9 ms·

Projecting the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 through postpandemic period

67 points by shadre 6y ago

turdnagel 6y ago
"To avoid this, prolonged or intermittent social distancing may be necessary into 2022." Wow -- seems very unlikely to happen though.
- DennisP 6y ago
  Intermittent seems quite possible. Every time the death rate spikes, we'll have to lock down again. Chances are, some region will decide against doing that, and their outcome will provide a clear incentive for everyone else to be more rigorous about it.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    > Chances are, some region will decide against doing that, and their outcome will provide a clear incentive for everyone else to be more rigorous about it. I used to have a poster along these lines in my office. https://despair.com/products/mistakes https://despair.com/products/mistakes
    - jsight 6y ago
      This one might be relevant too: https://despair.com/products/consequence https://despair.com/products/consequence
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
    That's happening right now with Sweden and it's sure to be a pretty interesting case study. Their health system hasn't yet been overwhelmed, but they've had a lot of cases (and a lot of deaths), especially on a per capita basis for a smaller country: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/sweden-coronavirus-death-toll-reaches-1000 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/sweden-coronav... Of course, some right-wing media outlets have still been touting this as a success and a model for a less economically-damaging approach— this article is from nine days ago, but it's not hard to find other similar ones: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-response-sweden-avoids-isolation-economic-ruin/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-response-... It's probably much too early to say one way or another, but I guess there is some value in having multiple approaches be tried. Particularly in a world where guys like Glenn Beck have gone on record saying they'd "rather die than kill the country."
    - ummonk 6y ago
      Funny world we’ve come to when right-wingers are pointing to Sweden as an example of how they want to handle an issue.
      - raducu 6y ago
        But in Sweden vs Norway, we are talking about 4x the case numbers adjusted for population, and a few hundred dead. The data might turn much worse, but right now I don't think it's bad for Sweden.
  - orbifold 6y ago
    Yeah no this is not happening, the young people will revolt before that. You can suspend civil liberties for a few months, that's fine, but not intermittently over several years. No way that governments in western countries will get away with that. I expect this to be an event that will remove most baby-boomers from power and bring in the millennial generation, they expect us to support ~5 old people through most of our productive life and now they created or are about to create debt that we will have to pay off for the rest of our lives. A lot of it is to prop up pension schemes and assets which are primarily owned by old people and projected to have collapsed by the time a 30 year old will retire.
    - watwut 6y ago
      It seems like around me young people take the virus more seriously then old people.
    - Der_Einzige 6y ago
      Lmfao you are far too optimistic about the revolutionary potential of westernized young people. They will not revolt. They won't take power. They don't even vote today.
      - orbifold 6y ago
        I think you underestimate how things can go from apathetic to extremely violent in a short period of time. There have been lots of violent (and non-violent) mass protests in several countries of Europe, for far smaller reasons, during last few years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots, France has the yellow west movement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_-W2_X5yS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_-W2_X5yS8 (this is happening despite the shutdown), Spain violently shut down Catalan independence last year, Italy is governed by a protest party, Germany had the Pegida and Friday's for Future Protests).
      - raducu 6y ago
        I take the "Ok boomer" to be the canary in the coal mine, or atleast I hope so, because without the young people revolting this planet is royaly screwed.
  - raducu 6y ago
    I'm starting to doubt this. What about Sweden vs Norway -- sure, the data is 4X worse for Sweden, but we are only talking thousands of infections and hundreds of deaths. Maybe this can't scale to bigger countries though.
  - malandrew 6y ago
    > Every time the death rate spikes, we'll have to lock down again. this will likely cause more business failures than a prolonged shut down. Starting up and shutting down a business is not free. There are legal costs and you need to source materials for operations. In the case of restaurants in particular, there will be loss due to spoilage
- llort2 6y ago
  Sounds like some liberal-fascism fuckery right there.
JetSetWilly 6y ago
This paper seems to have every imaginable scenario of which 2022 is a worst case. But, now actual data is starting to come in - such as the extremely interesting serum testing in Scotland (1) - which suggests that the infection rate is much much higher than previously supposed. The Scotland serum testing shows that around 35000 people were infected at a time when only 110 cases were known officially, and strongly suggests that at least 10%-20% of the country have been infected by now. Similar data has been suggested by the Danish serum testing. So I'd be interested to see what comes out of this Harvard model if they put in the numbers suggested from serum testing. 1. https://figshare.com/articles/Serological_analysis_of_1000_Scottish_blood_donor_samples_for_anti-SARSCoV2_antibodies_collected_in_March_2020/12116778/2 https://figshare.com/articles/Serological_analysis_of_1000_S... )
- elliekelly 6y ago
  When “sero samples” are done like this is there any effort to notify the donors their blood has been tested and come back positive for the antibodies? Ideally donors would be notified either way but at the very least I think the people with positive results ought to be informed.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- raphlinus 6y ago
  That's a lot of interpretation from 6 cases. There's a lot of serological testing being done right now, and we'll have hard data soon, but from what I see from expert epidemiologists (disclosure: I'm not one myself), the idea that we have a vast number of completely asymptomatic cases is wishful thinking.
  - JetSetWilly 6y ago
    Ah, but if you do a sample of 1000 then even low numbers of positives are still statistically significant. The poisson distribution on just 6 might be somewhat wide but you can give a reasonable confidence interval (ie 0.3-0.9%) - and either end of that interval still suggests a lot of undetected cases at a time when there was hardly any officially. What you can't do - statistically - is say "oh there were just 6, that means it all could just be a coincidence and the prevlence is actually very low". Especially when - if you dig into the numbers they make sense. First, they were spread over a 2 week period, with all the positives being in the second cohort - which is what is expected if there's an exponential explosion of cases going on. Secondly, 4 of the 6 positives are in the Edinburgh area which is the most internationally connected and affluent area of Scotland. So I really don't think it can be breezily dismissed just because you don't like the data. But as you say, we'll have a lot more serological data before long so lets see.
Jeema101 6y ago
This article brings up something I was thinking about when this all first started: cross-immunity with other coronaviruses and whether or not infection with one of them could at least give partial immunity to SARS-CoV-2. As the study points out, there are less harmful human coronaviruses which are thought to cause around 15% of common colds worldwide. I wonder if anybody has thought to research using these viruses as part of an innoculation strategy at least for high-risk groups. After all the first 'vaccine' ever developed in the 18th century (really an innoculation) was to intentionally give people cowpox in order to give them immunity to smallpox. Maybe it's too risky though for some reason? I dunno.
- makomk 6y ago
  The existing human coronaviruses aren't the most well-researched things around, but as I understand it there's evidence infection with them might actually be pretty dangerous to at-risk people. They just can't cause a pandemic because too many people are immune.
  - eloff 6y ago
    The common cold is dangerous to people? The flu, sure, but I never heard of people dying from a cold. I'm sure it happens, but in comparable numbers though? I don't think so.
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      Certainly not the same mortality rate, but the common cold does kill people every year due to pneumonia, asthma attacks, etc.
    - ejstronge 6y ago
      You may already know this, but for the sake of others, it’s important to realize that many viruses cause what we refer to as ‘common cold’. Coronaviruses are only a minor component of this set of viruses, as low as 1-2% in a study I read (can’t find it now; this value also depends on lots of factors).
aaron695 6y ago
It's mind blowing we are not putting more money, Billions of dollars, into why people are getting reinfected and around antibodies. It is fully expected people will be able to get the disease again in years. But it might be much sooner. And when you get it a second time it might not be as easy as the first. Your third winter and third time getting it might be death. This variable turns SARS-CoV-2 from it's current media accepted 'mild' to very serious, and we don't know what it is, these 3 months into the disease. Ok link talking about some of the issues - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/coronavirus-immunity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/coronavirus-immun...
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Actually we don't have to do anything except let corona virus run its course. Just saved you billions in research.
  - javagram 6y ago
    “Run its course” = 2-3% of the population die due to the virus. I think the billions in research might be a more humane alternative.
llort2 6y ago
It's very clear at this point that many of the deaths that are being reported as Covid deaths are actually in fact not. Also, the projections are so insanely off that these "scientists" should be held accountable for propagating lies and murdering the economy. I'm curious to learn what other "science" is demonstrably false. OPEN THE COUNTRY!

67 points by shadre 6y ago

"To avoid this, prolonged or intermittent social distancing may be necessary into 2022." Wow -- seems very unlikely to happen though.

DennisP 6y ago
Intermittent seems quite possible. Every time the death rate spikes, we'll have to lock down again. Chances are, some region will decide against doing that, and their outcome will provide a clear incentive for everyone else to be more rigorous about it.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > Chances are, some region will decide against doing that, and their outcome will provide a clear incentive for everyone else to be more rigorous about it. I used to have a poster along these lines in my office. https://despair.com/products/mistakes https://despair.com/products/mistakes
  - jsight 6y ago
    This one might be relevant too: https://despair.com/products/consequence https://despair.com/products/consequence
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  That's happening right now with Sweden and it's sure to be a pretty interesting case study. Their health system hasn't yet been overwhelmed, but they've had a lot of cases (and a lot of deaths), especially on a per capita basis for a smaller country: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/sweden-coronavirus-death-toll-reaches-1000 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/sweden-coronav... Of course, some right-wing media outlets have still been touting this as a success and a model for a less economically-damaging approach— this article is from nine days ago, but it's not hard to find other similar ones: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-response-sweden-avoids-isolation-economic-ruin/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-response-... It's probably much too early to say one way or another, but I guess there is some value in having multiple approaches be tried. Particularly in a world where guys like Glenn Beck have gone on record saying they'd "rather die than kill the country."
  - ummonk 6y ago
    Funny world we’ve come to when right-wingers are pointing to Sweden as an example of how they want to handle an issue.
    - raducu 6y ago
      But in Sweden vs Norway, we are talking about 4x the case numbers adjusted for population, and a few hundred dead. The data might turn much worse, but right now I don't think it's bad for Sweden.
- orbifold 6y ago
  Yeah no this is not happening, the young people will revolt before that. You can suspend civil liberties for a few months, that's fine, but not intermittently over several years. No way that governments in western countries will get away with that. I expect this to be an event that will remove most baby-boomers from power and bring in the millennial generation, they expect us to support ~5 old people through most of our productive life and now they created or are about to create debt that we will have to pay off for the rest of our lives. A lot of it is to prop up pension schemes and assets which are primarily owned by old people and projected to have collapsed by the time a 30 year old will retire.
  - watwut 6y ago
    It seems like around me young people take the virus more seriously then old people.
  - Der_Einzige 6y ago
    Lmfao you are far too optimistic about the revolutionary potential of westernized young people. They will not revolt. They won't take power. They don't even vote today.
    - orbifold 6y ago
      I think you underestimate how things can go from apathetic to extremely violent in a short period of time. There have been lots of violent (and non-violent) mass protests in several countries of Europe, for far smaller reasons, during last few years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots, France has the yellow west movement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_-W2_X5yS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_-W2_X5yS8 (this is happening despite the shutdown), Spain violently shut down Catalan independence last year, Italy is governed by a protest party, Germany had the Pegida and Friday's for Future Protests).
    - raducu 6y ago
      I take the "Ok boomer" to be the canary in the coal mine, or atleast I hope so, because without the young people revolting this planet is royaly screwed.
- raducu 6y ago
  I'm starting to doubt this. What about Sweden vs Norway -- sure, the data is 4X worse for Sweden, but we are only talking thousands of infections and hundreds of deaths. Maybe this can't scale to bigger countries though.
- malandrew 6y ago
  > Every time the death rate spikes, we'll have to lock down again. this will likely cause more business failures than a prolonged shut down. Starting up and shutting down a business is not free. There are legal costs and you need to source materials for operations. In the case of restaurants in particular, there will be loss due to spoilage
llort2 6y ago
Sounds like some liberal-fascism fuckery right there.

JetSetWilly 6y ago

This paper seems to have every imaginable scenario of which 2022 is a worst case. But, now actual data is starting to come in - such as the extremely interesting serum testing in Scotland (1) - which suggests that the infection rate is much much higher than previously supposed. The Scotland serum testing shows that around 35000 people were infected at a time when only 110 cases were known officially, and strongly suggests that at least 10%-20% of the country have been infected by now. Similar data has been suggested by the Danish serum testing. So I'd be interested to see what comes out of this Harvard model if they put in the numbers suggested from serum testing. 1. https://figshare.com/articles/Serological_analysis_of_1000_Scottish_blood_donor_samples_for_anti-SARSCoV2_antibodies_collected_in_March_2020/12116778/2 https://figshare.com/articles/Serological_analysis_of_1000_S... )

elliekelly 6y ago
When “sero samples” are done like this is there any effort to notify the donors their blood has been tested and come back positive for the antibodies? Ideally donors would be notified either way but at the very least I think the people with positive results ought to be informed.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
raphlinus 6y ago
That's a lot of interpretation from 6 cases. There's a lot of serological testing being done right now, and we'll have hard data soon, but from what I see from expert epidemiologists (disclosure: I'm not one myself), the idea that we have a vast number of completely asymptomatic cases is wishful thinking.
- JetSetWilly 6y ago
  Ah, but if you do a sample of 1000 then even low numbers of positives are still statistically significant. The poisson distribution on just 6 might be somewhat wide but you can give a reasonable confidence interval (ie 0.3-0.9%) - and either end of that interval still suggests a lot of undetected cases at a time when there was hardly any officially. What you can't do - statistically - is say "oh there were just 6, that means it all could just be a coincidence and the prevlence is actually very low". Especially when - if you dig into the numbers they make sense. First, they were spread over a 2 week period, with all the positives being in the second cohort - which is what is expected if there's an exponential explosion of cases going on. Secondly, 4 of the 6 positives are in the Edinburgh area which is the most internationally connected and affluent area of Scotland. So I really don't think it can be breezily dismissed just because you don't like the data. But as you say, we'll have a lot more serological data before long so lets see.

Jeema101 6y ago

This article brings up something I was thinking about when this all first started: cross-immunity with other coronaviruses and whether or not infection with one of them could at least give partial immunity to SARS-CoV-2. As the study points out, there are less harmful human coronaviruses which are thought to cause around 15% of common colds worldwide. I wonder if anybody has thought to research using these viruses as part of an innoculation strategy at least for high-risk groups. After all the first 'vaccine' ever developed in the 18th century (really an innoculation) was to intentionally give people cowpox in order to give them immunity to smallpox. Maybe it's too risky though for some reason? I dunno.

makomk 6y ago
The existing human coronaviruses aren't the most well-researched things around, but as I understand it there's evidence infection with them might actually be pretty dangerous to at-risk people. They just can't cause a pandemic because too many people are immune.
- eloff 6y ago
  The common cold is dangerous to people? The flu, sure, but I never heard of people dying from a cold. I'm sure it happens, but in comparable numbers though? I don't think so.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    Certainly not the same mortality rate, but the common cold does kill people every year due to pneumonia, asthma attacks, etc.
  - ejstronge 6y ago
    You may already know this, but for the sake of others, it’s important to realize that many viruses cause what we refer to as ‘common cold’. Coronaviruses are only a minor component of this set of viruses, as low as 1-2% in a study I read (can’t find it now; this value also depends on lots of factors).

aaron695 6y ago

It's mind blowing we are not putting more money, Billions of dollars, into why people are getting reinfected and around antibodies. It is fully expected people will be able to get the disease again in years. But it might be much sooner. And when you get it a second time it might not be as easy as the first. Your third winter and third time getting it might be death. This variable turns SARS-CoV-2 from it's current media accepted 'mild' to very serious, and we don't know what it is, these 3 months into the disease. Ok link talking about some of the issues - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/coronavirus-immunity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/coronavirus-immun...

redis_mlc 6y ago
Actually we don't have to do anything except let corona virus run its course. Just saved you billions in research.
- javagram 6y ago
  “Run its course” = 2-3% of the population die due to the virus. I think the billions in research might be a more humane alternative.

llort2 6y ago

It's very clear at this point that many of the deaths that are being reported as Covid deaths are actually in fact not. Also, the projections are so insanely off that these "scientists" should be held accountable for propagating lies and murdering the economy. I'm curious to learn what other "science" is demonstrably false. OPEN THE COUNTRY!