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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

#61

Post by DanBC »

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_ (unlike israel)

Yes, we're only just beginning to see the vaccine effect. Vaccine effect is now clear in hospital admissions, but not so clear in cases: https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1363480366397485056?...

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

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

#62

Post by iainmerrick »

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…

How would you go about figuring that out?

What the trials have mostly been checking so far is “does the vaccine prevent serious illness”, and they measure that by counting occurrences in the test group vs placebo group. Very straightforward, which is why it’s possible to do it fairly quickly.

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

#63

Post by carlmr »

tialaramex wrote: post #50
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…

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 d…

>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.

I think this is only because it was contained in China before it reached the world. They had an excellent pandemic response and quashed it before it reached other countries.

This time around it had spread around the world before we even heard about it. It was completely predictable containment efforts would be futile.

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

#64

Post by tom_mellior »

> 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 infections. I don't see why this explanation is dismissed.

Anyway, it's not so long until April, so we'll see soon if "Covid will be mostly gone by April". ("By" appears vague, but my understanding is that refers more to "at the beginning of April" rather than "at the end of April", could Americans confirm?) Of course even if it does disappear as suddenly as this person predicts, we might not be able to tell whether it was due to vaccination.

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

#65

Post by Reason077 »

KaiserPro wrote: post #55
Reason077 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “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 v…

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

It takes longer for fatalities to drop because typically, there is several weeks between infection and death, and a further delay before deaths get reported. There is also a delay (weeks) between receiving a vaccine dose and achieving maximum immunity.

Death rates have also dropped fastest in the groups (such as over-80s) who were vaccinated first: https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n506

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

Yes, we had a couple of weeks of unusually cold weather. But it's much warmer now, and currently, that's forecast to continue.

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

#66

Post by KaiserPro »

Reason077 wrote: post #65
KaiserPro wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 v…

> "The data doesn't show that. There is a slim margin that might suggest fatalities are dropping, but not by much." It takes longer for fatalities to drop because typically, there is several weeks between infection and death, and a further delay before deaths get reported. There is also a delay (weeks) between receiving a vaccine dose and achieving maximum immunity. Death rates have also dropped fastest in the groups…

> dropping more sharply than the infection rate.

I know this might seem petty, but its really important to split out the effect of lockdown vs vaccinations.

If the drop in hospital admissions is down to vaccinations, we'd expect to see a decrease in those in the top 4 groups that have been vaccinated, but a no decrease in other groups (like in Israel)

In the case of the UK when the general background is decreasing infections we should see a marked difference in steepness between both groups.

Now, as you rightly point out, there is normally a 4-6week lag between infection and hospital admission (this has been getting longer with improved at home monitoring). Deaths for the over 70's not so much. They are more likely to palliated, rather than put on a vent.

I am not a vaccine skeptic, I look forward to getting mine and going back into a physical office. I just want to make sure that we prove things with the data we _have_ rather than try and back fill insignificant margins with meanings they can't support. The UK is a beacon of vaccination, I want it to be robust, rather than bluster.

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

#67

Post by sgt101 »

throwaway8581 wrote: post #51
sgt101 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gr…

>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.

Unless vaccine

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

#68

Post by [deleted] »

mrtesthah wrote: post #5
legulere wrote: post #3

Just wait until you get the British variant. Edit: to explain my point a bit: the British variant has a higher reproductive number. The existing immunity and measures in some cases can be enough to reduce the numbers of the traditional variants, while not being enough to stop the growth of the British variant. This is happening in Germany for instance right now. Currently the numbers are suddenly stagnating and soon…

The South African variant is already known to escape neutralization by convalescent serum containing covid antibodies. It's too early to see whether T-cell immunity will be adaptive enough to handle it in vivo. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.18.427166v1

[deleted]

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

#69

Post by burnthrow »

Urgo wrote: post #21

While I'd love to believe that herd immunity is almost here or the vaccine is effectively stopping the spread already, I think the biggest reason for the drop in new cases as well as the drop in active cases can be summed up in a single word. Christmas. Or more broadly the holiday season. It's absolutely true that new cases are dropping and active cases are dropping as well but if you look at active cases everything…

What I love about the news right now is that they've perfected the alchemy of turning every holiday into its own news cycle. Gatherings feared... Experts fear another spike. No proof at all that holiday -> virulence, of course. You should try turning off the news for a bit.

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

#70

Post by ncallaway »

burnthrow wrote: post #69
Urgo wrote: post #21

While I'd love to believe that herd immunity is almost here or the vaccine is effectively stopping the spread already, I think the biggest reason for the drop in new cases as well as the drop in active cases can be summed up in a single word. Christmas. Or more broadly the holiday season. It's absolutely true that new cases are dropping and active cases are dropping as well but if you look at active cases everything…

What I love about the news right now is that they've perfected the alchemy of turning every holiday into its own news cycle. Gatherings feared... Experts fear another spike . No proof at all that holiday -> virulence, of course. You should try turning off the news for a bit.

What we do have is proof that increased gatherings lead to increased transmission. We have, I think, a pretty reasonable assumption that holidays lead to increased gatherings.

So, a cautious assumption until data shows it's not accurate that "holidays lead to increased transmission" seems to me to be warranted.

Have you seen data that shows holidays don't lead to increased transmission?

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