Is COVID strategy moving towards herd-immunity?!

[North_Sky]

Leeroy, in some countries children are dying from starvation, abused, mistreated, etc.
As long as a child is dying somewhere in the world because of no food, or no water...there's something very wrong anywhere, everywhere. My vision, and it has been since a very very long time.

All that money in the world for what ...
_____

Thomas, yes...if you could clarify please.

 

[Aerith Gainsborough]

About 1-2 % of all tested "common colds" appear to be covid-19. If covid-19 would have been true airborne and spread through asymptomatic route in a significant way, I would expect that covid-19 would dominate over all other common colds by now.

I question your source on that.
Doctors do not test you if you have a normal viral infection (both me and my co-worker can attest to that), only if your symptoms are getting worse or are C-19 specific.

So we do not have accurate data on how many %of cold patients have C-19.

As long as a child is dying somewhere in the world because of no food, or no water...there's something very wrong anywhere, everywhere. My vision, and it has been since a very very long time.

Uhuh, so adults starving is okay in your book or what?

 

[Racheski]

Required monitoring test. That morning I got tested was the day I saw most people at once in recent two weeks. I have no clue what's going on. Currently following protocols and alerting everyone...

Maybe it’s good to just get it over with...stay safe.

 

[North_Sky]

Uhuh, so adults starving is okay in your book or what?

It depends who answers your question...between someone say like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates and someone who lives on the streets of Chicago or Kathmandu.

You and I don't apply to neither categories. In Canada we are covered, in Germany you are covered.

I never lived in Chicago, so I just don't know but I'm sure there are Salvation Army stores, and food banks. In Canada we do, in Germany you do. In Kathmandu I don't know.

In some poor regions of India, jungles of Amazon, desert of Ethiopia, dunes of the Sahara to the metropolis of Seattle and cities of Dubai or Abu Dhabi to the favelas of Rio the vast division of classes creates another type of virulent virus.

You and I are not starving...that'll be the day.

 

[Racheski]

AFAICS, only one of the mentioned reasons is enough to explain the entire evolution of the Swedish death rate:
"Residents of elderly care homes account for nearly half of Sweden's coronavirus deaths, so curbing transmission in those facilities in particular seems to have caused deaths to fall significantly."
Once they took care of that (better security protocols, moratorium on visiting, etc), the numbers went down significantly. Not much to do with herd immunity or Sweden's no-quarantine strategy, just some serious mistakes in handling the nursing homes.
As about herd immunity, they are nowhere near that:

You contradict yourself literally in the first 10 words of this quote. When will everyone accept that Sweden's COVID19 policy was a really bad decision? Are you Swedish?

 

[Thomas_A]

I question your source on that.
Doctors do not test you if you have a normal viral infection (both me and my co-worker can attest to that), only if your symptoms are getting worse or are C-19 specific.

So we do not have accurate data on how many %of cold patients have C-19.


Uhuh, so adults starving is okay in your book or what?

There is a strong increase in common colds right now and many go for test for covid-19. Only symptomatic ones are tested. Still there are only below 2 % covid-19.

 

[Thomas_A]

can you explain how this makes sense?

Which one, the low proportion of positive tests or whether the R0 should be extremely high for covid-19 (due to airborne/asymptomatic spread).

 

[Racheski]

The evidence for the airborne transmission (i.e. via aerosols) of COVID19 is very strong - after a couple more upcoming papers are published there is going to be a scientific consensus.

The important question(s) now are how significant airborne transmission is compared to other means of infection, and what should be done to minimize airborne transmission.

Edit: One solution is "liquid breathing" as demonstrated by Ed Harris in the non-fiction thriller "The Abyss". There is even a Wiki page about the technology , and I'm sure most folks would prefer wearing a badass helmet compared to a mask.

 

[North_Sky]

And the RO RO RO ...
• https://www.the-scientist.com/features/why-r0-is-problematic-for-predicting-covid-19-spread-67690

 

[North_Sky]

The evidence for the airborne transmission (i.e. via aerosols) of COVID19 is very strong - after a couple more upcoming papers are published there is going to be a scientific consensus.

The important question(s) now are how significant airborne transmission is compared to other means of infection, and what should be done to minimize airborne transmission.

Edit: One solution is "liquid breathing" as demonstrated by Ed Harris in the non-fiction thriller "The Abyss". There is even a Wiki page about the technology , and I'm sure most folks would prefer wearing a badass helmet compared to a mask.
View attachment 84720

Or wearing a mask. ...Fifty cents each when you buy a box of fifty.

 

[lashto]

You contradict yourself literally in the first 10 words of this quote. When will everyone accept that Sweden's COVID19 policy was a really bad decision? Are you Swedish?

How? Why? And not really.

 

[Wombat]

The evidence for the airborne transmission (i.e. via aerosols) of COVID19 is very strong - after a couple more upcoming papers are published there is going to be a scientific consensus.

The important question(s) now are how significant airborne transmission is compared to other means of infection, and what should be done to minimize airborne transmission.

Edit: One solution is "liquid breathing" as demonstrated by Ed Harris in the non-fiction thriller "The Abyss". There is even a Wiki page about the technology , and I'm sure most folks would prefer wearing a badass helmet compared to a mask.
View attachment 84720

Let us know when you re-enter the reality world re liquid breathing, and, helmet availability for all. Of course you may have been kidding and I missed it.

In the meantime the mask is easy to use and quite effective if individuals just use them along with safe distancing measures.

 

[lashto]

I think herd immunity is basically asking everyone to play Russian roulette. This isn't the first thing a responsible gov should come up with in the beginning, but that's what we saw.

Few examples:

1. Princess Diamond cruise ship. ~3700 people, infection rate stabilized at ~20%
2. Peru, Iquitos >70% infected and >90% with antibodies
3. ICE detention center in Farmville, Va. >80% infected

Scenario no1 sounds pretty good, no2 & no3 are really, really bad.
So yes, with the current knowledge/data, betting on herd immunity would be a huge risk.

 

[Wombat]

If the pandemic was lethal mainly to the 25 to 40 y.o. cohort, I reckon herd immunity would be off the discussion table.

 

[Deleted member 65]

Few examples:

1. Princess Diamond cruise ship. ~3700 people, infection rate stabilized at ~20%
2. Peru, Iquitos >70% infected and >90% with antibodies
3. ICE detention center in Farmville, Va. >80% infected

Scenario no1 sounds pretty good, no2 & no3 are really, really bad.
So yes, with the current knowledge/data, betting on herd immunity would be a huge risk.

Robust T cell immunity in convalescent individuals with asymptomatic or mild COVID-19

SUMMARY
SARS-CoV-2-specific memory T cells will likely prove critical for long-term immune protection against COVID-19. We here systematically mapped the functional and phenotypic landscape of SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell responses in unexposed individuals, exposed family members, and individuals with acute or convalescent COVID-19. Acute phase SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells displayed a highly activated cytotoxic phenotype that correlated with various clinical markers of disease severity, whereas convalescent phase SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells were polyfunctional and displayed a stem-like memory phenotype. Importantly, SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells were detectable in antibody-seronegative exposed family members and convalescent individuals with a history of asymptomatic and mild COVID-19. Our collective dataset shows that SARS-CoV-2 elicits robust, broad and highly functional memory T cell responses, suggesting that natural exposure or infection may prevent recurrent episodes of severe COVID-19.
................
In this study, we used a systematic approach to map cellular and humoral immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 in patients with acute moderate or severe COVID- 19, individuals in the convalescent phase after mild or severe COVID-19, exposed family members, and healthy individuals who donated blood before (2019) or during the pandemic (2020). Individuals in the convalescent phase after mild COVID-19 were traced after returning to Sweden from endemic areas (mostly Northern Italy). These donors exhibited robust memory T cell responses months after infection, even in the absence of detectable circulating antibodies specific for SARS-CoV-2, indicating a previously unanticipated degree of population-level immunity against COVID-19.

https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092...m/retrieve/pii/S0092867420310084?showall=true

 

[lashto]

A bit of further digging into Peru/Iquitos. It is a fairly isolated, high altitude community and according to recent surveys they have >70% of people infected and >90% with antibodies (links above). The numbers for the entire province (Loreto):

• Population: 1.027.559, of which ~500K in Iquitos
• Cases: 18.225
• Deaths: 945

Let's go with worst-case numbers and assume that all registered cases/deaths are for Iquitos alone (probably not the worst assumption since the rest of the state is mostly jungle). According to the surveys pretty much everyone in Iquitos is/was infected so:

• Out of ~500K, about 20K were officially tested positive and that seems to indicate a big percent of asymptomatic/no-big-problems cases.
• In terms of mortality, we have 1/500 (i.e. ~1K deaths for ~500K people). Not good but also far from "doom".

This looks like a pretty bad case of herd-immunity scenario: almost everyone infected, overwhelmed health care system, incompetent local authorities, etc. Hard to figure out how it can be worse.

P.S.
I am not trying to praise/recommend herd-immunity, just trying to figure out how would that look. And it looks like even the dumbest/worst herd-immunity scenario is still quite far from a catastrophe. Which is pretty good news IMO.
P.S.2
for comparison, some data for the "normal" flu.

 

[bt3]

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/517801-fauci-rand-paul-is-not-listening-to-the-cdc-director-about-covid-19-data?jwsource=cl

 

[Harmonie]

A bit of further digging into Peru/Iquitos. It is a fairly isolated, high altitude community and according to recent surveys they have >70% of people infected and >90% with antibodies (links above). The numbers for the entire province (Loreto):

• Population: 1.027.559, of which ~500K in Iquitos
• Cases: 18.225
• Deaths: 945

Let's go with worst-case numbers and assume that all registered cases/deaths are for Iquitos alone (probably not the worst assumption since the rest of the state is mostly jungle). According to the surveys pretty much everyone in Iquitos is/was infected so:

• Out of ~500K, about ~20K were officially tested positive and that seems to indicate a big percent of asymptomatic/no-big-problems cases.
• In terms of mortality, we have 1/500 (i.e. ~1K deaths for ~500K people). Not good but also far from "doom".

.

I wonder if higher altitude (less oxygen, more White globules) isn't playing a role.

 

[Vasr]

And it looks like even the dumbest/worst herd-immunity scenario is still quite far from a catastrophe. Which is pretty good news IMO.

Pretty good news for the ones who survive you mean?

How is this different from a "Human Wave" strategy in a war?

Some of you will die, we can't predict who but likely people in the first row but we need everyone to participate to make it work. Not everybody will die, so it is not a catastrophe but some of you will likely have long-term trauma and lost limbs. So that is pretty good news overall and I as the general making it happen will get a medal for bravery ("or get elected" or "remain in power", etc).

Leaving the ethical/moral considerations of making people play a Russian Roulette aside, the above is justifiable ONLY if the alternative is an even bigger catastrophe. This is why you see the ideological or self-interested "libertarians" who aren't exactly on the front-lines spreading FUD that it is.

In the most optimistic estimate for herd immunity in the US (roughly 60% spread, about 0.5% CFR), some 1.2M people will die if my math is right. Pretty good news? Compared to what? Not being able to go to the hair salon? Children starving in Africa (which was happening even before)? Mom and Pop shops going under (unless countries do loose fiscal policies aimed solely at them rather than largely reward capital investors as the US seems to be doing)?

You combine bad fiscal policies influenced by lobbies with bad mitigation policies on an undisciplined population and you get ... the US.

 

[Neutron]

I still remember Stalin saying death of a million is just a statistic.

Anyway, until more people are being infected 2nd time, there is no way in confirming how long antibodies would ever protect people.

If it ended up like flu and people could get infected annually, betting on herd immunity is going to be hilarious. That’s why this idea shouldn’t be put forward too early.

Now the most needed thing is effective and accessible treatment plans. Yet after the HCQ fight this discussion went silent.