7 ms·

The false promise of herd immunity for Covid-19

39 points by jupp0r 6y ago

godelski 6y ago
Can we stop referring to herd immunity through natural inoculation as "herd immunity?" Herd immunity includes vaccination and has for a long time been part of the argument for vaccines. It seems weird that we've made this paradigm shift which I find potentially dangerous and at best disingenuous. It also makes population wide immunity conversations difficult because people are using the same term with pre-covid and post-covid meaning. Edit: I should also note that this article uses both terms which makes it difficult to read and confusing.
CyberRabbi 6y ago
Hasn’t this infection already run its course? Ignoring the fact that we’re way past the peak rate of infections (*hospitalizations, not simply cases), the likelihood of fatality is somewhere in the 0.3-0.01% range. That doesn’t mean it’s harmless just that we’ve dealt with infections of this scale before with orders of magnitude less disruption to life. I’m no fan of trump but looking at the data I’m having a hard time understanding why this is still a topline global concern. If I am factually incorrect please point out how.
- elihu 6y ago
  Worldometer currently shows the rate of new infections worldwide increasing sharply. In the U.S. we just surpassed our record of new infections per day set back in July, with an upward slope that's going to continue to who knows where. There are some places that have Covid-19 reasonably under control, but on average we're in the worst of it right now as far as we know. (The peak in spring might possibly have been worse, we just didn't have adequate testing at the time to know for sure. But right now we know cases are on the rise, and it's not just large population centers but rural areas too.) https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > but looking at the data I’m having a hard time understanding why this is still a topline global concern Same reason as "Summer of the Shark". (When US media exhaustively covered shark attacks, during a year when shark attacks were a little below average.) It's news, so there's a lot of coverage, which makes it news.
  - tathougies 6y ago
    Yeah, except this summer of shark is being used to drive people into poverty and has caused non-COVID deaths and harm to many more, such as the deceased babies unable to receive medical attention in Australia due to the interstate border closures.
    - loktarogar 6y ago
      They were able to receive the medical attention, but returning them would have been complicated - so the powers decided to just not do it. A dumb decision that could have been made outside of COVID times for any number of reasons.
      - foobar1962 6y ago
        I’m an Aussie and that's the first I heard about babies dying due to border closures (but I could have missed the memo). Far more scandalous (and getting more media coverage) is the fact that Victorian football teams had to relocate to Queensland to continue their training.
        lazyasciiart 6y ago
        Twin baby dies during childbirth after a rural woman has to wait for transport to Sydney instead of Brisbane -https://www.sbs.com.au/news/unborn-twin-baby-dies-in-nsw-after-queensland-border-confusion https://www.sbs.com.au/news/unborn-twin-baby-dies-in-nsw-aft... 4 babies with cardiac problems have died in Adelaide, but it appears to have been a decision in SA not to send them to the pediatric cardiac unit in Melbourne (their normal referral practice) or anywhere else - victoria says they weren't asked and would not have rejected them. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-22/unanswered-questions-over-baby-deaths-at-adelaide-hospital/12801108 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-22/unanswered-questions-...
- exogeny 6y ago
  Not an expert by any means, but on a quick Google, it appears that the most aggressive estimate of how many people have gotten the virus is 10%[0]. Herd immunity requires a much, much higher number than that -- especially if we want our lives to go back to normal -- which is why you see the Rt rates[1] and rate of new cases going up very sharply, even if you account for the reporting lag. EDIT: This thread is already getting brigaded by people who apparently think of this as a hoax or some kind of conspiracy so I'm going to leave and take my citations and facts from the article with me. [0]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/covid-19-may-have-infected-10-percent-world-s-population-n1242118 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/covid-19-may-have-infecte... [1]: https://rt.live https://rt.live (US-centric)
  - henrikschroder 6y ago
    > Herd immunity requires a much, much higher number than that The jury is very, very much out on that. The 70% number bandied about is extremely naively calculated, it assumes 0 pre-existing resistance or immunity (Which we now know exists), and it assumes all humans are homogenous sphere-shaped balls floating around in a gaseous society, which is also obviously not true. There are countless reports and studies on transmission among children in school settings, and they pretty much unilaterally state that there's very little spread happening there, contrary to everyone's "gut feeling" about kids being snot-nosed petri dishes.
    - mattycakes 6y ago
      Yeah, the article completely disputes this point. I suggest you read the section titled "How high is the threshold for SARS-CoV-2?"
      - henrikschroder 6y ago
        > Yeah, the article completely disputes this point. No, the article explicitly says "Estimates of the threshold for SARS-CoV-2 range from 10% to 70% or even more", and then it sort of handwaves away any studies showing lower numbers, and highlights the ones showing the higher numbers. That is pretty much the definition of the jury being out on the matter.
- est31 6y ago
  Your fatality rate number is too low. Tens of millions of people would die a preventable death if we let it run its course, and many more would get disabilities from the disease. The economic cost would be tremendous.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - anoncake 6y ago
    > many more would get disabilities from the disease. That's a myth. Even "long" Covid only lasts for a few months.
    - est31 6y ago
      There are people who lost limbs because of clotting. Just imagine you wake up and don't have any legs any more. Like in a horror movie. Also, disability doesn't have to be permanent. Broke your leg and need a wheelchair? You're still disabled for the duration you need the wheelchair. ARDS recovery caused by COVID can take months.
      - anoncake 6y ago
        > There are people who lost limbs because of clotting. How many? > Also, disability doesn't have to be permanent. Broke your leg and need a wheelchair? You're still disabled for the duration you need the wheelchair. Why are you arguing semantics instead of writing something constructive? Yes, technically you are disabled if you have "a physical or mental condition that limits [your] movements, senses, or activities". That obviously happens to everyone who gets sick.
- anticristi 6y ago
  My understanding is that the virus is a pretty tricky one: Its fatality rate is low enough to spread rather unnoticed, but high enough to kill vulnerable people. Given its exponential spread, there is a risk that letting it completely uncontrolled will very quickly fill hospital beds and that's when fatality rate becomes high. Edit: I'm unsure why OP was downvoted. The question is legitimate and deserves an answer.
  - cheschire 6y ago
    It's a legitimate question that has been asked every hour of every day by some person in the english speaking world, and therefore is highly searchable.
    - anticristi 6y ago
      Thanks for the clarification. I'm split on such issues. On one hand, it's tiring to keep putting out fires. On the other hand, I feel the answer one gets depends too heavily on what "side" of the Internet the search algorithm placed you, so it's not only OP's fault that he didn't get the right answer yet.
      - foobar1962 6y ago
        > ... it's not only OP's fault that he didn't get the right answer yet. With respect, people should be looking at facts and coming to their own answers/conclusions. That strategy is more immune (sorry) from search-algorithm errors.
  - CyberRabbi 6y ago
    I understand that concept. If we acknowledge there is a well understood set of people who are unusually vulnerable to this otherwise low-fatality rate infection, why is there still such a large disruption to the general population? Why not simply take precautions only with that Relatively small vulnerable subset?
    - mattycakes 6y ago
- getfactsright 6y ago
  Wow. 7.5 months in and people still just spreading absolute nonsense on this website. Try getting the basic facts right. The US is a day or two away from beating our all-time moving-7-day average. We're currently setting new daily records for infection levels. The EU isn't much better off. I also already knew this just from the bare minimum amount of attention I'm paying to the news, and then sought confirmation from the CDC to back it up. If only others could be bothered. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrendscases https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrends... Look in the bottom left hand corner, just skim through the "new cases" and "7day moving averages" through out the last 8 months. And actually the graph is showing it visually, you can literally just look at it and see the blue spike ... the highest daily infection rate yet, and the weekly trend line is moving up too. Basic, basic, basic facts.
- tzs 6y ago
  > Hasn’t this infection already run its course? The US is averaging more confirmed new cases per day now than it has at any prior time, and the rate is going up. Here's a graph [1]. [1] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countries-normalized&highlight=United%20States&show=25-lg&y=both&scale=log&data=cases-daily-7&data-source=jhu&xaxis=left#countries-normalized http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countri...
  - CyberRabbi 6y ago
    What about deaths? Hospitalizations?
    - elihu 6y ago
      Deaths are mostly holding steady or gradually rising at about a thousand a day in the U.S., but it usually takes a few weeks for an increase in the number of cases to be reflected in the death statistics. In general, therapeutics are better than they were at the start. Fewer infected people need ventilators and fewer of them are dying. I don't know what the details are, but apparently doctors are learning what works and what doesn't.
    - lazyasciiart 6y ago
      Hospitals in Utah, Idaho and Texas are full. The numbers aren't nearly as high as they have been in previous peaks, but they're on a steep upward slope https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-currently-hospitalized https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-currently-hospitali...
WalterBright 6y ago
Without a vaccine, the only option is herd immunity, regardless of lockdowns. Note that our reaction to Covid has caused many deaths, such as from people avoiding treatment for other diseases, efforts to control other deadly diseases like tuberculosis being shut down or set back, economic devastation, etc. I haven't seen any analysis yet trading off: 1. the Covid deaths from waiting for a vaccine 2. the risk of releasing the vaccine early 3. the other deaths I mentioned from our reaction to Covid with the metric being a combined "minimum number of deaths".
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Heard Immunity only works without a vaccine if immunity lasts more than a couple of months For the best cases you need ~40%/50% of people with immunity that lasts for months. (And this is a recent revised best case) Now if you check the serological analysis of even hard hit places and you see there's still a way to go until those 50%. And it is suspected infection induced immunity goes away more quickly than we need it to.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    So far, I've only heard of 3 documented cases of reinfection.
- mattycakes 6y ago
  I kinda sorta feel like basic public health precautions that public health experts and epidemiologist are calling for could......... also.... be.... an.... option............
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    I doubt these can be maintained indefinitely, hence herd immunity whether we like it or not.
    - lazyasciiart 6y ago
      Another option is that it just becomes normal/accepted for people to die of covid - like heart disease and cancer.
anticristi 6y ago
Swedish resident here. I'm not sure why media keeps characterising the Swedish strategy as "herd immunity". I would rather characterize it as sustainable: i.e., find minimum and stable restrictions that keep the spread below 1. It balances fatality reduction and disturbance avoidance, because the population has time to adjust and internalise the restrictions. Contrast that to countries having mass lockdown protests or our neighbors who add and remove restrictions on a weekly basis. Another "inconvenient truth", thanks to good welfare, there is not "come to work sick" heroism in Sweden. You are basically paid to keep your kids and yourself at home, for as little as a running nose.
- jordanbeiber 6y ago
  Fellow resident - I’ve been home with all three of my kids whole of last week because runny nose. Pre-schools and schools are super strict. It’s tough times as a parent, kids have runny noses in the autumn/winter... I’m 100% WFH anyways because this is the general recommendation - if you can stay home.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  I'd add a couple more factors: - More people working from home, both given the type of job they do and the trust by bosses (as opposed to France or Italy where a government suggestion to WFH means almost nothing to the bosses) - Less people per household - People might just literally keep their space more
- jeandejean 6y ago
  That's because the media are craving for examples to prove their points, but if they don't have facts, they just fake them...
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
  Because the strategy is herd immunity by every definition except official labeling. That is not a media characterisation, it is the standard understanding in medical communities. Eg ". “They did not want to put it bluntly, but seeking herd immunity was always inherent in the Swedish strategy,” says Anders Bjorkman, a professor of infectious diseases at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm." https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2376 https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2376
jordanbeiber 6y ago
In foreign press, Sweden is always put forward in the herd immunity discussion - this is wrong. Our version of CDC agency have clearly stated all along that herd immunity is not the goal. Life in Sweden changed dramatically with the outbreak and the number of deaths have a few reasonable explanations, IMO. The Swedish “CDC” have pushed for long term resilience and believe that strict prolonged lockdowns will be impossible to maintain. Other countries have had a far more political response to this pandemic. Second wave obviously pushing forwards - other Euro countries locking down again. This is kind of ironic as Swedes probably would put up with being locked down better than most other populations. We’re famous for “waiting in line” and following signs and directions - we would suffer lockdown, but in general we simply follow directions, so the idea was it would be ineffective.
- barumi 6y ago
  > The Swedish “CDC” have pushed for long term resilience and believe that strict prolonged lockdowns will be impossible to maintain. > Other countries have had a far more political response to this pandemic. Spain suffered so much from the covid epidemic that they had to commandeer hotels and convention centers to serve as makeshift emergency hospitals to receive critical covid19 cases. Death rates were so high that in Madrid they had to commandeer an ice rink to serve as a makeshift morgue. Spain's investment in a lockdown allowed them to contain and lower the daily death count from nearly a thousand to single-digits, and reign back spread rates. The lockdown decision in other countries is not political. It's common sense. Have people already forgot what "flatten the curve" means?
  - jordanbeiber 6y ago
    Sweden have experienced the same “reining in” of infection and death rates without lockdown. Perhaps lockdowns are required elsewhere due to cultural differences. This is also partly an explanation for Swedens relatively high death rates - our completely botched integration of immigrants over the years. But how many and harsh lockdown can a population endure?
    - 6y ago
just-juan-post 6y ago
That is the message often repeated by China. This article is well written with credible verified sources and screenshots. China has been pushing this narrative the this article lays out all the evidence: China’s Global Lockdown Propaganda https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-covid-lockdown-propaganda https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-covid... > In March, Chinese state media began describing the strategy of “herd immunity”—allowing the coronavirus to spread among the young and healthy—as a violation of “human rights,” an Orwellian formulation given that lockdowns are essentially a blanket suspension of rights. > Initially, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also opted for herd immunity. But on March 13, suspicious accounts began storming his Twitter feed and likening his plan to genocide. This language almost never appears in Johnson’s feed before March 12, and several of the accounts were hardly active before then. Britain locked down on March 23. Please read and share.
mattycakes 6y ago
Judging from the few comments here, I doubt the article has been read. Absurd that the US averages DAILY more deaths than South Korea has had throughout the entire course of the pandemic.
- exogeny 6y ago
  I honestly can't tell if it's that, or the people commenting on HN on this topic are sociopaths who are unfazed at the prospect of hundreds of thousands of unnecessary, needless deaths in the pursuit of potentially being right.
TooCreative 6y ago
Man is this article weak and bloated. It needs pages and pages to make two points: 1: Going for herd immunity has caused more infections and deaths in countries that tried. 2: We are not sure if once infected people will stay immune. The first point is completely nonsensical. Of course more people are infected when you allow more people to be infected. That idea of this approach is that you come out ahead in the long run. The second is a valid point.
- watwut 6y ago
  The first point is not completely nonsensical. The treatment methods improve over time, even if we don't have cure. People being sick later have better chance. The healthcare system overload happening or not does matter a lot too. People not being sick at the same time matter.
  - TooCreative 6y ago
    Imagine they said that investing money is a bad idea. And their argument is that people who tried had less money to spend in the short term. Then I come and say "Duh! That is the point of investing.". Now you point out all the great stuff one could buy in the short term. Yes. That is the point of investing. You trade a negative effect in the short term for a positive effect in the long term. Nobody ever said it is a free lunch.
    - barumi 6y ago
      You failed to make any point about the reason why stating the fact that covid19 kills is nonsense. In fact, the way you chose to frame the consequences of allowing an epidemic to spread as "point out all the great stuff one could [do otherwise] in the short term" makes it quite clear that your point, focused on your own personal convenience alone, is absurd to begin with.
- barumi 6y ago
  > The first point is completely nonsensical. Of course more people are infected when you allow more people to be infected. Sadly it is not nonsense to state the fact that Sweden's approach caused more deaths than what would otherwise have happened. The reason is quite simple: some people somehow believe the opposite. There's a crackpot section of society that somehow and unexplainedly believe that lockdowns and wearing masks and any change to their personal routine causes more harm than a disease that already killed over a million patients. Then there are the inconvenient facts that: a) patients do get reinfected, b) allowing an epidemic to run wild creates conditions for it to mutate and change in unpredictable ways, including becoming more deadly and damaging than what it is right now.
Consultant32452 6y ago
Herd immunity can be achieved in two ways. Roughly, "everyone gets it" or "vaccine." If herd immunity doesn't stick, then a vaccine will not be our savior and we better start thinking in terms of what a new normal looks like. And we need to think of this new normal in terms of basically forever.
- mattycakes 6y ago
  Please read the article.
  - godelski 6y ago
    I don't think the person you're replying to is saying something that implies they didn't read the article. The article uses the term in two ways, which makes it disingenuous. > Will herd immunity work? Many researchers say pursuing herd immunity is a bad idea. “Attempting to reach herd immunity via targeted infections is simply ludicrous,” Andersen says. “In the US, probably one to two million people would die.” Then they basically answer no. At the end of the article they quote Andersen again > “There’s no magic wand we can use here,” Andersen says. “We have to face reality — never before have we reached herd immunity via natural infection with a novel virus, and SARS-CoV-2 is unfortunately no different.” Vaccination is the only ethical path to herd immunity, he says.
guscost 6y ago
Well I read the whole thing, and... it is just open psychological warfare at this point. Not even a mention of variation in susceptibility. Nothing about how at least 60% of people are not threatened by the virus in the first place, and we could have been finding and inoculating those people for the better part of a year now. This is not an exaggeration or an emotional outburst: The folks pushing deadly propaganda based on these garbage models are war criminals.
- rsfern 6y ago
  > finding and inoculating There’s still no vaccine, so do you really mean identifying and otherwise protecting the vulnerable group of people? Do you specifically mean variolation [0]? If so, is there evidence that would be safe and if effective? > war criminals I think this is a bit much. Sure, you could argue some other flavor of criminality, but “war crimes” has a very specific meaning that doesn’t fit here IMO 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation
  - guscost 6y ago
    I guess what I mean is more like a “crime against humanity”, thanks. Gaslighting civilians and deliberately harming public health to score a political/PSYWAR victory is extremely messed up, in any case.
madpot 6y ago
They lay about lock down to be effective. Let’s compare death rates in Spain, Italy and others most restrictive countries with Swedes. No difference or even more deaths in lockdowned population.
ta8645 6y ago
Why does Nature make it political in the very first line? > Why proposals to largely let the virus run its course — embraced by Donald Trump’s administration and others — could bring “untold death and suffering”. This should just be a description of the scientific facts in order to maintain objectivity. Let the political people run with it afterword. And it doesn't even say that it emphatically "will bring <bad thing>", it uses the weasel words "could bring <bad thing>". This seems politically motivated; at the very least they've made it easy to mistake this as more political than scientific.
madpot 6y ago
They lay about lock down to be effective. Let’s compare death rates in Spain, Italy and others most restrictive countries with Swedes. No difference or even more deaths in lockdowned population.
dazag 6y ago
If they are publishing this BS in nature, I wonder why we are having so muche science problems... "Science" is corrupted as everything is in a society today, because if you have to eat to live, you will do anything, so in this society means, anything that gives me money it's alright. It happen everywhere, from the richest doctors to the poorest people. We are pushed that way. Scientists too, so there you go, decades of bullshit feeding us making us.

39 points by jupp0r 6y ago

Can we stop referring to herd immunity through natural inoculation as "herd immunity?" Herd immunity includes vaccination and has for a long time been part of the argument for vaccines. It seems weird that we've made this paradigm shift which I find potentially dangerous and at best disingenuous. It also makes population wide immunity conversations difficult because people are using the same term with pre-covid and post-covid meaning. Edit: I should also note that this article uses both terms which makes it difficult to read and confusing.

CyberRabbi 6y ago

Hasn’t this infection already run its course? Ignoring the fact that we’re way past the peak rate of infections (*hospitalizations, not simply cases), the likelihood of fatality is somewhere in the 0.3-0.01% range. That doesn’t mean it’s harmless just that we’ve dealt with infections of this scale before with orders of magnitude less disruption to life. I’m no fan of trump but looking at the data I’m having a hard time understanding why this is still a topline global concern. If I am factually incorrect please point out how.

elihu 6y ago
Worldometer currently shows the rate of new infections worldwide increasing sharply. In the U.S. we just surpassed our record of new infections per day set back in July, with an upward slope that's going to continue to who knows where. There are some places that have Covid-19 reasonably under control, but on average we're in the worst of it right now as far as we know. (The peak in spring might possibly have been worse, we just didn't have adequate testing at the time to know for sure. But right now we know cases are on the rise, and it's not just large population centers but rural areas too.) https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> but looking at the data I’m having a hard time understanding why this is still a topline global concern Same reason as "Summer of the Shark". (When US media exhaustively covered shark attacks, during a year when shark attacks were a little below average.) It's news, so there's a lot of coverage, which makes it news.
- tathougies 6y ago
  Yeah, except this summer of shark is being used to drive people into poverty and has caused non-COVID deaths and harm to many more, such as the deceased babies unable to receive medical attention in Australia due to the interstate border closures.
  - loktarogar 6y ago
    They were able to receive the medical attention, but returning them would have been complicated - so the powers decided to just not do it. A dumb decision that could have been made outside of COVID times for any number of reasons.
    - foobar1962 6y ago
      I’m an Aussie and that's the first I heard about babies dying due to border closures (but I could have missed the memo). Far more scandalous (and getting more media coverage) is the fact that Victorian football teams had to relocate to Queensland to continue their training.
      - lazyasciiart 6y ago
        Twin baby dies during childbirth after a rural woman has to wait for transport to Sydney instead of Brisbane -https://www.sbs.com.au/news/unborn-twin-baby-dies-in-nsw-after-queensland-border-confusion https://www.sbs.com.au/news/unborn-twin-baby-dies-in-nsw-aft... 4 babies with cardiac problems have died in Adelaide, but it appears to have been a decision in SA not to send them to the pediatric cardiac unit in Melbourne (their normal referral practice) or anywhere else - victoria says they weren't asked and would not have rejected them. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-22/unanswered-questions-over-baby-deaths-at-adelaide-hospital/12801108 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-22/unanswered-questions-...
exogeny 6y ago
Not an expert by any means, but on a quick Google, it appears that the most aggressive estimate of how many people have gotten the virus is 10%[0]. Herd immunity requires a much, much higher number than that -- especially if we want our lives to go back to normal -- which is why you see the Rt rates[1] and rate of new cases going up very sharply, even if you account for the reporting lag. EDIT: This thread is already getting brigaded by people who apparently think of this as a hoax or some kind of conspiracy so I'm going to leave and take my citations and facts from the article with me. [0]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/covid-19-may-have-infected-10-percent-world-s-population-n1242118 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/covid-19-may-have-infecte... [1]: https://rt.live https://rt.live (US-centric)
- henrikschroder 6y ago
  > Herd immunity requires a much, much higher number than that The jury is very, very much out on that. The 70% number bandied about is extremely naively calculated, it assumes 0 pre-existing resistance or immunity (Which we now know exists), and it assumes all humans are homogenous sphere-shaped balls floating around in a gaseous society, which is also obviously not true. There are countless reports and studies on transmission among children in school settings, and they pretty much unilaterally state that there's very little spread happening there, contrary to everyone's "gut feeling" about kids being snot-nosed petri dishes.
  - mattycakes 6y ago
    Yeah, the article completely disputes this point. I suggest you read the section titled "How high is the threshold for SARS-CoV-2?"
    - henrikschroder 6y ago
      > Yeah, the article completely disputes this point. No, the article explicitly says "Estimates of the threshold for SARS-CoV-2 range from 10% to 70% or even more", and then it sort of handwaves away any studies showing lower numbers, and highlights the ones showing the higher numbers. That is pretty much the definition of the jury being out on the matter.
est31 6y ago
Your fatality rate number is too low. Tens of millions of people would die a preventable death if we let it run its course, and many more would get disabilities from the disease. The economic cost would be tremendous.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- anoncake 6y ago
  > many more would get disabilities from the disease. That's a myth. Even "long" Covid only lasts for a few months.
  - est31 6y ago
    There are people who lost limbs because of clotting. Just imagine you wake up and don't have any legs any more. Like in a horror movie. Also, disability doesn't have to be permanent. Broke your leg and need a wheelchair? You're still disabled for the duration you need the wheelchair. ARDS recovery caused by COVID can take months.
    - anoncake 6y ago
      > There are people who lost limbs because of clotting. How many? > Also, disability doesn't have to be permanent. Broke your leg and need a wheelchair? You're still disabled for the duration you need the wheelchair. Why are you arguing semantics instead of writing something constructive? Yes, technically you are disabled if you have "a physical or mental condition that limits [your] movements, senses, or activities". That obviously happens to everyone who gets sick.
anticristi 6y ago
My understanding is that the virus is a pretty tricky one: Its fatality rate is low enough to spread rather unnoticed, but high enough to kill vulnerable people. Given its exponential spread, there is a risk that letting it completely uncontrolled will very quickly fill hospital beds and that's when fatality rate becomes high. Edit: I'm unsure why OP was downvoted. The question is legitimate and deserves an answer.
- cheschire 6y ago
  It's a legitimate question that has been asked every hour of every day by some person in the english speaking world, and therefore is highly searchable.
  - anticristi 6y ago
    Thanks for the clarification. I'm split on such issues. On one hand, it's tiring to keep putting out fires. On the other hand, I feel the answer one gets depends too heavily on what "side" of the Internet the search algorithm placed you, so it's not only OP's fault that he didn't get the right answer yet.
    - foobar1962 6y ago
      > ... it's not only OP's fault that he didn't get the right answer yet. With respect, people should be looking at facts and coming to their own answers/conclusions. That strategy is more immune (sorry) from search-algorithm errors.
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  I understand that concept. If we acknowledge there is a well understood set of people who are unusually vulnerable to this otherwise low-fatality rate infection, why is there still such a large disruption to the general population? Why not simply take precautions only with that Relatively small vulnerable subset?
  - mattycakes 6y ago
getfactsright 6y ago
Wow. 7.5 months in and people still just spreading absolute nonsense on this website. Try getting the basic facts right. The US is a day or two away from beating our all-time moving-7-day average. We're currently setting new daily records for infection levels. The EU isn't much better off. I also already knew this just from the bare minimum amount of attention I'm paying to the news, and then sought confirmation from the CDC to back it up. If only others could be bothered. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrendscases https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrends... Look in the bottom left hand corner, just skim through the "new cases" and "7day moving averages" through out the last 8 months. And actually the graph is showing it visually, you can literally just look at it and see the blue spike ... the highest daily infection rate yet, and the weekly trend line is moving up too. Basic, basic, basic facts.
tzs 6y ago
> Hasn’t this infection already run its course? The US is averaging more confirmed new cases per day now than it has at any prior time, and the rate is going up. Here's a graph [1]. [1] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countries-normalized&highlight=United%20States&show=25-lg&y=both&scale=log&data=cases-daily-7&data-source=jhu&xaxis=left#countries-normalized http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countri...
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  What about deaths? Hospitalizations?
  - elihu 6y ago
    Deaths are mostly holding steady or gradually rising at about a thousand a day in the U.S., but it usually takes a few weeks for an increase in the number of cases to be reflected in the death statistics. In general, therapeutics are better than they were at the start. Fewer infected people need ventilators and fewer of them are dying. I don't know what the details are, but apparently doctors are learning what works and what doesn't.
  - lazyasciiart 6y ago
    Hospitals in Utah, Idaho and Texas are full. The numbers aren't nearly as high as they have been in previous peaks, but they're on a steep upward slope https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-currently-hospitalized https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-currently-hospitali...

WalterBright 6y ago

Without a vaccine, the only option is herd immunity, regardless of lockdowns. Note that our reaction to Covid has caused many deaths, such as from people avoiding treatment for other diseases, efforts to control other deadly diseases like tuberculosis being shut down or set back, economic devastation, etc. I haven't seen any analysis yet trading off: 1. the Covid deaths from waiting for a vaccine 2. the risk of releasing the vaccine early 3. the other deaths I mentioned from our reaction to Covid with the metric being a combined "minimum number of deaths".

raverbashing 6y ago
Heard Immunity only works without a vaccine if immunity lasts more than a couple of months For the best cases you need ~40%/50% of people with immunity that lasts for months. (And this is a recent revised best case) Now if you check the serological analysis of even hard hit places and you see there's still a way to go until those 50%. And it is suspected infection induced immunity goes away more quickly than we need it to.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  So far, I've only heard of 3 documented cases of reinfection.
mattycakes 6y ago
I kinda sorta feel like basic public health precautions that public health experts and epidemiologist are calling for could......... also.... be.... an.... option............
- WalterBright 6y ago
  I doubt these can be maintained indefinitely, hence herd immunity whether we like it or not.
  - lazyasciiart 6y ago
    Another option is that it just becomes normal/accepted for people to die of covid - like heart disease and cancer.

anticristi 6y ago

Swedish resident here. I'm not sure why media keeps characterising the Swedish strategy as "herd immunity". I would rather characterize it as sustainable: i.e., find minimum and stable restrictions that keep the spread below 1. It balances fatality reduction and disturbance avoidance, because the population has time to adjust and internalise the restrictions. Contrast that to countries having mass lockdown protests or our neighbors who add and remove restrictions on a weekly basis. Another "inconvenient truth", thanks to good welfare, there is not "come to work sick" heroism in Sweden. You are basically paid to keep your kids and yourself at home, for as little as a running nose.

jordanbeiber 6y ago
Fellow resident - I’ve been home with all three of my kids whole of last week because runny nose. Pre-schools and schools are super strict. It’s tough times as a parent, kids have runny noses in the autumn/winter... I’m 100% WFH anyways because this is the general recommendation - if you can stay home.
raverbashing 6y ago
I'd add a couple more factors: - More people working from home, both given the type of job they do and the trust by bosses (as opposed to France or Italy where a government suggestion to WFH means almost nothing to the bosses) - Less people per household - People might just literally keep their space more
jeandejean 6y ago
That's because the media are craving for examples to prove their points, but if they don't have facts, they just fake them...
lazyasciiart 6y ago
Because the strategy is herd immunity by every definition except official labeling. That is not a media characterisation, it is the standard understanding in medical communities. Eg ". “They did not want to put it bluntly, but seeking herd immunity was always inherent in the Swedish strategy,” says Anders Bjorkman, a professor of infectious diseases at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm." https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2376 https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2376

jordanbeiber 6y ago

In foreign press, Sweden is always put forward in the herd immunity discussion - this is wrong. Our version of CDC agency have clearly stated all along that herd immunity is not the goal. Life in Sweden changed dramatically with the outbreak and the number of deaths have a few reasonable explanations, IMO. The Swedish “CDC” have pushed for long term resilience and believe that strict prolonged lockdowns will be impossible to maintain. Other countries have had a far more political response to this pandemic. Second wave obviously pushing forwards - other Euro countries locking down again. This is kind of ironic as Swedes probably would put up with being locked down better than most other populations. We’re famous for “waiting in line” and following signs and directions - we would suffer lockdown, but in general we simply follow directions, so the idea was it would be ineffective.

barumi 6y ago
> The Swedish “CDC” have pushed for long term resilience and believe that strict prolonged lockdowns will be impossible to maintain. > Other countries have had a far more political response to this pandemic. Spain suffered so much from the covid epidemic that they had to commandeer hotels and convention centers to serve as makeshift emergency hospitals to receive critical covid19 cases. Death rates were so high that in Madrid they had to commandeer an ice rink to serve as a makeshift morgue. Spain's investment in a lockdown allowed them to contain and lower the daily death count from nearly a thousand to single-digits, and reign back spread rates. The lockdown decision in other countries is not political. It's common sense. Have people already forgot what "flatten the curve" means?
- jordanbeiber 6y ago
  Sweden have experienced the same “reining in” of infection and death rates without lockdown. Perhaps lockdowns are required elsewhere due to cultural differences. This is also partly an explanation for Swedens relatively high death rates - our completely botched integration of immigrants over the years. But how many and harsh lockdown can a population endure?
  - 6y ago

just-juan-post 6y ago

That is the message often repeated by China. This article is well written with credible verified sources and screenshots. China has been pushing this narrative the this article lays out all the evidence: China’s Global Lockdown Propaganda https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-covid-lockdown-propaganda https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-covid... > In March, Chinese state media began describing the strategy of “herd immunity”—allowing the coronavirus to spread among the young and healthy—as a violation of “human rights,” an Orwellian formulation given that lockdowns are essentially a blanket suspension of rights. > Initially, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also opted for herd immunity. But on March 13, suspicious accounts began storming his Twitter feed and likening his plan to genocide. This language almost never appears in Johnson’s feed before March 12, and several of the accounts were hardly active before then. Britain locked down on March 23. Please read and share.

mattycakes 6y ago

Judging from the few comments here, I doubt the article has been read. Absurd that the US averages DAILY more deaths than South Korea has had throughout the entire course of the pandemic.

exogeny 6y ago
I honestly can't tell if it's that, or the people commenting on HN on this topic are sociopaths who are unfazed at the prospect of hundreds of thousands of unnecessary, needless deaths in the pursuit of potentially being right.

TooCreative 6y ago

Man is this article weak and bloated. It needs pages and pages to make two points: 1: Going for herd immunity has caused more infections and deaths in countries that tried. 2: We are not sure if once infected people will stay immune. The first point is completely nonsensical. Of course more people are infected when you allow more people to be infected. That idea of this approach is that you come out ahead in the long run. The second is a valid point.

watwut 6y ago
The first point is not completely nonsensical. The treatment methods improve over time, even if we don't have cure. People being sick later have better chance. The healthcare system overload happening or not does matter a lot too. People not being sick at the same time matter.
- TooCreative 6y ago
  Imagine they said that investing money is a bad idea. And their argument is that people who tried had less money to spend in the short term. Then I come and say "Duh! That is the point of investing.". Now you point out all the great stuff one could buy in the short term. Yes. That is the point of investing. You trade a negative effect in the short term for a positive effect in the long term. Nobody ever said it is a free lunch.
  - barumi 6y ago
    You failed to make any point about the reason why stating the fact that covid19 kills is nonsense. In fact, the way you chose to frame the consequences of allowing an epidemic to spread as "point out all the great stuff one could [do otherwise] in the short term" makes it quite clear that your point, focused on your own personal convenience alone, is absurd to begin with.
barumi 6y ago
> The first point is completely nonsensical. Of course more people are infected when you allow more people to be infected. Sadly it is not nonsense to state the fact that Sweden's approach caused more deaths than what would otherwise have happened. The reason is quite simple: some people somehow believe the opposite. There's a crackpot section of society that somehow and unexplainedly believe that lockdowns and wearing masks and any change to their personal routine causes more harm than a disease that already killed over a million patients. Then there are the inconvenient facts that: a) patients do get reinfected, b) allowing an epidemic to run wild creates conditions for it to mutate and change in unpredictable ways, including becoming more deadly and damaging than what it is right now.

Consultant32452 6y ago

Herd immunity can be achieved in two ways. Roughly, "everyone gets it" or "vaccine." If herd immunity doesn't stick, then a vaccine will not be our savior and we better start thinking in terms of what a new normal looks like. And we need to think of this new normal in terms of basically forever.

mattycakes 6y ago
Please read the article.
- godelski 6y ago
  I don't think the person you're replying to is saying something that implies they didn't read the article. The article uses the term in two ways, which makes it disingenuous. > Will herd immunity work? Many researchers say pursuing herd immunity is a bad idea. “Attempting to reach herd immunity via targeted infections is simply ludicrous,” Andersen says. “In the US, probably one to two million people would die.” Then they basically answer no. At the end of the article they quote Andersen again > “There’s no magic wand we can use here,” Andersen says. “We have to face reality — never before have we reached herd immunity via natural infection with a novel virus, and SARS-CoV-2 is unfortunately no different.” Vaccination is the only ethical path to herd immunity, he says.

guscost 6y ago

Well I read the whole thing, and... it is just open psychological warfare at this point. Not even a mention of variation in susceptibility. Nothing about how at least 60% of people are not threatened by the virus in the first place, and we could have been finding and inoculating those people for the better part of a year now. This is not an exaggeration or an emotional outburst: The folks pushing deadly propaganda based on these garbage models are war criminals.

rsfern 6y ago
> finding and inoculating There’s still no vaccine, so do you really mean identifying and otherwise protecting the vulnerable group of people? Do you specifically mean variolation [0]? If so, is there evidence that would be safe and if effective? > war criminals I think this is a bit much. Sure, you could argue some other flavor of criminality, but “war crimes” has a very specific meaning that doesn’t fit here IMO 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation
- guscost 6y ago
  I guess what I mean is more like a “crime against humanity”, thanks. Gaslighting civilians and deliberately harming public health to score a political/PSYWAR victory is extremely messed up, in any case.

madpot 6y ago

They lay about lock down to be effective. Let’s compare death rates in Spain, Italy and others most restrictive countries with Swedes. No difference or even more deaths in lockdowned population.

ta8645 6y ago

Why does Nature make it political in the very first line? > Why proposals to largely let the virus run its course — embraced by Donald Trump’s administration and others — could bring “untold death and suffering”. This should just be a description of the scientific facts in order to maintain objectivity. Let the political people run with it afterword. And it doesn't even say that it emphatically "will bring <bad thing>", it uses the weasel words "could bring <bad thing>". This seems politically motivated; at the very least they've made it easy to mistake this as more political than scientific.

madpot 6y ago

They lay about lock down to be effective. Let’s compare death rates in Spain, Italy and others most restrictive countries with Swedes. No difference or even more deaths in lockdowned population.

dazag 6y ago

If they are publishing this BS in nature, I wonder why we are having so muche science problems... "Science" is corrupted as everything is in a society today, because if you have to eat to live, you will do anything, so in this society means, anything that gives me money it's alright. It happen everywhere, from the richest doctors to the poorest people. We are pushed that way. Scientists too, so there you go, decades of bullshit feeding us making us.