Herd Immunity May Be The Best Solution

digitusmedius said:

Deaths have increased to just under 1,000 per over the least four days (and like to do so again today)--doubling or close to tripling the daily average of the previous three weeks. Deaths are a lagging indicator of the spread of the virus in the population. These deaths are pretty much right on schedule from the drastic and premature opening of a month ago when distancing and and mask use to lesser degree but, as we see now, dropped significantly especially in R states who had talked themselves into thinking they'd dodged the bullet largely if not entirely on the basis of what Dumbass Trump kept telling them. The increase has been enough to show a significant increase in the 7-day moving average to where it was a month ago:

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Yep, something less than 1% of those infected will succumb. Life goes on, and the planet is still over populated with humans.

Mithros said:

This is how "Herd Immunity" works.

Ro is the rate of reproduction. It's the number of people a sick person is expected to infect. If Ro is less than 1.0, then the virus will die out. If Ro is greater than 1.0 then the virus will exponentially grow.

Ro is a simplification. It's actually the product of 3 different numbers, the probability of transmission, the average number of interactions a sick person has, and the percent chance that a contact has immunity. Early on in an outbreak the number of people who have immunity is 0, so the Ro is just the rate of transmission times the number of contacts. As the number of people who have been infected increases, Ro decreases. If 5% have been infected Ro will be 95% of its normal value. Once 25% have been infected Ro will be 75%. And once 70% of people have been infected Ro will be 30%.

For COVID19, Ro with normal interactions is about 3. If we want to stop the virus we need to get that under 1. If 70% of people become infected then Ro will be 30% of 3.0 or .9. This is herd immunity.

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Thanks for all that.

In the case of the data from Queens, is 68 close enough to 70 for you?

iguanaman said:

Slowing the spread with masks and distancing is the only way we have to control the virus. You can call it what you want. There is no way to protect the vulnerable except by controlling the spread. You should have realized that by now. Being around 1000's of people exhaling the virus will not work.

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I guess you're unaware of my proposal of a reverse quarantine of those most susceptible to Covid? I've probably posted about it over 100 times. Social distancing isn't the only way to control the virus.

Social distancing should've been the absolute last thing suggested to control the virus since social distancing is so destructive in many ways AND DOESN"T PROTECT THOSE MOST SUCEPTIBLE TO COVID.

You may want to visit my new signature.

RAMOSS said:

Well, the people making the determination are going by the numbers, and by talking to the people that test positive. I am sorry if simple things like investigation and numbers escape you. I personally am surprised that there wasn't a much larger bump, but in NYS at least, that bump is attributed to reopening, because they did the whole 'what large groups of people were you in contact with' business and also contract tracers.

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More studies need to be done. It isn't logical that the protestors who wore masks but didn't socially distance, didn't wash their hands and didn't lockdown didn't help to spread cases. It doesn't even matter if one is indoors or outdoors. It one only wears a mask, one is contributing to the spread of Covid.

Is it a coincidence that a spike of cases occurred right after the protests?

Thoreau72 said:

Thanks for all that.

In the case of the data from Queens, is 68 close enough to 70 for you?

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That's a great example of a data point that is easily misconstrued. You're referring to a single clinic in Queens which tested people coming in and found that 68% of them had antibodies consistent with Corona virus. Another one found 56%. This was in contrast to a similar clinic in Brooklyn which found antibodies in 13% of the people.

So there are two three important facts which have to be understood to properly interpret the data. The sampling wasn't random, we don't know what having antibodies mean for immunity, and having an Ro of less than 1.0 is not the same as an Ro of 0.0.

First, this was not a random sampling. These were testing people going to a clinic seeking medical care. We might be able to infer something about the relative infection rates between wealthy communities and poorer ones, but unless we have some data on relationship between having antibodies and going to clinics we can't say much about what that means for the population at large. It would be like standing outside of a building and polling people for their support on an issue. If you don't know what the building is then you don't know much. An evangelical church and a new age spa will give you vastly different results.

Second, we have no idea what kind of immunity antibodies give you or how long they last. This virus has been around since November. We're guessing at any long term effects or immunity.

Lastly, having an Ro less than 1.0 does not mean the virus instantly dispersal. It means that it cannot sustain its current level of infection and will gradually die off. If you have 100,000 new cases today and you're at 70%, then you may only have 90,000 cases next week and so on.... Lots of people will still get sick after you reach "herd immunity".


As a side note, there is no such thing as a free lunch. You do not get herd immunity for free. The vast majority of the population has to be exposed to the virus, either in vaccine or live form. If it's live form then millions will die and tens of millions will have serious life altering complications. Herd immunity is how all epidemics eventually die out. The black death -> herd immunity. Smallpox in the new world -> herd immunity. Herd immunity is the worst case scenario for an epidemic.

cabse5 said:

Are we gonna actually protect those most susceptible to Covid or are we gonna throw up our hands and worry that there will be enough beds? If you don't already know, we threw up our hands and worried about hospital beds...That is what social distancing is...A throwing up of one's hands.

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No, "throwing up our hands" means doing nothing.

Social distancing is doing something. Wearing a mask is doing something.

cabse5 said:

More studies need to be done. It isn't logical that the protestors who wore masks but didn't socially distance, didn't wash their hands and didn't lockdown didn't help to spread cases. It doesn't even matter if one is indoors or outdoors. It one only wears a mask, one is contributing to the spread of Covid.

Is it a coincidence that a spike of cases occurred right after the protests?

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How do you know they aren't washing their hands?

cabse5 said:

More studies need to be done. It isn't logical that the protestors who wore masks but didn't socially distance, didn't wash their hands and didn't lockdown didn't help to spread cases. It doesn't even matter if one is indoors or outdoors. It one only wears a mask, one is contributing to the spread of Covid.

Is it a coincidence that a spike of cases occurred right after the protests?

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It isn't a coincidence since there were not spikes in all areas with protests and there were spikes in areas without protests.

Thoreau72 said:

Yep, something less than 1% of those infected will succumb. Life goes on, and the planet is still over populated with humans.

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Based on absolutely zero data.

The average mortality rate from detected cases to confirmed deaths across the US is about 5%. We know that we miss a lot of cases, and we know that we're missing a lot of deaths. Based on that we estimate that the death rate **could** be as low as less than 1%, but that is the low end of an uncertainty bound. It **could** also be as high as 5%.

On a quick estimate that's 1.4-10 million dead in addition to the 2.2 million who typically die every year.

Gaius46 said:

That sounds like a neat bumper sticker. So how about you back it up with something factual. Studies perhaps? Or even a common sense argument.

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Ask any epidemiologist what the goal of social distancing is. Saving lives is coincidental to saving hospital resources in a social distancing atmosphere because, every time there has been a decision to be made between saving lives and saving hospital resources and only one of those decisions can be made, social distancing has chosen saving hospital resources.

It isn't even appropriate to determine if social distancing is doing a good job by examining the number of deaths. Social distancing doesn't care as much about saving lives.

Lakryte said:

Saving hospital resources does save lives. If hospitals don't have resources the can't save lives. The two aren't mutually exclusive (which should be blatantly obvious to anyone).

Moreover, the death toll has been dramatically lower in places where social distancing was followed, and started going up in places where social distancing discouraged or ignored. To claim social distancing causes a higher death toll is beyond nonsense.

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Saving lives and saving hospital resources has been mutually exclusive with this pandemic.

Here's an example of when social distancing chose hospital resources over saving lives in the Covid pandemic: NYC, for example (New York wasn't the only state which used this deadly tactic) was given additional federally-made makeshift hospital resources to help with the pandemic and NYC, instead of using the federally-made makeshift hospital resources, sent nursing home Covid patients back to the nursing home.

2distracted said:

I have yet to have anyone explain herd immunity...how that works exactly

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Ok. If enough people are immune to the disease (because of having it , and not being able to be reinfected, or via vaccine)< then there are not enough vulnerable people to widely spread the disease.

Unfortuately, for people who get infected, the mechanism to create long term antibodies seems to be disabled for this specific virus in most cases. The virus disables the mechanism for that.

RAMOSS said:

Yes, but then there are the studies that were done, about masks and social distancing, and then we have the observation of the difference in the states that mandated social distancing and masks verses those that didn't. Texas, Florida and Arizonia, as well as Georgia and Alabama are beginning to feel the effects of not wearing masks or social distancing.

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You think wearing a mask is the magic pill.:lamo

Phys251 said:

So not only do you support literal genocide, you want it to be a nice, slow burn.

Attitudes such as yours are why the economy will not make a full recovery any time soon. We will not be foolish enough to do everything we want while covidiotic governors crank up the death toll through their pro-death policies.

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Wow. Those are big words. You wanna back up your claim?

PIPEWRENCH said:

Well if you are protesting you can't spread the virus. ... They must be part of that protesting immunity miracle.

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Why do Trump supporters keep posting this bull****?

They are literally the only one I see promoting this straw man.

Are you just glad to have an argument you can win?

Phys251 said:

Repeatedly debunked. More lies by you.

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There is absolutely no basis in logic that protestors that wore masks but didn't socially distance, didn't wash their hands and didn't lockdown aren't going to spread the virus. Ask any epidemiologist or medical expert.

Lutherf said:

There is a Walgreens on the corner near my house that has been turned into a testing center. At a quarter past 7 this morning the line of cars was at least half a mile.

The spike here in Tucson is a little hard to follow because good data isn't readily available and isn't updated regularly but the latest information I have shows that the number of cases peaked the week of 6/14-6/20 at right around 2000. The next week was 1700 cases and last week was 170. Hospitalizations peaked across all age groups between 5/31 and 6/13 but last week we had just one Covid hospitalization. The week before was 16 and during the peak we were around 60.

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This is the statewide numbers for arizona ADHS - Data Dashboard

And according to this source, most of the ICU beds were getting used up in that county. Pima County was close to, but still under, ICU bed capacity through much of the week - AZPM

The Pima County dashboard has a lot more hospitalization for covid 19 than you are claiming

https://webcms.pima.gov/UserFiles/S...0.2020 Death Hospitalization Case Report_.pdf

RAMOSS said:

The protests did have an effect, but since many people actually wore masks at the protests, the spikes were not as big as it could have been. However, one thing the states that did have lots of protests DID do is go out of their way to test the protestors, and the numbers are not that much different than the rest of the general population.

Outdoors and wearing masks reduced the risks. So, we have not yet seen a spike due to the protests.. That was a major concern though.

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We need more studies done.

cabse5 said:

We need more studies done.

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Better data would always be good, and having people tested, and making sure the ones that test positive self quarantine is not a bad idea.

PIPEWRENCH said:

You can't enforce it. We can't even secure our border let alone force 300+ million people to not spread this disease. Your dreaming. When this wasn't isolated in China the game was over. You can blame Trump all you want but this pandemic was beyond stopping world wide by December or even earlier. I have been watching protesting, rallies, and private parties everywhere I go spreading this virus since this started. Plus you have to do it in every country across the entire world for it to work. Face the facts already. Stop believing the lies by out power hungry parties that don't give a damn about the people. The governor of my state ordered infected patients be put back in crowded conditions with our most vulnerable and the party blind think this is just fine.

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Are you referring to a reverse quarantine having to be in every country for a reverse quarantine to work? If so, why would a reverse quarantine have to be in every country for a reverse quarantine to work?

You aren't aware of Trump's nationalism?

HumblePi said:

Herd immunity is not going to save us from Covid-19. Herd immunity without a vaccine is by definition not a preventative measure. Until we have a vaccine, anyone talking about herd immunity as a preventative strategy for COVID-19 is simply wrong.

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How many successful vaccines for any type of coronavirus ( for humans) have there ever been? A big fat zero.

Gaius46 said:

Horse crap. The OP completely misread the article he cited.

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NY did what the CDC/WHO recommended after only a few months of world Covid data. Social distancing is what isn't effective to handle the virus.

Deuce said:

No, "throwing up our hands" means doing nothing.

Social distancing is doing something. Wearing a mask is doing something.

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A throwing up of one's hands, in this case, is stopping to worry about saving lives and, instead, worrying about saving hospital resources.

RAMOSS said:

This is the statewide numbers for arizona ADHS - Data Dashboard

And according to this source, most of the ICU beds were getting used up in that county. Pima County was close to, but still under, ICU bed capacity through much of the week - AZPM

The Pima County dashboard has a lot more hospitalization for covid 19 than you are claiming

https://webcms.pima.gov/UserFiles/S...0.2020 Death Hospitalization Case Report_.pdf

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You found the site. The chart is right here, page 4 - https://webcms.pima.gov/UserFiles/Servers/Server_6/File/Health/COVID-19/Report%20Files/Demo%20Reports/Demographics%20of%20COVID-19%20by%20mmwr%20week_7_2_20.pdf

Deuce said:

How do you know they aren't washing their hands?

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In many cases protestors are holding hands. Or painting things. Or holding bricks, for example.