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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

#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 will start to rise again while the measures stay the same.

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

#5
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

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

#6
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

That's pretty racist calling them by nationality.

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

#7
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…

Why spread FUD? Both vaccines in the US seem to be effective against variants.

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

#8
post #7
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…

Why spread FUD? Both vaccines in the US seem to be effective against variants.

The article isn’t about vaccinations but rather primarily about “naturally attained” immunity.

The US isn’t going to hit 80% vaccination by April.

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

#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 second point: vaccinating those who've not been infected first. Its a great idea, but difficult to do in practice. First as the author points out, we don't have an accurate, quick and cheap t-cell test, so its not actually practicable to figure out who's been infected prior to vaccination.

The author says the infections are dropping in the UK and sights that as the start of natural immunity. I say thats bollocks. Its almost certainly because of the lockdown. looking at the regional numbers, its the only thing explains a coordinated drop over the entire county.

Given that "uk" variant started in the south east, it should have caused peaks spread over time as it moved from city to city. There is no data for that. which suggests it's lockdown thats causing the drop.

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

#10
post #7
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…

Why spread FUD? Both vaccines in the US seem to be effective against variants.

The British variant spreads faster than you can possibly vaccinate people. In Germany the case numbers are still going down, but if you look at the wildtype and B.1.1.7 separately, the wildtype is going down while the British variant is in full exponential growth. And that is in spite of a full nationwide hard lockdown.
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