Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

[Trick]

. Listen to the experts, and let them take the blame. Don't take medical advice from a tv doctor or a game show host. Easy.

for me personally it’s easy where to listen....But for others? I mean when people as BGates are around in the virus game it may confuse their minds, An expert that is neither that or an tv doctor....maybe fit as an virus game host

[windwalker]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biC4nHP ... e=youtu.be

Doctors Gupta and Bhattacharya echoed Dr. Kulldorff and explained how herd immunity should be the goal and could be accomplished in a relatively short amount of time where even the elderly and sickly would eventually be safe to come out of lockdown.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/1 ... essionals/

There have been other studies done suggesting numbers needed to achieve it are much lower then what are commonly used
in current predictive models for achieving it.

[LaoDan]

He is back to the White House, making a public show of "strength", but though it's clear he's a liar in almost everything, I still tend to believe him that he's feeling a lot better already. It doesn't seem too far fetched to me. Maybe things will still get worse, but maybe all the experimental treatments done so early are rather effective. Although the politics and PR aspects are altogether different subjects. I would like him to learn some lesson and not play things down since others had and will have much worse outcomes and not be able to get this level of treatment, but it doesn't seem like he will have any ability to reflect in this way, even if it could be to his benefit.

Trump was under the influence of drugs when he made the statements that included feeling 20 years younger. This is a common feeling for individuals given high dosages of steroids, as has been reported as being part of the treatments that he received. Didn’t his doctor explain this to him, especially after his SUV excursion?

I know that Trump is more concerned about perception than about reality, but his “conclusions” about his experiences just fits with his self-centeredness, e.g. others shouldn’t worry because there are good treatments for COVID-19 and for him it was no worse than a bout of the flu (despite his being monitored and treated earlier than anyone in the general population would be able to and is released “home” to a facility with medical facilities and monitoring unavailable in the homes of other citizens, and despite his treatments which included things that are unavailable to the general population, and despite the fact that the disease affects different individuals differently including KILLING over 200,000 people which is already about 4X the typical annual deaths from the flu...).

[Steve James]

Ah, I guess it was all planned after all. 45 just suggested that he deliberately got infected to show leadership.

“We’re going back. We’re going back to work. We’re gonna be out front. As your leader I had to do that. I knew there’s danger to it but I had to do it,”
“I stood out front. I led. Nobody that’s a leader would not do what I did. I know there’s a risk, there’s a danger,” Trump said,

So, I guess now he's going to demand that Biden show he can beat the virus too. Well, I guess we all can --except the aforementioned 210K deaths. Anyway, the political spin is amazing, but not surprising, and it's sure to be defended. True: No leader on Earth would do that.

Some people will piss in your face and tell you it's raining. And some people will swear it's rain and lap it up, to those people he is a heroic genius for whom they'd gladly give their lives. I heard this at the parade.

[everything]

At least I tend to believe he truly believes he feels better. But yeah, probably due to medicines, and then there's all the differences in early/available treatment. It's mind-boggling the dumbassery of his statements, even after all this. Probably takes the cake.

[Steve James]

Google

Top U.S. military leaders, including chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are quarantining after being exposed to the virus.

Hope they're good at Zoom meetings.

[LaoDan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biC4nHP ... e=youtu.be

Doctors Gupta and Bhattacharya echoed Dr. Kulldorff and explained how herd immunity should be the goal and could be accomplished in a relatively short amount of time where even the elderly and sickly would eventually be safe to come out of lockdown.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/1 ... essionals/

There have been other studies done suggesting numbers needed to achieve it are much lower then what are commonly used
in current predictive models for achieving it.

OK, let me repeat my analysis about herd immunity, again, in a different way.

Herd immunity has been used for vaccines where a certain percentage of the population would need to be vaccinated in order to protect those remaining individuals who, for whatever reason, did not receive the vaccine. For vaccinations this is estimated to be between about 70-90% of the population, with variability due to the virility of the specific disease and the variable effectiveness of the specific vaccines against them. It is not commonly used to predict immunity for totally unvaccinated populations. Unless they are careful in applying their analysis, commentators could inadvertently be comparing “apples to oranges” when comparing herd immunity rates to the current pandemic vs. what is thought to be needed for immunizations. This is one reason why my earlier analysis used data from the H1N1 pandemic of 1918-1919 as a baseline for achieving herd immunity in the global population. Unless someone shows why the H1N1 pandemic of 1918-1919 would not be appropriate for comparison with the current pandemic, then I stand by my analysis.

The H1N1 pandemic of 1918-1919 saw an estimated 1/3 of the world population being affected by the virus. Unless someone can show why this may be an overestimate, this means that, at minimum, herd immunity without vaccinations would only be achieved when ~30% of the population shows symptoms of the disease (refer to my earlier post for the estimates being for those showing symptoms vs. asymptomatic individuals, and how ~50% of the population may be ~ symptomless).

Current reports give less than 36,000,000 global cases (both symptomatic and asymptomatic), which would only be about 0.5% of the world population. But this is certainly an underestimate since many asymptomatic individuals probably were not tested and are therefore not included in the current global numbers. Since some have recently suggested that the actual percentage of the population that may have been infected in the current pandemic is closer to 10%, let’s use that figure instead. That would be ~780,000,000 people infected (including the estimate for asymptomatic individuals). This is still far below the ~1/3 of the world population % that had symptoms from the 1918-1919 pandemic. We would be at most only 1/3 of the way to herd immunity based on these estimates. But since the H1N1 pandemic numbers probably only include symptomatic individuals, and the modeling by Karl Friston indicates that perhaps 50% of the individuals that get the disease may not show significant symptoms, the actual value for the 1918-1919 pandemic may be closer to 80% of the population (symptomatic + asymptomatic; 30% + 50% respectively). Using the estimate of ~10% of the world population having been infected (symptomatic + asymptomatic) in the current pandemic, this is far below this ~80% value estimated from the 1918-1919 pandemic.

This appears to indicate that we are currently far below the number of global infections required to reach herd immunity for the current pandemic.

Unless commentators address these issues, I personally doubt that their speculations are very rigorous, and are likely to contain significant errors or omissions.

I still think that hoping for herd immunity is extreme wishful thinking since we are probably at best still only ~1/3 of the way there, and probably closer to only being ~1/8 of the way to herd immunity.

[windwalker]

OK, let me repeat my analysis about herd immunity, again, in a different way.

Herd immunity has been used for vaccines where a certain percentage of the population would need to be vaccinated in order to protect those remaining individuals who, for whatever reason, did not receive the vaccine. For vaccinations this is estimated to be between about 70-90% of the population, with variability due to the virility of the specific disease and the variable effectiveness of the specific vaccines against them.

Ok, Let me re-post an analysis of those in the field studying herd immunity have concluded, many epidemiologist
are coming to agree with.

When they updated the classical model to take into account rates of transmission in different age groups and among people with varying levels of social activity, the threshold for herd immunity fell to 43%.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articl ... l-activity

Doctors Gupta and Bhattacharya echoed Dr. Kulldorff and explained how herd immunity should be the goal and could be accomplished in a relatively short amount of time where even the elderly and sickly would eventually be safe to come out of lockdown.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/1 ... essionals/




Seems very clear.

A reachable goal based on an updated modeling according to the characteristics of this virus.

[Ian C. Kuzushi]

“In our model, we assume that infection with and subsequent clearance of the virus leads to immunity against further infection for an extended period of time. If there is a relatively quick loss of immunity, or if we want to consider a time scale where the impact of demographic processes, such as births and people changing age-group, becomes substantial, then we need further models.”

That's a hell of an assumption. So, basically, the entire article doesn't mean a thing as we just don't know about immunity post infection.

Reasonable people have spoken of herd immunity from vaccination, which is the goal. But, we don't have a vaccine.

[everything]

Perhaps treatments instead of vaccines will be the way to go.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52354520

What work is being done to find treatments?
More than 150 different drugs are being researched in different countries. Most are existing drugs that are being trialled against the virus.

The UK is running the the world's largest clinical trial, called Recovery, with more than 12,000 patients taking part - it is one of the few trials to have given a definitive view on which drugs do and do not work
The World Health Organization (WHO) is running the the Solidarity trial to assess promising treatments in countries around the world
Multiple pharmaceutical companies are running trials of their own drugs
There are three broad approaches being investigated:

Antiviral drugs that directly affect the coronavirus's ability to thrive inside the body
Drugs that calm the immune system (severe Covid-19 is caused by patients' immune systems overreacting and damaging the body)
Antibodies that can target the virus, taken from either survivors' blood plasma or made in a lab
It is possible that different drugs will work better at different stages - such as anti-virals at the beginning and immune drugs in late-stage diseases. Combinations of therapies will also be investigated.

[Steve James]

Perhaps treatments instead of vaccines will be the way to go.

Sure, treatments are great. However, we treat the seasonal flu but still develop vaccines. The virus is probably not going away. There'll be another covid vaccine next year --even if there's one this year. People seem to believe this is going away soon. Imo, it'll be "over" when people feel comfortable going maskless to buffet restaurants.

[windwalker]

For those interested on how some researchers arrived at 43% level for heard immunity

In response to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), some politicians have been keen to exploit the idea of achieving herd immunity.

Countering this possibility are estimates derived from work on historical vaccination studies, which suggest that herd immunity may only be achieved at an unacceptable cost of lives.


Because human populations are far from homogeneous, Britton et al. show that by introducing age and activity heterogeneities into population models for SARS-CoV-2, herd immunity can be achieved at a population-wide infection rate of ∼40%, considerably lower than previous estimates.

This shift is because transmission and immunity are concentrated among the most active members of a population, who are often younger and less vulnerable.

If nonpharmaceutical interventions are very strict, no herd immunity is achieved, and infections will then resurge if they are eased too quickly.

An important question for both policies has been when to lift some or all of the restrictions. A closely related question is if and when herd immunity can be achieved. Herd immunity is defined as a level of population immunity at which disease spreading will decline and stop even after all preventive measures have been relaxed.

If all preventive measures are relaxed when the immunity level from infection is below the herd immunity level, then a second wave of infection may start once restrictions are lifted.

By 1 May 2020, some regions and countries reached high estimates for the population immunity level; for example, 26% of the population was infected (with a large confidence interval) in the metropolitan Stockholm region, as shown by a mathematical model (2).

At the same time, population studies in Spain showed that in the second half of May 2020, >10% of the population of Madrid had antibodies for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) (3).

It is debatable whether (classical) herd immunity for COVID-19, which is believed to lie between 50 and 75%, can be achieved without unacceptably high case fatality rates (4–6).

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6505/846

[Steve James]

Perhaps treatments instead of vaccines will be the way to go.

Sure, treatments are great. However, we treat the seasonal flu but still develop vaccines. The virus is probably not going away. There'll be another covid vaccine next year --even if there's one this year. People seem to believe this is going away soon. Imo, it'll be "over" when people feel comfortable going maskless to buffet restaurants.

[bailewen]

Trump was under the influence of drugs when he made the statements that included feeling 20 years younger. This is a common feeling for individuals given high dosages of steroids, as has been reported as being part of the treatments that he received.

The steroids are irrelevant.

COVID takes about a week to get serious even without any treatment whatsoever. We are only on about day 5.

Sitting outside the US, the reporting, going back to March even, has been incredibly bad. I mean like, mind bogglingly stupid. I'm sitting here in China, where we basically just did a 1 month lockdown, but a real lockdown nationwide, and EVERYONE wore masks, and it's been gone for months. The economy in China opened up in about 6 weeks. COVID is ancient history out here. Everyone wore masks, even after lockdown. Nobody complained. And on TV, the Chinese govt leaders did not take of their masks to speak into a microphone like some American douchbag. And they all wore standard disposible surgical masks, not those "cool" looking black masks that are so de reigeuour for US officials, but are kind of shit in terms of stopping transmission.

During the lockdown, ALL TV news personalities wore masks during the nightly news.

When Xijingping was on TV, speaking into microphones, he wore a mask, and you could see shots of the party cadres in the audience, not with "an empty seat" between them, but with their own separate tables, with full social distancing.

I have no words left for how humiliated I am by the US response. I hear that something like 60 percent of American's "dissaprove" of T's handling. That is humiliating. 1 in 3 approve?!? WFT guys.

The US is a fucking pariah on the world stage. All this talk about "herd mentality" is right on point. The fact that even more than 10% does not recognize are flat earther stupid just boggles the mind. Why the fuck is anyone even trying to figure out how T is doing "so well" on day 5. When this thing hid Wuhan last year most people did not even report to the hospital until day 5. Typically, the very earliest was day 3, and then the next big batch was day 5. And now president Typhoid Mary is back in the white house spreading death to everyone around him.

It's embarrassing.

"leader of the free world" my ass. He's the stupidist, weakest, most irresponsible national leader I have ever seen in my lifetime, and just like every businsess he have ever run, he is running the United States into the ground.

[LaoDan]

When they updated the classical model to take into account rates of transmission in different age groups and among people with varying levels of social activity, the threshold for herd immunity fell to 43%.

...
Seems very clear.
...

The authors of the study stated clearly:

Our estimates should be interpreted as an illustration of how population heterogeneity affects herd immunity rather than as an exact value or even a best estimate.

This seems very clear, unless someone has reading comprehension difficulties.

The authors used a simple model where they added two arbitrary variables (age groups and activity levels) to demonstrate that the classical calculations using a homogeneous population differ from one where heterogeneous variables are included. The classical (homogeneous population) calculations gave a value of 60% whereas the calculations using added variables (heterogeneous population) produced a value of 43%.

I still do not see how this study would significantly change the expected value of ~30% showing symptoms before herd immunity is achieved, as extrapolated from the H1N1 pandemic of 1918-1919. Even if we were to erroneously use the 43% value from the study, this would mean that about 3.4 billion people would need to be infected before herd immunity is achieved. We are not even close to that number! Therefore, we are currently not even close to achieving herd immunity and will not be for a long time (unless we let the transmissions go unchecked into an exponential spread of the virus).