest data is about 60 days old. But that's what to watch. It's annoying that so little current data is available on this. Anyway, as of late December, those numbers are from 3% (Hawaii) to 23% (North Dakota).

Blood samples are also taken from blood donations. If you donate blood, you get an COVID-19 antibody test done on it, and the Red Cross will tell you the results. (Yes, there's an app for that.) Those provide a crosscheck. People who have blood drawn for medical purposes tend to be sicker than average, and blood donors tend to be less sick than average. So one would expect the value for a whole population to be somewhere above the blood donor rate and below the medical sample rate.

Kansas is seeing 22% of blood donors showing antibodies, as of mid-January. Note that this includes people who have been vaccinated, which, for Kansas, is about 8%. That compares to 12% showing antibodies in lab samples as of mid-December, which was pre-vaccine. I haven't been able to find data from other states. Anyone finding that?

There are a number of approved blood-based antibody tests, and they have sensitivity levels from 89% to 99%. So test error isn't a big contributor to error.

So, while the measured values are moving up, nothing as high as 55% is showing up in the actual data yet. More current data would be a big help. Perhaps the data collection and publication will be improved under the new administration. Anyway, looking at the actuals is more useful than trying to project this from a measurement of something else.

[1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/?CDC_AA_refVal=http...

[2] https://www.ctnewsonline.com/news/article_a97ef828-6122-11eb...

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

#45

Post by sgt101 »

throwaway8581 wrote: post #20
rawfan wrote: post #13

The author, Marty Makary, is a surgon. He does not have any expertise regarding viruses or epidemiology. He's completely ignoring all other reasons why infection might go down, the most important one being effective countermeasures, like wearing masks and social distancing. He's also ignoring that the case rates are stagnating due to the British variant. Germany is in that phase now. Cases of the British variant are…

The author’s point is that by now, something at least 50% of the US population has had the virus and 15% have had the vaccine. And that for some reason, the official sources are just putting their hands on their ears and saying “LALALALALALALALALA” at the mere mention of herd immunity. There is a resistance to accepting that this pandemic is soon going to end the way that just about every pandemic in the entirety of…

When you say "the vaccine was done in May" do you include building the manufacturing system that would create it and put it into a supply chain? This is a physical thing, not a website, scaling a website to cope with 100m requests is helluva job - scaling a physical product to 100m items is much, much, much harder. Especially when it is a medical product.

I think you have forgotten this small detail.

Another detail : yes we found that ventilators were harmful, but we also found that other forms of assisted breathing like high nasal flow oxygen were effective. Additionally we found that giving steroids was effective. There are other treatments coming online now in addition to this - so when we look at delaying the pandemic and the benefit there of we need to understand that the survival rate for patients has improved over that time.

You seem to have forgotten this small detail.

When we talk about this as a natural process in a population and allowing it to happen the people it happens to in the summer rather than the winter live 6 months less. They may have written a book or a play or helped their grandchildren become the people they need to be in that time span.

You seem to have forgotten this small detail.

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

#46

Post by roelschroeven »

cheph wrote: post #32
berdario wrote: post #16

I really want to see positive news, and the vaccination rollout (despite how uneven it is) is definitely positive. But the focus on herd immunity, if conflated with immunity after infection, is misleading: Look at what's happening in Manaus: https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n394 The news there are definitely sobering :( Unfortunately, the multiplication of strains of covid19 was inevitable, due to the decision of…

> 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?

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

#48

Post by jsnell »

sneak wrote: post #38
ganafagol wrote: post #12

Note that we still don't have much data on whether and by how much vaccinations do reduce transmission. The objective of the vaccines was to minimize serious cases. But transmissions are a different story. It could easily be that the vaccine prevents serious cases in 95% of people but transmission is not impacted significantly. We just don't know yet. Why is this relevant? Because the whole concept of "herd immunity"…

A side question: the vaccines have been out for months. Why is there no data on whether or not they affect transmission? That seems like something that could be figured out within a week or two of the vaccine being finalized. I have been worrying that the now all too familiar "we still don't know if the vaccine prevents transmission" is just a stand in for saying "it doesn't". Every additional week makes me less hope…

> That seems like something that could be figured out within a week or two of the vaccine being finalized.

Just what kind of a study do you think could do that within "a week or two"?

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

#49

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

timr wrote: post #31
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-…

> What, the linked study proves the opposite. A massive amount of death in Manaus in 2021, despite 'herd immunity' measured in October 2020. That is not a study. It is an editorial. It "proves" nothing, and instead advances a few alternative theories that might explain the discrepancy. However, it is not a complex situation. The following quote from the editorial is consistent with my personal belief after reading th…

I definitely found an epidemiologist on Twitter giving out about that study. The Science study used a convenience sample, which makes me believe that it's a very biased estimate of sero-prevalance.

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

#50

Post by tialaramex »

carlmr wrote: post #33
alfiedotwtf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAICS this isn’t talked about enough! If lockdowns were taken seriously from the start, it would had prevented going wild and risking new strains. But here we are

>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…

The long distance travel which spreads a pandemic so fast now is predominantly a First World thing. We could and should have shut that down.

A month after we knew we were in deep trouble it was still perfectly normal to decide hey this is boring I'll go on vacation to somewhere with nowhere near the capacity needed to handle COVID-19. Oh, I have a little cough, never mind if I feel sick I'll just fly home after I'm done infecting these people.

Remember this is SARS-CoV-2. Where's the mutations and endless new strains of SARS-CoV-1? There aren't any, it was eliminated in humans.

So yes it is now sadly likely we're stuck with this, but we ought to be clear it's our fault in countries that didn't do even one tenth of what they should to prevent it.

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