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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

#51

Post by throwaway8581 »

sgt101 wrote: post #45
throwaway8581 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :…

The vaccine could have been rolled out to the most vulnerable groups much sooner than it was. If you vaccinate only those groups (and the vaccine works), you prevent the vast majority deaths.

>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.

As for your last point, that's not how it works. To the extent that the disease runs its course through the population anyway, then there's also people aging (and infirming) INTO the vulnerable group too, who would have lived if they caught it in the summer but upon catching it six-months later die.

Another way to look at it is that it's not any better or worse that a pandemic hits one year or the other (putting aside population growth). A flu pandemic in 1905 is no better than a flu pandemic in 1904. It just kills a different set of people.

And actually, by extending the period where the virus is in pandemic circulation, and to the extent that it will spread through the population anyway, you probably kill more people by stretching the pandemic out. Virus survivors die for other reasons, "wasting" their immunity, and like I said above, more people become newly vulnerable to the virus.

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

#52

Post by phillc73 »

logicchains wrote: post #40
tsimionescu wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again this idiotic discourse that doesn't understand that letting a pandemic spread unchecked across the world has huge risks even beyond the obvious death toll. Covid19, even with the current measures, has killed more people than TB worldwide in 2020. Those deaths are often in addition to those killed by TB, overdose, and most other diseases you care to pick. It has let countless other people with chronic symptoms o…

>It has let countless other people with chronic symptoms of varying severity, possibly for the rest of their lives. This is complete FUD with as-of-yet no scientific support. The lifetime effects of poverty and depression, in contrast, are quite well-studied and there's strong evidence that even a single year of unemployment can have a significant negative impact on lifetime health outcomes. >Covid19, even with the c…

I'm not sure I can agree with the "death's door" statement, but I do agree that many COVID-19 related deaths were in people with some other underlying conditions.

I also find the way COVID-19 related deaths are being counted to be somewhat disingenuous. Every single person who dies and is COVID-19 positive is counted as a "COVID death." Many of those with an underlying condition may have died in the near term anyway, or on contraction of some other influenza-like virus. I think the figure which we will never know is the number of COVID-19 deaths in otherwise healthy people.

Yet, when 23 people in Norway die soon after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine shot, they are not counted as "COVID vaccine deaths." Rather, every media story I read was at pains to point out that these people were all elderly, frail and had underlying health conditions.

Then there are the other issues related to lockdowns - domestic abuse, mental health etc. The comment by `cheph` about damage to their back and hips has been downvoted to hell, and it was probably written in a combative tone. Nonetheless, these are very real problems that are not being discussed enough.

The COVID-19 pandemic is real and dangerous, but the reaction and reporting is not very well balanced.

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

#53

Post by saalweachter »

Animats wrote: post #44

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…

He also uses a fairly low estimate of IFR:

> Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. would also suggest much broader immunity than recognized. About 1 in 600 Americans has died of Covid-19, which translates to a population fatality rate of about 0.15%. The Covid-19 infection fatality rate is about 0.23%. These numbers indicate that roughly two-thirds of the U.S. population has had the infection.

I usually see numbers like 0.5-0.6% bandied around for the US, which changes the deaths-IFR estimate to 1/4-1/3 of the country having been infected, rather than 2/3.

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

#54

Post by qqqwerty »

logicchains wrote: post #41
phnofive wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Correlation does not equal causation. Maybe the $1400 stimulus checks were the problem, giving addicts a windfall that they then used on drugs. Or maybe it was triggered by peoples relatives passing away from COVID, all alone in the hospital, that caused an uptick in depression and suicide.

You are making a fairly strong claim that the lockdowns (which were barely even enforced) were the cause. Generally, strong claims should be backed up with some evidence.

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

#55

Post by KaiserPro »

Reason077 wrote: post #29
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…

> “In the UK infections are decreasing because we are in a harsh lockdown. The vaccine show little to no effect _yet_” UK data does suggest that the vaccination campaign is having an effect: hospital admission rates have been dropping more sharply than infection rates. No doubt the lockdown has reduced infection rates, but there are also seasonal factors. As the weather warms up, people spend more time outdoors, wind…

> UK data does suggest that the vaccination campaign is having an effect: hospital admission rates have been dropping more sharply than infection rates.

https://www.ft.com/content/6d4ff17b-b3a2-4f9a-bb73-84e50ba61...

The data doesn't show that. There is a slim margin that might suggest fatalities are dropping, but not by much.

> As the weather warms up, people spend more time outdoors, windows are opened for better ventilation, etc.

February was the coldest month for a long time in the UK. Epic rain, frost and snow. People have been stuck inside.

The re-opening of schools will cause a rise in infections, the question is, how much.

I expect that the data will be much more clear in april, when about 20 million more people will be inoculated.

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

#56

Post by timr »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #49
timr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah, there are possible issues with the way the Science paper collected their sample, as well. The authors of the Lancet editorial allude to this in the next sentence:

"furthermore, comparisons of blood donors with census data showed no major difference in a range of demographic variables, and the mandatory exclusion of donors with symptoms of COVID-19 is expected to underestimate the true population exposure to the virus."

Here, the Lancet writers are trying to argue that the sample wasn't that biased, and therefore the Science paper was right, and therefore the current infections are due to "variants".

It's a very weird and convoluted argument. Comparison to demographic variables is irrelevant, and the second sentence doesn't address the actual concern with the Science paper (i.e. testing in Brazil was rare at the time of the study, so people with Covid sought out the study). Regardless, I think it's a red herring. It doesn't matter if the sample was biased or not -- you can look at the data as collected, and see that the upward adjustments were so aggressive that the conclusion of the Science paper is likely to be wrong.

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

#57

Post by akvadrako »

Animats wrote: post #44

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…

Why are you talking about antibodies? The author was specifically talking about T-cells which are more prevalent.

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

#58

Post by ganafagol »

timr wrote: post #42
reissbaker wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 immu…

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

Not necessarily "naturally".

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

#59

Post by timr »

ganafagol wrote: post #58
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…

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

I mean "naturally", in the sense that it is a process mediated by the immune system. Even a vaccine-induced immune response is natural.

But yes, my choice of words is confusing there. The point I am making is that herd immunity is not eradication. People (like the OP) confuse the two concepts.

You can have herd immunity in a population, and the pathogen will still circulate. Observing that a virus still infects people is not evidence that herd immunity to that virus has not been achieved.

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

#60

Post by ganafagol »

reissbaker wrote: post #39
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"…

This is no longer true. We do have data that the vaccines reduce transmission, thanks to Israel's mass vaccination program: https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-israel-va... The margin of reduced transmission is very close to the margin of reduced symptoms: 90% reduction in asymptomatic transmission, and 93% reduction for symptomatic transmission. The study is only on Pfizer's vaccines, but I would expe…

Excellent! Thanks for the link. This needs more studies but it's a promising data point.

I'm surprised that these studies come so late. Vaccination strategies need to be quite different depending on their outcomes.

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