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Coronavirus
- Thread starter Wenche
- Start date
Doggydogworld
Active Member
"81.5% of US counties are in the high or substantial transmission category."
Three weeks ago it was already 73.2%. Yet deaths continue to decline. Hospitalizations have doubled since the low in April, but ICU load is not growing nearly as fast. Herd immunity is increasing and treatments are improving. We're not at "just a flu" levels yet, but we're getting close.
scottf200
Well-Known Member
To be honest, I don't know what to think about 'herd immunity' because of the seemingly regular reinfections.
It is not like the potential of getting the flu each year because of Long Covid's serious issues.
What am I missing about this old notion of 'herd immunity' that doesn't really seem to apply "anymore".
Likely my perception or interpretation is off.
I have a long road trip this summer with a well vaccinated (2nd booster after 4+ months from prev) auto-immune person.
Thinking of contingency if one of us gets covid while we are traveling. Kind of weird but there is a treatment aspect plus all the night lodging is preplanned and prepaid for (with typical cancelation notice).
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
There are varying degrees of immunity. You likely are thinking "complete" immunity (i.e. don't get sick).
Coronaviruses (and rhinoviruses, and adnoviruses, and many other viruses) rarely induce complete immunity. The immune system fights them off with each exposure, but they stick around and infect those with lower immunity levels repeatedly, etc.
Think of it is common cold type pattern - you keep getting it, even though you have previously fought it off.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Yes. It sucks that COVID is still around, but if we can keep driving deaths down, we should take the win, and hope that long COVID is not actually really very common when boosted (still TBD, but seems possible). It definitely sucks for those who are immunocompromised, at this point.
I’m like 70% sure at this point that I am wrong about that. I just have no idea why.
I guess I should have stuck to my long tail theory. I guess it was right and what is happening is roughly predictable from ICU numbers plus a long death tail.
We're at 3000 ICU right now compared to about 4000 at the prior minimum of ~240 deaths per day (with some smoothing). Given the relatively early occurrence of deaths after ICU entry, I guess I wouldn't expect us to drop much more below our current ~300 a day level (even though one might directly extrapolate to below 200, I don't think we can get below 250 in the near term, since ICU numbers are rising). But it's complicated; have to think about the delays and the ultimate lower limit also depends on how long ICU numbers have been low, as well as the current trajectory. I'm surprised someone hasn't come up with impulse responses to each signal and convolved them to predict deaths.
In any case that's still ~3-4% excess mortality! Hopefully we can get it even lower, to 100 a day. Someday! Maybe at the end of the summer after the BA.4/BA.5 wave, which should end in August/September timeframe. Or maybe it will require a retargeted vaccine and a bit of luck with stability from the virus for a bit.
My wife told me that a lot of the patients she is seeing in the hospital are COVID+ even though most have been vaccinated. But a number of those are not in the hospital because of COVID but something else. They just are testing anyone who has any symptoms. Still have to treat them as COVID precautions patients though.
My concern is the Fall/Winter. People are getting exposed now in the Spring/Summer. In the Fall/Winter when people will be mostly indoors higher viral loads and potentially newer variants. Hopefully they have a widely available updated vaccine by then.
scottf200
Well-Known Member
An interesting data state point (1 of 50) ... I was a little super in the NC variant % breakdown graph and that BA.2.12.1 has not taken over in rough the same weekly percentage increases as the whole US. ie. light pink bar in graph below is maintaining or growing.
You can see the previous variants seemed to follow the trend of rising weekly (dark pink and light pink).
Via: North Carolina COVID-19 Dashboard | NC COVID-19
Delta and Omicron killed far more children than flu ever does.
Covid-19 killed around 600 children in 2021, which is far more than influenza ever kills in any given year. At the peak of Omicron, 156 US children died of Covid-19 in a single month (January 2022). In the 10 years leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic, an average of 120 children died of flu per year—and that was without masking or distancing.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Yes, this is in line with expectations from late 2020, when there was sufficient mortality to estimate impact on children. And it was never remotely plausible that it was "like the flu" for children given the complications of MIS-C, etc., which were known very early on.
1 in 10k cases or so dies. A bit worse for the 0-4 age group, though Omicron may have shifted it a bit (in a good direction) for that group.
Whether all the restrictions on in-person schooling were worth it after school year 2019-2020 is another question, given that it's not THAT deadly to children. Though I supported that at the time, I now tend to think they were not (in retrospect), given how terrible a job everyone else was doing spreading it around. Just not enough marginal benefit. If it were the only source of spread it would have made more sense. Should have used the DPA to build child-size N95s for all children, enforce their use, make 'em eat outside, and send them to school. I guess. And provided optional remote learning or something. A very sticky problem in any case (not great to have kids killing their parents and grandparents).
And I wonder what the ratio of kids dead:kids with long covid is.
Meanwhile in China:
www.bloomberg.com
What will be the long term effects of this? Will we get less frequent influenza seasons as influensa used to start in China a lot of the time? Will China be isolating people with colds, influenza and other diseases and Chinese kids have worse immune systems? When a Chinese person travels abroad he can expect some nasty weeks while his immune system catches up to everything going around in the west?
Will we have a Europeans and native americans situation again?
Meanwhile in China:
China Plans for Years of Covid Zero Strategy With Tests on Every Corner
After a bruising lockdown in Shanghai and severe curbs in Beijing were needed to halt the spread of Covid-19, China is doubling down on mass-testing in a move that’s dashing hopes for a shift away from its costly Covid Zero strategy.
www.bloomberg.com
China Plans for Years of Covid Zero Strategy With Tests on Every Corner
- Cities require frequent Covid tests to detect stealthy spread
- Permanent testing infrastructure may solidify zero tolerance
What will be the long term effects of this? Will we get less frequent influenza seasons as influensa used to start in China a lot of the time? Will China be isolating people with colds, influenza and other diseases and Chinese kids have worse immune systems? When a Chinese person travels abroad he can expect some nasty weeks while his immune system catches up to everything going around in the west?
Will we have a Europeans and native americans situation again?
scottf200
Well-Known Member
Title: COVID State of Affairs: May 31
yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com
COVID State of Affairs: May 31
The global average of reported cases and deaths continue to decline across the world. There are a few exceptions, most notably in Taiwan, Portugal, Australia, and the United States. It’s not entirely clear if we can continue to judge the global situation by comparing per capita case rates across...
yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com
Makes you wonder if China knows something we don't.And I wonder what the ratio of kids dead:kids with long covid is.
Meanwhile in China:
China Plans for Years of Covid Zero Strategy With Tests on Every Corner
After a bruising lockdown in Shanghai and severe curbs in Beijing were needed to halt the spread of Covid-19, China is doubling down on mass-testing in a move that’s dashing hopes for a shift away from its costly Covid Zero strategy.China Plans for Years of Covid Zero Strategy With Tests on Every Corner
- Cities require frequent Covid tests to detect stealthy spread
- Permanent testing infrastructure may solidify zero tolerance
What will be the long term effects of this? Will we get less frequent influenza seasons as influensa used to start in China a lot of the time? Will China be isolating people with colds, influenza and other diseases and Chinese kids have worse immune systems? When a Chinese person travels abroad he can expect some nasty weeks while his immune system catches up to everything going around in the west?
Will we have a Europeans and native americans situation again?
I think people were too quick with calling their strategy stupid/insane/crazy. I will admit that I was. Whenever someone knows what you do and still chooses to do something different the first response should not be that they are stupid, but instead to try to understand why, if there are pros with their choice etc, can they make workarounds around the cons that you see etc.
I think most of us assumed that the pandemic would rip through the let it rip countries, we would get a peak, then just small number of cases and very few deaths as it becomes endemic. But clearly today we still have a lot of cases. USA now has 1M deaths with an average 300deaths/day 2 years into the pandemic. Before the pandemic this would have been considered very large numbers. And the number of long covid is likely even larger than this with cost to individuals and society. And it seems BA.5 will rip pretty bad for people who were not vaccined before they got omicron.
So is China really that insane for not opening up? Maybe. Maybe not. I think we in the west should be a bit more humble to the possibility that China knows what they are doing.
It seems that Covid has mechanisms to downregulate the body’s immune system. So it becomes a race between the immune system and the virus, can the immune system activate its response before covid has shut it down. That’s why healthy people seem to do better and that’s why boosted people temporarily have a better response. My own strategy when my girlfriend got Omicron was to try to optimize my immune system(I had 2x pfizer 6months earlier) with taking zinc, omega3, sunlight and melatonin. And I think the best strategy is to not take paracetamol to lower the bodys temperature and instead let the temperature go very high to maximize the Interferon levels. Not super excited about likely catching BA.5 soon again, but will probably use the same protocol again.
The problem with the zero tolerance policy is political. There's no way to enforce it in most countries, so there isn't a lot of point in pursuing it. There's also the issue of untrained immune systems, and the vaccine-not-developed-here issue that China has. What's required is a faster vaccine ramp so a vaccine appears shortly after the next variant.
Does that include all the ones that were removed in march or have they taken that into consideration?
Covid-19: US tracker overestimated deaths among children
The US’s health protection agency has reduced the number of deaths it is attributing to covid-19 by more than 70 000 after what it referred to as “coding logic errors” were highlighted on social media. On 15 March the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) removed 72 277 deaths...
I am not trying to minimize the risk of COVID to kids I just want to make sure the data are accurate. I suspect it is not more dangerous to kids on an infection by infection basis than the flu, it is just much more contagious than the flu at this point during the pandemic so there are a lot more infections which lead to a higher number of deaths. I have a vaccinated elementary age child and them dying of COVID is not a concern for me honestly.
I think you are right as far as the deaths in children and adolescents. Fortunately it is much lower than the death rates for adults.Does that include all the ones that were removed in march or have they taken that into consideration?
Covid-19: US tracker overestimated deaths among children
The US’s health protection agency has reduced the number of deaths it is attributing to covid-19 by more than 70 000 after what it referred to as “coding logic errors” were highlighted on social media. On 15 March the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) removed 72 277 deaths...www.bmj.com
I am not trying to minimize the risk of COVID to kids I just want to make sure the data are accurate. I suspect it is not more dangerous to kids on an infection by infection basis than the flu, it is just much more contagious than the flu at this point during the pandemic so there are a lot more infections which lead to a higher number of deaths. I have a vaccinated elementary age child and them dying of COVID is not a concern for me honestly.
However, the risk of long Covid is likely much higher. Assessing that risk is tremendously difficult since we don't actually have a fixed case definition or test for it. Even if rates are at the lower end of the 2-10% estimates, if it is your kid it's a big deal, and that's a lot of kids.
scottf200
Well-Known Member
You are fortunate that your kids are old enough because there are a lot of worried parents of unvaccinated younger kids.
Saw this good news today tho:
It’s certainly good to have the option if it is shown to help. That said, there have been 900 COVID deaths for kids age 0-17 in the last 2 years out of 73 million kids in that age group. I’m not gonna lose my mind over those odds but I get that some worry more than others.
EVNow
Well-Known Member
I think the right policy would have been "zero covid" until most people were vaccinated. Like with New Zealand. That definitely reduced severe disease numbers by orders of magnitude.
I think the right strategy now would be simple mask mandate to reduce transmission.
Agreed, provided mask=N95 Cloth masks are 80% useless.
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