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WHO says Covid-19 pandemic is 'one big wave', not seasonal

51 points by stx 6y ago

artur_makly 6y ago
thats what they said about BTC.
- dgut 6y ago
  I must say at the expense of HN karma this made me laugh. A good joke should never be down-voted.
wintorez 6y ago
We can't possibly have enough data, and even enough time since the start of the pandemic to come to this conclusion. To know if something is seasonal, we must first let a couple of years pass and measure and compare the numbers with previous years, no? Disclaimer: I am not an expert. I believe in science, and its conclusions. All I wanted to know is if there's enough data points to plot a long-term trend.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  You're right, we won't know if this is an nadir or not in the whole thing, but she seems to be warning against the idea that this is the off season and we don't have to worry about it. I can't figure out who the target audience is for - the people who have written off COVID also seem to have written off the WHO, and those who haven't see that there's still a major ongoing problem.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - stx 6y ago
    I don't trust the WHO but I have certainly not written off COVID. I think the WHO has too much China influence but I think they may still have some accurate information. I don't know if its seasonal or not yet although I could see experts could start making predictions already. To me though it is not one big wave. Watching the numbers in the USA and other countries it appears that as restrictions are lifted cases rise. When they rise we add restrictions and they go down at a much slower rate. Its many smaller waves.
    - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
      Yeah, the relationship I implied doesn't actually work both ways - but anyone who has written off the WHO is sure not to take their advice, and I have a hard time seeing anyone who hasn't written off WHO ignoring COVID. But people who have written off the WHO could still not write off COVID. And based upon your assessment, you'd seem to agree with her point - "It’s going to be one big wave. It’s going to go up and down a bit. The best thing is to flatten it and turn it into just something lapping at your feet"
    - glennpratt 6y ago
      The fact that restrictions are effective or cause rate changes has nothing to do with the seasonal behavior of virus. The fact that restrictions don't cause immediate drops is pretty obvious A) there is time lag and B) no restrictions are 100% effective. It takes time for a change in the rate of spread to compound into reductions. "many smaller waves" does not seem relevant to understanding the virus and in fact is what they are warning against. Where I live, if you dig down, "waves" appear to be simple thing, super spreader events at essential businesses and churches. > WHO officials have been at pains to avoid describing a resurgence of COVID-19 cases like those in Hong Kong as “waves” as this suggests the virus is behaving in ways beyond human control, when in fact concerted action can slow its spread.
- deleted 6y ago
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- throwaway_kufu 6y ago
  I think there is enough information/data to be gained from the virus itself to determine if it has the same or similar characteristics of other corona viruses (like influenza) to support seasonality or season-less continuity.
  - sveme 6y ago
    Influenza is no Corona virus.
    - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
      And just to be clear, it's neither like the Coronavirus (COVID-19), nor is it any sort of Coronavirus - it's the Influenza virus.
- kn0where 6y ago
  It’s well into summer in the northern hemisphere and the virus is still spreading as rapidly as ever, so that would be pretty good reason to think it’s not seasonal like the flu, which dies down a lot in the summer.
  - icedchai 6y ago
    Maybe this is "died down"... That is scary to think. It could get worse in the winter. We just don't know.
    - mdgrech23 6y ago
      That's been my hunch too. It's going to be a dark winter.
    - stx 6y ago
      This is what worries me. Although I would imagine that if that was the case we might be seeing it in the southern hemisphere already.
      - lbebber 6y ago
        FWIW it is getting worse just now in the south of Brazil, where we have colder winters.
        stx 6y ago
        I always think of Brazil as hot and humid but I have never been there. How cold does it get in southern Brazil? I also never realized how large some countries are as far as population.
        lbebber 6y ago
        We've had -3ºC these weeks, which is about as cold as it gets here. It snows in some regions but it's a bit rare, once in a year in some places, once in a decade in others.
- covid2019 6y ago
  It wasn’t on westerners radars until February in any serious way. It spread through Winter 2019, Spring 2020, and is spreading during Summer 2020 when trying to “re-open.” Pretty sure measurable science to support the idea exists. Oh sure that trend may change, but come on, RIGHT NOW it’s literally showing no signs of fading away if we “live normally.” Why do you need 18 more months of plotting data to decide on what’s literally happening right before your eyes?
  - glofish 6y ago
    As counter intuitive as it sounds there is reason to believe that currently the penetration of the disease is much lower than in March. The modeling from IMHE claims that in March the number of daily new infections were above 250K whereas today are about 120K. https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america see the tab called Infections and Testing It just that we were measuring a lot many more people now. But it is true that in June there were fewer cases than today, but by far the most cases were in the Winter. How else would be in the situation where 10% of population is already seropostive and at least as many don't develop antibodies since their symptoms are mild, thus we are probably over 20% of people having had the disease.
    - knzhou 6y ago
      > The modeling from IMHE shows that in March the number of daily new infections were above 250K whereas today are about 120K. Yeah, but the IHME model is also extremely bad. It consists almost entirely of fitting a Gaussian to the number of cases over time. It’s mathematically impossible in their model for the case count to not go down.
      - glofish 6y ago
        I am not sure I follow. For any epidemic that is well underway it is impossible for the number cases not to go down over time, it is only the time frame that is under question perhaps.
    - covid2019 6y ago
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  > We can't possibly have enough data, and even enough time since the start of the pandemic to come to this conclusion. For, Pro, Against, Anti, WHO, CDC, vaccine, masks, orders... etc etc etc... I’ve been thinking this same thing since March. I’m absolutely fine being cautious and doing the right thing, but I think everyone pretends “the science is settled” on these things and it changes weekly - and it should because a lot of it is new - but now that’s used as a weapon by everyone invoked. Kinda sick of it. It should be totally OK to say “we don’t know, so we won’t guess”.
  - iso1631 6y ago
    We don't know, we won't guess, but we have to have a policy, and that policy is based on what we do know. If what we do know changes, we change the policy. The problem with that is that policy changing every week is not something that western populations can deal with, so policy changes have to be dampened somewhat.
    - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
      I don’t think I necessarily disagreed with that. The WHO saying it’s one big wave, is a guess though.
- fractal618 6y ago
  The more they say the less credibility they have
- gizmo 6y ago
  Covid-19 hardly mutates and people who were exposed to SARS 17 years ago have immunity to covid today. So yes, it’s pretty safe to say there won’t be a second wave of any significance. This was known since Februari and I don’t understand why you would think this disease will be seasonal when it isn’t anything like the seasonal viruses we know that mutate and don’t trigger good immune responses. (It is seasonal in the sense that the R0 is higher in the winter when people are cooped together, but once you've got sufficient exposure in the community a second wave won't happen regardless)
  - mynegation 6y ago
    > Covid-19 hardly mutates and people who were exposed to SARS 17 years ago have immunity to covid today. Citation, please. Any credible sources that I could find say that protection correlation with SARS is not clearly established and antibody levels to SARS fall off between 2-3 years after infection. > there won’t be a second wave of any significance There will or will not be but certainly not for the reasons you mention. Unlike flu and older coronaviruses, SARS-Cov-2 R_t seems to be driven exclusively by containment measures, not by seasonality, at least not at the present. > once you've got sufficient exposure in the community a second wave won't happen regardless We are nowhere near the "sufficient exposure" and it is already the most impactful pandemic in the last 100 years.
    - lbeltrame 6y ago
      > Any credible sources that I could find say that protection correlation with SARS is not clearly established and antibody levels to SARS fall off between 2-3 years after infection. It was T-cell immunity, not humoral immunity like with antibodies. Absence of antibodies != absence of immunity. And here's the citation: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z
- coronadisaster 6y ago
  They probably have more data than you do.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    They had more data in January as well, it didn't stop WHO from lying.
pstrateman 6y ago
Ok so we know for sure that it's seasonal. Got it.
haunter 6y ago
So it's seasonal then
DevX101 6y ago
Lots of non-epidemiologists in here with strong opinions on this.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  There are 6 comments, one of which is yours.
  - evan_ 6y ago
    30 minutes later and they were proven correct
nonamenoslogan 6y ago
Hmm, is it not a bit early to determine that?
jb775 6y ago
Can anyone trust anything coming from the WHO anymore?
- draw_down 6y ago
  That's the spirit! Only trust what they say when it comports with what you already believe
- iso1631 6y ago
  It's amazing how well brainwashing works
- hinkley 6y ago
  Pull over. License and registration please. We have to stop this narrative that we aren't going to listen to people until they are infallible. That's not how crisis management works. Or war, football, basketball, card games... Hedging your bets is the act of wasting resources constructively, so that if your worst case scenario happens, you aren't doomed. Faulting people for hedging their bets is going to get us all killed. It's been happening to scientists (first climate, now everybody) for years, and 'getting us all killed' was more figurative. Now we're doing it to doctors, and people are in fact dying. Of Covid (655k so far). Of measles (140k in 2018). Do you want a dark age? Because this is how you get a dark age.
  - lbeltrame 6y ago
    I don't agree with your statement. The matter has become so polarized that both sides are actually lying about the data. Just a few weeks ago, the Guardian quoted a study on Nature saying that asymptomatics were more infectious than symptomatic people. Except that the paper did not state anything like that, and even warned against using the results for policy reasons. On the same camp, a Wired article saying that "the press must watch on science" to avoid pushing untested vaccines on the population, yet omitting the fact that some side effects of the Moderna vaccine were on a dose no longer used for trials. And on the other side, we have conspiracy theorists and "skeptics" which only quote part of the studies which benefit their agenda, such as reporting only the more optimistic bound for the infection fatality rate. Or those who only quote negative bits about vaccines. And scientists (I'm one of them) are to blame, too. A lot of those reporting to the media gave predictions, talked in absolutes (at least speaking for my country). Few actually said "we don't know". I'm not aware of anyone saying "we got something wrong".
gridlockd 6y ago
We haven't even had one full season, so not calling it seasonal is premature, isn't it? Look at the numbers: We see that deaths are down and that illnesses are less severe (ICUs are not overwhelmed), even though daily infections are at all-time-highs in some regions. Coincidence, or perhaps due to seasonality? We also see that the virus can not be brought under control without permanent lockdowns. As soon as you open up, the virus starts spreading again. Countries that now have the virus "under control" have had a significant amount of uncontrolled spread beforehand. I've read several headlines along the lines of "resurgence of cases after opening up" or "second wave under way" in Europe. Then I look at the graphs and it's just not true. Cases are stable, you just have some daily variance.
- jxramos 6y ago
  I've wondered about the deaths being down and whether or not all the low hanging easy to pick off fruit from the virus' perspective is eaten up. The virus will then work its way through a healthier populace and not result in so many deaths. Do all pandemics work that way more or less?
  - gridlockd 6y ago
    I would assume so, but that alone doesn't explain why regions that haven't been exposed strongly until summer fare so much better than regions exposed earlier.
    - dabbledash 6y ago
      Just a guess, but maybe better isolation of the the most vulnerable (so the people getting sick now are younger), and more knowledge about how to treat those who end up hospitalized.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    It's hard to have this conversation with people. I believe that the morbidity rate is lower than we have estimated. Sure, we probably have a lot of people who have had the virus and didn't develop symptoms. But we are still on our way to a million dead, so that hardly matters. The other aspect the lackadaisical are ignoring is that the morbidity rate is only where it is because the number of critical patients is hovering around the carrying capacity of our medical infrastructure. More cases means a dog-leg in deaths because they will have to give up on people to save others. There will be no more heroic actions to save mom or dad once you can fill the ICU entirely with people with far better prognoses. Mom isn't going into the ICU because it's already full of athletes and people under 30. She's going on morphine and you can say goodbye over a phone.
president 6y ago
Doesn't that put it on par with the flu, of which is also a coronavirus?
- stx 6y ago
  I don't think flu strains are a type of coronavirus but I think some of the common cold strains are.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  Well, you picked a great username to make an incorrect assertion with.
- DanBC 6y ago
  Flu isn't a coronavirus. Flu is serious, which is why we have internationally coordinated campaigns to monitor circulating strains, develop vaccines, and get vulnerable people vaccinated. So far, covid-19 has been more severe than most flu years.
nafizh 6y ago
With all the debacles from WHO including the most disastrous one of trusting Chinese authorities and declaring there is no human to human transmission till January, I think I can be forgiven for not taking anything WHO says seriously anymore. WHO needs a leadership change at the least for getting back any sort of the authority they used to have.
- knzhou 6y ago
  This is one of those completely false things that people only believe is true by repetition. Go back and actually read the full set of WHO statements in mid-January. They have a bunch of statements saying that nations should get prepared, one saying that specific studies haven’t yet found hard evidence for person-to-person transmission (because at that point most of the cases they’d managed to find were tied to the market). The WHO never, ever said that it can’t be transmitted, and they absolutely never said that people should do nothing about COVID-19. They were urging nations to act for months before they actually did.
  - nafizh 6y ago
    Tweet on January 14 [0]. "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China" 0. https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152 https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - iso1631 6y ago
      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/refuses-rule-human-to-human-spread-chinas-mystery-virus-outbreak/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas... 14 January 2020 • 5:40pm > While clear information about the mysterious virus remains hazy, the WHO said on Tuesday that transmission between humans has not been ruled out. “From the information that we have it is possible that there is limited human-to-human transmission, potentially among families" The WHO report findings, and on Dec 14th there was limited evidence that it was spreading from human to human. All of that is true.
av3csr 6y ago
"People are still thinking about seasons. What we all need to get our heads around is this is a new virus and...this one is behaving differently [...] This virus likes all weather." I think the word "seasonal" is used here as a reference to weather rather than as a recurring time period.
DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
Many (most?) places around the world have changed the way they do things so as to limit the spread of coronavirus. These measures are currently seen as temporary. I wonder how long covid-19 needs to be a major threat before these "temporary" measures become permanent cultural / legal fixtures. E.g., updates to building codes, or conversion of executive emergency orders into permanent law. For example, modifying building codes for retail/office space to reduce risk of person-to-person transmission via bio-aerosol.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  It can never become permanent. Everyone will eventually be exposed to, and get, this virus. That rate of transmission is what needs to be controlled as much as possible.
alex_young 6y ago
See page 5 of daily WHO report for a nice graph of cases since inception: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200728-covid-19-sitrep-190.pdf?sfvrsn=fec17314_2 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati... COVID-19 is pretty clearly not subsiding in any meaningful way. For US data and projection based on models for each state: https://cv19.report/ https://cv19.report/
caiobegotti 6y ago
It's depressing to see rational voices saying they don't trust the WHO or tending to conspiratorial thoughts. The WHO has first-hand details about the pandemic and they update their views and adjust their recommendations accordingly even if we have the feeling they are acting slowly or back-and-forth (e.g. when there was a critical and global shortage of materials for masks to give to health workers and only months later started saying wearing masks was the ideal and people simply bought the "they changed their mind so they must have been wrong all the time" idea). Without WHO the world would effectively be a much worse place for a good chunk of the world population and many contagious diseases would be around right next to some rich nations's borders. If they say it's one big wave it's because this is what the current data and analysis suggest. Can it be seasonal after all? Nobody freaking knows, but this is the best line of thought we have so far so let's act accordingly and not let the guard down please.
- zests 6y ago
  A critical shortage of cloth? What's depressing is how politicized the virus has become. How someone feels about the job the WHO has done is probably tied more to their political beliefs than to reality. If we can't say that the WHO dropped the ball with their mask recommendations then we really can't say anything at all.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - DanBC 6y ago
    > If we can't say that the WHO dropped the ball with their mask recommendations You seem certain of this. Please post a link to the high quality evidence that you think WHO should have used to recommend mask wearing in the general public. This should be either a meta-analysis or RCT that shows a clear benefit. We have plenty of RCTs of masks to prevent spread of respiratory disease. It should be very easy to find one -- you're so certain you must have already read the research, and if the effect is so clear it'd be obvious to people doing the research.
  - goodside 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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napier 6y ago
This is premature at best and a potentially misleading statement by the WHO. Perhaps things haven't improved as much during the summer as we'd like, but seasonality is difficult to disaggregate from non-pharmaceutical countermeasures being lifted as we moved into warmer, sunnier weather in the northern hemisphere. Based on everything we know about infectious disease transmission and illness severity in general, infection rate indicators and case severity are likely to worsen throughout fall and become particularly nasty during the depths of winter. Seasonal reduction in sunlight exposure suppresses immunity (it's not just an issue of vitamin-D), bacteria and mold exposure upticks dramatically as cool, damp days predominate in much of the northern hemisphere. Air pollution increases as old weather reduces dispersal rates and people burn more fuel to heat their homes while driving more to avoid trudging through rain and snow in the gloom. And if they're not driving, then they're using public transport, and as we know, buses and trains are petri dishes. Some other infectious diseases are likely to play well with SARS2, as is observed with a variety of bacterial infections and common cold associated coronaviruses. On top of all this, populations are much more likely to huddle together indoors, often in poorly ventilated spaces which allows bioaerosols to concentrate, making a physical distancing impractical for many and multiplying viral exposure load. This can be mitigated by taking steps to upgrade ventilation, adding air cleaning and sterilization countermeasures, and at an individual level, wearing the best available masks and sealed eye protection while indoors with people outside of your quarantine bubble. Let's hope for the best while preparing for the worst.
- gizmo 6y ago
  This just means that the R0 is higher during the winter months, immunity will still accumulate to the point where the virus will be contained to small clusters here and there.
  - napier 6y ago
    Yes, it's an overview of the factors that will likely drive R0 to increase during winter months. R0 is highly context dependant variable, it is not a constant. What evidence are you drawing upon to suggest that immunity will have accumulated by then enough to limit outbreaks to small containable clusters?
deleted 6y ago
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s9w 6y ago
The WHO should not be trusted - specifically on covid. I will hold them accountable to their 3,4% claim to the day the people responsible will end up in jail.
- DanBC 6y ago
  > their 3,4% claim The fact you didn't understand a simple statistic isn't the WHO's fault.
  - s9w 6y ago
    "Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected"." That is the mother of all misleading comparisons. He, Ferguson and the other quacks must be held responsible. They are the ones who caused all this chaos.
    - DanBC 6y ago
      The fact you don't understand a simple statistic isn't WHO's fault. > "Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. REPORTED. From that speech > There is now a total of 90,893 reported cases of COVID-19 globally, and 3110 deaths. 3110 as a percentage of 90,893 is 3.42% > By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected" Why are you quoting this? How many people do you think die of seasonal flu each year?
      - s9w 6y ago
        If you're done insulting people maybe you'll actually read and understand.
        DanBC 6y ago
        So far everything you've said, in any thread, about covid-19 has been provably incorrect.
bengkoang 6y ago
They can't/won't acknowledge that Corona Virus is airborne transmission disease until its 5 month after its worldwide pandemic spread, yet they can predict that this is not seasonal pandemic, without sufficient data to support it.

51 points by stx 6y ago

artur_makly 6y ago

thats what they said about BTC.

dgut 6y ago
I must say at the expense of HN karma this made me laugh. A good joke should never be down-voted.

wintorez 6y ago

We can't possibly have enough data, and even enough time since the start of the pandemic to come to this conclusion. To know if something is seasonal, we must first let a couple of years pass and measure and compare the numbers with previous years, no? Disclaimer: I am not an expert. I believe in science, and its conclusions. All I wanted to know is if there's enough data points to plot a long-term trend.

SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
You're right, we won't know if this is an nadir or not in the whole thing, but she seems to be warning against the idea that this is the off season and we don't have to worry about it. I can't figure out who the target audience is for - the people who have written off COVID also seem to have written off the WHO, and those who haven't see that there's still a major ongoing problem.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- stx 6y ago
  I don't trust the WHO but I have certainly not written off COVID. I think the WHO has too much China influence but I think they may still have some accurate information. I don't know if its seasonal or not yet although I could see experts could start making predictions already. To me though it is not one big wave. Watching the numbers in the USA and other countries it appears that as restrictions are lifted cases rise. When they rise we add restrictions and they go down at a much slower rate. Its many smaller waves.
  - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
    Yeah, the relationship I implied doesn't actually work both ways - but anyone who has written off the WHO is sure not to take their advice, and I have a hard time seeing anyone who hasn't written off WHO ignoring COVID. But people who have written off the WHO could still not write off COVID. And based upon your assessment, you'd seem to agree with her point - "It’s going to be one big wave. It’s going to go up and down a bit. The best thing is to flatten it and turn it into just something lapping at your feet"
  - glennpratt 6y ago
    The fact that restrictions are effective or cause rate changes has nothing to do with the seasonal behavior of virus. The fact that restrictions don't cause immediate drops is pretty obvious A) there is time lag and B) no restrictions are 100% effective. It takes time for a change in the rate of spread to compound into reductions. "many smaller waves" does not seem relevant to understanding the virus and in fact is what they are warning against. Where I live, if you dig down, "waves" appear to be simple thing, super spreader events at essential businesses and churches. > WHO officials have been at pains to avoid describing a resurgence of COVID-19 cases like those in Hong Kong as “waves” as this suggests the virus is behaving in ways beyond human control, when in fact concerted action can slow its spread.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
throwaway_kufu 6y ago
I think there is enough information/data to be gained from the virus itself to determine if it has the same or similar characteristics of other corona viruses (like influenza) to support seasonality or season-less continuity.
- sveme 6y ago
  Influenza is no Corona virus.
  - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
    And just to be clear, it's neither like the Coronavirus (COVID-19), nor is it any sort of Coronavirus - it's the Influenza virus.
kn0where 6y ago
It’s well into summer in the northern hemisphere and the virus is still spreading as rapidly as ever, so that would be pretty good reason to think it’s not seasonal like the flu, which dies down a lot in the summer.
- icedchai 6y ago
  Maybe this is "died down"... That is scary to think. It could get worse in the winter. We just don't know.
  - mdgrech23 6y ago
    That's been my hunch too. It's going to be a dark winter.
  - stx 6y ago
    This is what worries me. Although I would imagine that if that was the case we might be seeing it in the southern hemisphere already.
    - lbebber 6y ago
      FWIW it is getting worse just now in the south of Brazil, where we have colder winters.
      - stx 6y ago
        I always think of Brazil as hot and humid but I have never been there. How cold does it get in southern Brazil? I also never realized how large some countries are as far as population.
        lbebber 6y ago
        We've had -3ºC these weeks, which is about as cold as it gets here. It snows in some regions but it's a bit rare, once in a year in some places, once in a decade in others.
covid2019 6y ago
It wasn’t on westerners radars until February in any serious way. It spread through Winter 2019, Spring 2020, and is spreading during Summer 2020 when trying to “re-open.” Pretty sure measurable science to support the idea exists. Oh sure that trend may change, but come on, RIGHT NOW it’s literally showing no signs of fading away if we “live normally.” Why do you need 18 more months of plotting data to decide on what’s literally happening right before your eyes?
- glofish 6y ago
  As counter intuitive as it sounds there is reason to believe that currently the penetration of the disease is much lower than in March. The modeling from IMHE claims that in March the number of daily new infections were above 250K whereas today are about 120K. https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america see the tab called Infections and Testing It just that we were measuring a lot many more people now. But it is true that in June there were fewer cases than today, but by far the most cases were in the Winter. How else would be in the situation where 10% of population is already seropostive and at least as many don't develop antibodies since their symptoms are mild, thus we are probably over 20% of people having had the disease.
  - knzhou 6y ago
    > The modeling from IMHE shows that in March the number of daily new infections were above 250K whereas today are about 120K. Yeah, but the IHME model is also extremely bad. It consists almost entirely of fitting a Gaussian to the number of cases over time. It’s mathematically impossible in their model for the case count to not go down.
    - glofish 6y ago
      I am not sure I follow. For any epidemic that is well underway it is impossible for the number cases not to go down over time, it is only the time frame that is under question perhaps.
  - covid2019 6y ago
SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
> We can't possibly have enough data, and even enough time since the start of the pandemic to come to this conclusion. For, Pro, Against, Anti, WHO, CDC, vaccine, masks, orders... etc etc etc... I’ve been thinking this same thing since March. I’m absolutely fine being cautious and doing the right thing, but I think everyone pretends “the science is settled” on these things and it changes weekly - and it should because a lot of it is new - but now that’s used as a weapon by everyone invoked. Kinda sick of it. It should be totally OK to say “we don’t know, so we won’t guess”.
- iso1631 6y ago
  We don't know, we won't guess, but we have to have a policy, and that policy is based on what we do know. If what we do know changes, we change the policy. The problem with that is that policy changing every week is not something that western populations can deal with, so policy changes have to be dampened somewhat.
  - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    I don’t think I necessarily disagreed with that. The WHO saying it’s one big wave, is a guess though.
fractal618 6y ago
The more they say the less credibility they have
gizmo 6y ago
Covid-19 hardly mutates and people who were exposed to SARS 17 years ago have immunity to covid today. So yes, it’s pretty safe to say there won’t be a second wave of any significance. This was known since Februari and I don’t understand why you would think this disease will be seasonal when it isn’t anything like the seasonal viruses we know that mutate and don’t trigger good immune responses. (It is seasonal in the sense that the R0 is higher in the winter when people are cooped together, but once you've got sufficient exposure in the community a second wave won't happen regardless)
- mynegation 6y ago
  > Covid-19 hardly mutates and people who were exposed to SARS 17 years ago have immunity to covid today. Citation, please. Any credible sources that I could find say that protection correlation with SARS is not clearly established and antibody levels to SARS fall off between 2-3 years after infection. > there won’t be a second wave of any significance There will or will not be but certainly not for the reasons you mention. Unlike flu and older coronaviruses, SARS-Cov-2 R_t seems to be driven exclusively by containment measures, not by seasonality, at least not at the present. > once you've got sufficient exposure in the community a second wave won't happen regardless We are nowhere near the "sufficient exposure" and it is already the most impactful pandemic in the last 100 years.
  - lbeltrame 6y ago
    > Any credible sources that I could find say that protection correlation with SARS is not clearly established and antibody levels to SARS fall off between 2-3 years after infection. It was T-cell immunity, not humoral immunity like with antibodies. Absence of antibodies != absence of immunity. And here's the citation: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z
coronadisaster 6y ago
They probably have more data than you do.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  They had more data in January as well, it didn't stop WHO from lying.

pstrateman 6y ago

Ok so we know for sure that it's seasonal. Got it.

haunter 6y ago

So it's seasonal then

DevX101 6y ago

Lots of non-epidemiologists in here with strong opinions on this.

secondcoming 6y ago
There are 6 comments, one of which is yours.
- evan_ 6y ago
  30 minutes later and they were proven correct

nonamenoslogan 6y ago

Hmm, is it not a bit early to determine that?

jb775 6y ago

Can anyone trust anything coming from the WHO anymore?

draw_down 6y ago
That's the spirit! Only trust what they say when it comports with what you already believe
iso1631 6y ago
It's amazing how well brainwashing works
hinkley 6y ago
Pull over. License and registration please. We have to stop this narrative that we aren't going to listen to people until they are infallible. That's not how crisis management works. Or war, football, basketball, card games... Hedging your bets is the act of wasting resources constructively, so that if your worst case scenario happens, you aren't doomed. Faulting people for hedging their bets is going to get us all killed. It's been happening to scientists (first climate, now everybody) for years, and 'getting us all killed' was more figurative. Now we're doing it to doctors, and people are in fact dying. Of Covid (655k so far). Of measles (140k in 2018). Do you want a dark age? Because this is how you get a dark age.
- lbeltrame 6y ago
  I don't agree with your statement. The matter has become so polarized that both sides are actually lying about the data. Just a few weeks ago, the Guardian quoted a study on Nature saying that asymptomatics were more infectious than symptomatic people. Except that the paper did not state anything like that, and even warned against using the results for policy reasons. On the same camp, a Wired article saying that "the press must watch on science" to avoid pushing untested vaccines on the population, yet omitting the fact that some side effects of the Moderna vaccine were on a dose no longer used for trials. And on the other side, we have conspiracy theorists and "skeptics" which only quote part of the studies which benefit their agenda, such as reporting only the more optimistic bound for the infection fatality rate. Or those who only quote negative bits about vaccines. And scientists (I'm one of them) are to blame, too. A lot of those reporting to the media gave predictions, talked in absolutes (at least speaking for my country). Few actually said "we don't know". I'm not aware of anyone saying "we got something wrong".

gridlockd 6y ago

We haven't even had one full season, so not calling it seasonal is premature, isn't it? Look at the numbers: We see that deaths are down and that illnesses are less severe (ICUs are not overwhelmed), even though daily infections are at all-time-highs in some regions. Coincidence, or perhaps due to seasonality? We also see that the virus can not be brought under control without permanent lockdowns. As soon as you open up, the virus starts spreading again. Countries that now have the virus "under control" have had a significant amount of uncontrolled spread beforehand. I've read several headlines along the lines of "resurgence of cases after opening up" or "second wave under way" in Europe. Then I look at the graphs and it's just not true. Cases are stable, you just have some daily variance.

jxramos 6y ago
I've wondered about the deaths being down and whether or not all the low hanging easy to pick off fruit from the virus' perspective is eaten up. The virus will then work its way through a healthier populace and not result in so many deaths. Do all pandemics work that way more or less?
- gridlockd 6y ago
  I would assume so, but that alone doesn't explain why regions that haven't been exposed strongly until summer fare so much better than regions exposed earlier.
  - dabbledash 6y ago
    Just a guess, but maybe better isolation of the the most vulnerable (so the people getting sick now are younger), and more knowledge about how to treat those who end up hospitalized.
- hinkley 6y ago
  It's hard to have this conversation with people. I believe that the morbidity rate is lower than we have estimated. Sure, we probably have a lot of people who have had the virus and didn't develop symptoms. But we are still on our way to a million dead, so that hardly matters. The other aspect the lackadaisical are ignoring is that the morbidity rate is only where it is because the number of critical patients is hovering around the carrying capacity of our medical infrastructure. More cases means a dog-leg in deaths because they will have to give up on people to save others. There will be no more heroic actions to save mom or dad once you can fill the ICU entirely with people with far better prognoses. Mom isn't going into the ICU because it's already full of athletes and people under 30. She's going on morphine and you can say goodbye over a phone.

president 6y ago

Doesn't that put it on par with the flu, of which is also a coronavirus?

stx 6y ago
I don't think flu strains are a type of coronavirus but I think some of the common cold strains are.
ceejayoz 6y ago
Well, you picked a great username to make an incorrect assertion with.
DanBC 6y ago
Flu isn't a coronavirus. Flu is serious, which is why we have internationally coordinated campaigns to monitor circulating strains, develop vaccines, and get vulnerable people vaccinated. So far, covid-19 has been more severe than most flu years.

nafizh 6y ago

With all the debacles from WHO including the most disastrous one of trusting Chinese authorities and declaring there is no human to human transmission till January, I think I can be forgiven for not taking anything WHO says seriously anymore. WHO needs a leadership change at the least for getting back any sort of the authority they used to have.

knzhou 6y ago
This is one of those completely false things that people only believe is true by repetition. Go back and actually read the full set of WHO statements in mid-January. They have a bunch of statements saying that nations should get prepared, one saying that specific studies haven’t yet found hard evidence for person-to-person transmission (because at that point most of the cases they’d managed to find were tied to the market). The WHO never, ever said that it can’t be transmitted, and they absolutely never said that people should do nothing about COVID-19. They were urging nations to act for months before they actually did.
- nafizh 6y ago
  Tweet on January 14 [0]. "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China" 0. https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152 https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - iso1631 6y ago
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/refuses-rule-human-to-human-spread-chinas-mystery-virus-outbreak/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas... 14 January 2020 • 5:40pm > While clear information about the mysterious virus remains hazy, the WHO said on Tuesday that transmission between humans has not been ruled out. “From the information that we have it is possible that there is limited human-to-human transmission, potentially among families" The WHO report findings, and on Dec 14th there was limited evidence that it was spreading from human to human. All of that is true.

av3csr 6y ago

"People are still thinking about seasons. What we all need to get our heads around is this is a new virus and...this one is behaving differently [...] This virus likes all weather." I think the word "seasonal" is used here as a reference to weather rather than as a recurring time period.

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago

Many (most?) places around the world have changed the way they do things so as to limit the spread of coronavirus. These measures are currently seen as temporary. I wonder how long covid-19 needs to be a major threat before these "temporary" measures become permanent cultural / legal fixtures. E.g., updates to building codes, or conversion of executive emergency orders into permanent law. For example, modifying building codes for retail/office space to reduce risk of person-to-person transmission via bio-aerosol.

secondcoming 6y ago
It can never become permanent. Everyone will eventually be exposed to, and get, this virus. That rate of transmission is what needs to be controlled as much as possible.

alex_young 6y ago

See page 5 of daily WHO report for a nice graph of cases since inception: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200728-covid-19-sitrep-190.pdf?sfvrsn=fec17314_2 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati... COVID-19 is pretty clearly not subsiding in any meaningful way. For US data and projection based on models for each state: https://cv19.report/ https://cv19.report/

caiobegotti 6y ago

It's depressing to see rational voices saying they don't trust the WHO or tending to conspiratorial thoughts. The WHO has first-hand details about the pandemic and they update their views and adjust their recommendations accordingly even if we have the feeling they are acting slowly or back-and-forth (e.g. when there was a critical and global shortage of materials for masks to give to health workers and only months later started saying wearing masks was the ideal and people simply bought the "they changed their mind so they must have been wrong all the time" idea). Without WHO the world would effectively be a much worse place for a good chunk of the world population and many contagious diseases would be around right next to some rich nations's borders. If they say it's one big wave it's because this is what the current data and analysis suggest. Can it be seasonal after all? Nobody freaking knows, but this is the best line of thought we have so far so let's act accordingly and not let the guard down please.

zests 6y ago
A critical shortage of cloth? What's depressing is how politicized the virus has become. How someone feels about the job the WHO has done is probably tied more to their political beliefs than to reality. If we can't say that the WHO dropped the ball with their mask recommendations then we really can't say anything at all.
- deleted 6y ago
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- DanBC 6y ago
  > If we can't say that the WHO dropped the ball with their mask recommendations You seem certain of this. Please post a link to the high quality evidence that you think WHO should have used to recommend mask wearing in the general public. This should be either a meta-analysis or RCT that shows a clear benefit. We have plenty of RCTs of masks to prevent spread of respiratory disease. It should be very easy to find one -- you're so certain you must have already read the research, and if the effect is so clear it'd be obvious to people doing the research.
- goodside 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

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napier 6y ago

This is premature at best and a potentially misleading statement by the WHO. Perhaps things haven't improved as much during the summer as we'd like, but seasonality is difficult to disaggregate from non-pharmaceutical countermeasures being lifted as we moved into warmer, sunnier weather in the northern hemisphere. Based on everything we know about infectious disease transmission and illness severity in general, infection rate indicators and case severity are likely to worsen throughout fall and become particularly nasty during the depths of winter. Seasonal reduction in sunlight exposure suppresses immunity (it's not just an issue of vitamin-D), bacteria and mold exposure upticks dramatically as cool, damp days predominate in much of the northern hemisphere. Air pollution increases as old weather reduces dispersal rates and people burn more fuel to heat their homes while driving more to avoid trudging through rain and snow in the gloom. And if they're not driving, then they're using public transport, and as we know, buses and trains are petri dishes. Some other infectious diseases are likely to play well with SARS2, as is observed with a variety of bacterial infections and common cold associated coronaviruses. On top of all this, populations are much more likely to huddle together indoors, often in poorly ventilated spaces which allows bioaerosols to concentrate, making a physical distancing impractical for many and multiplying viral exposure load. This can be mitigated by taking steps to upgrade ventilation, adding air cleaning and sterilization countermeasures, and at an individual level, wearing the best available masks and sealed eye protection while indoors with people outside of your quarantine bubble. Let's hope for the best while preparing for the worst.

gizmo 6y ago
This just means that the R0 is higher during the winter months, immunity will still accumulate to the point where the virus will be contained to small clusters here and there.
- napier 6y ago
  Yes, it's an overview of the factors that will likely drive R0 to increase during winter months. R0 is highly context dependant variable, it is not a constant. What evidence are you drawing upon to suggest that immunity will have accumulated by then enough to limit outbreaks to small containable clusters?

deleted 6y ago

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s9w 6y ago

The WHO should not be trusted - specifically on covid. I will hold them accountable to their 3,4% claim to the day the people responsible will end up in jail.

DanBC 6y ago
> their 3,4% claim The fact you didn't understand a simple statistic isn't the WHO's fault.
- s9w 6y ago
  "Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected"." That is the mother of all misleading comparisons. He, Ferguson and the other quacks must be held responsible. They are the ones who caused all this chaos.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    The fact you don't understand a simple statistic isn't WHO's fault. > "Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. REPORTED. From that speech > There is now a total of 90,893 reported cases of COVID-19 globally, and 3110 deaths. 3110 as a percentage of 90,893 is 3.42% > By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected" Why are you quoting this? How many people do you think die of seasonal flu each year?
    - s9w 6y ago
      If you're done insulting people maybe you'll actually read and understand.
      - DanBC 6y ago
        So far everything you've said, in any thread, about covid-19 has been provably incorrect.

bengkoang 6y ago

They can't/won't acknowledge that Corona Virus is airborne transmission disease until its 5 month after its worldwide pandemic spread, yet they can predict that this is not seasonal pandemic, without sufficient data to support it.