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Coronavirus
- Thread starter Wenche
- Start date
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Projections for the US haven't changed much, but I don't pay attention to Europe. Looks like about a million deaths in Europe & central Asia by the end of February though.
The Australians did a study a few months back that found that the virus spread better in dry air than in damp air. I think they also found it traveled better in warm air than cold air too, but I don't remember for sure.
Utah sent every phone in the state an emergency alert warning about rapidly rising Covid-19 cases - CNN
FWIW, when my county in California began lockdown, we got these emergency alerts on our phones. And, we kept getting them as either reminders about the situation or a change in the health orders. I think we stopped getting these a few months ago...
FWIW, when my county in California began lockdown, we got these emergency alerts on our phones. And, we kept getting them as either reminders about the situation or a change in the health orders. I think we stopped getting these a few months ago...
And he did it again: Trump baselessly claims doctors are inflating coronavirus death counts for money as cases again hit record levels - CNNPolitics is from Oct 31st.
dhanson865
Well-Known Member
Would You Fly to London if You Knew Everyone Onboard Was Negative for COVID?
So if someone doesn't have enough virus to test positive one can be sure they can't be infectious?
So if someone doesn't have enough virus to test positive one can be sure they can't be infectious?
https://siepr.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/20-043.pdf
The Effects of Large Group Meetings on the Spread of COVID-19: The Case of Trump Rallies
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
I wouldn't fly to London because it's cold and wet there and they have way more COVID than here!
I'm unclear how long before the flight the tests are taken? If it was a PCR test 6 hours before the flight then I'd be ok with it.
Also they're probably going to lockdown again: UK's Johnson to hold news conference; new lockdown expected
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Is highlighting repeatedly the motivated discounting of epidemiologic science and the undercutting of simple recommendations for masking and social distance trolling? Isn't the discounting of basic epidemiologic science why we are nudging up against a hundred thousand new cases a day? Or actually are those scientific viewpoints being responded to with trolling by an ideologically rabid crowd that believes well for example that Anthony Fauci started covid-19 so that he could make money on a vaccine and that hospitals are inflating Covid death statistics so they can make more money that way? Who's the troll in all that?
Norbert
TSLA will win
US deaths/day have now reached 857 again (7-day average on worldometers.info), from the previous level of around 750, which is more than 10% up. So I think this looks like indeed deaths will follow cases, just with a long delay. Although it is not clear yet to which level, I agree that eventually 1500/day seems likely (and cases/day are still rising). Although I somewhat doubt it will reach 310k already by end of the year, I do think the current situation suggests that might happen soon after.
Norbert
TSLA will win
I think we can see now why Trump keeps going bankrupt, a how he portrays himself as the victim of evil forces. /end of analysis.
Question from a person who is not knowledgeable on this stuff. I think I read that the amount of infections may be as high as 4 to 5 times the number of cases confirmed by tests. If that is the case that would be about 1/2 a million people per day getting the virus. At that rate would herd immunity not be achievable by next spring.
Norbert
TSLA will win
For the sake of argument, let's just say the factor is 5. The US is close to 10 million cases, so that would be 50 million. That's maybe a quarter of what's needed for herd immunity (0.6 * 331 million). If we kept going at the really high rate of 5 * 100k/day, that would be 300 days, pretty much a year. Optimistically.
Thank you. Always a way yet.
We are seeing a rise in Canada as well. Our 7 day average in BC is around 240 cases a day now. Our death rate is still down around 1 or 2 a day right now but I think it will climb. Population of 5.4 million people.
As doctor Bonny our health minister tells us every day on her briefing.
Be kind, be calm and be safe.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
It depends on where you are in the US, but probably close to 2-3x right now on average. Versus 10x or more in March/April. It depends on the amount of testing, and of course as a massive outbreak grows, the ascertainment drops (another reason (there are three clear other reasons) that deaths tend to lag the case surge...)
Approximate numbers listed here, about 23rd tweet (thread is well worth a read, I've posted it here before)...
https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1319892084250165254?s=20
It would likely slow down significantly before then, unless they completely give up on any countermeasures. With current measures in place things probably slow down a lot once infections get to 40-50%. Rt of 1.3 means HIT is about 23%!
Of course it wouldn’t stop at 23%, and infections would bounce around, as people relaxed measures and then Rt increases to 3 again, and it would take off in another wave.
Herd immunity is of course not a strategy - in practice it really doesn't work. You can't have "herd immunity" and protect all the vulnerable people, then relax everything. Because then the virus will just destroy the vulnerable. Because it won't be gone. There are other reasons it won't work. I'm not aware of any viruses where herd immunity through natural infection actually resulted in herd immunity.
The other problem w/herd immunity w/o a vaccine is it's unclear how long one is immune to COVID-19 after being infected once, if it all. I've seen some recent figures suggesting five months. And, there have been some cases of apparent re-infection.
Trying to get everyone infected in five months would be mean healthcare system collapse and MANY deaths. What if there turns out there isn't always immunity? Or, what about the people that got infected at the beginning of the five months and it's six months or a year later?
It seems like the UK originally opted for the herd immunity path then decided against it after the horrific death projections. However, they paid the price for that already with a fairly high death rate per million population (if you check Coronavirus Update (Live): 46,425,070 Cases and 1,200,810 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Pandemic - Worldometer).
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As discussed up thread, B-cell immunity tends to fade in 3-5 months, but B-cells are the active mechanism for fighting the virus. It appears people who have had COVID do get T-cell immunity. T-cell immunity means the body has the template to mass produce antibodies to fight off the virus if it runs into it again, but there are no active antibodies.
The antibody tests we have now only test for B-cell immunity and, as I understand it, T-cell immunity is difficult and expensive to test for. I've read that there are a couple of T-cell tests that have been developed, but I believe they are limited to research use only.
There is a retired male nurse in the UK who has a series of YouTube videos on various aspects of COVID. In one he talked about a study that was done on SARS patients who had it back in 2002 and 2003. 17 years later they still had T-cell immunity and though the number of people who had SARS is small, it does not appear any have developed COVID.
T-cell immunity is what we develop with most vaccines. If you had the rubella vaccine for example. A test for the antibody for rubella would show none in your blood stream. But you probably are still immune to the virus because your body has the T-cells necessary to give you long term immunity. If you encounter the virus again, your body makes antibodies and kills it off before you realize you were infected.
Again as I understand it, there are some viruses where we don't develop T-cell immunity well, which is why most people are vulnerable to the rino viruses (colds) that go around every winter. T-cell immunity to flu viruses seems to vary from person to person. The 1918 flu pandemic hit people under 30 harder than people over 30 because there had been a similar flu virus that went around in the winter of 1889-1890 that provided some immunity to the older population. Some people who were older were completely immune while others had partial immunity, while still others succumbed to the pandemic. My great-grandfather died of the flu in that pandemic (he was in his 50s at the time).
Some people get the flu every year or every few years as adults while others never get it. When I was a kid, I got whatever flu virus was going around every winter, but after about age 12, I never got it. Nobody in my family got sick when I got it either. As an adult I've only come close to having the flu once. I took it easy, got extra rest and kicked it in about a week without actually getting fully sick.
The thing that keeps immunologists up at night is how are humans going to react to COVID long term. There are some cases of people getting reinfected, so not everyone has full T-cell immunity long term. But most people who get it again have a milder case the second time, though there have been exceptions to that too.
It's possible long term everyone will see their T-cell immunity fade, or it may be like flu viruses that some people have immunity fade and others never get it again. It appears that SARS, which is closely related to COVID, was a one any done virus. But there are some other corona viruses that we don't seem to develop good long term immunity to. Those tend to be mild viruses which just produce cold-like symptoms.
Going for herd immunity with a virus that kills a small percentage of patients, but is known to cause permanent damage to the body in a much larger percentage of patients is stupid. We don't know what long term immunity is going to be, but even if it is permanent for most people, it's still stupid. We need to start thinking of COVID more like polio than the flu.
We have a good vaccine for polio, so it's pretty rare in the developed world and is getting rarer in the undeveloped world. It kills some victims, but it can really mess up many more people for life. FDR had it in the 1920s and it mostly paralyzed his legs.
People who have recovered fro COVID are left with heart damage, lung damage, cognitive issues, lower overall energy levels, and a lot of other long term effects, some that may fade with time and some that probably won't.
Going for herd immunity in the US may kill more than 1 million Americans, but it would probably leave tens of millions with long term health deficits that may require more follow on health care and could impact a person's ability to work. With the reluctance of the US government to take care of people with problems, that means these people will be suffering unnecessarily and a fairly large percentage could end up homeless because they can't make enough money to keep a roof over their head. A lot of these people will also be dying before their time due to complications from their lingering health problems.
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