8 ms·

I think you're vastly overestimating our capacity to build enough vaccines and distribute them over the world, as well as dealing with those who will refuse to

I think you're vastly overestimating our capacity to build enough vaccines and distribute them over the world, as well as dealing with those who will refuse to vaccinate. Even if we had a vaccine ready for the roll-out today, I don't see us going back to normalish until late 2021 at earliest. As with any vaccine, you'd need about 80% of the population to vaccinate in order for herd immunity to kick in. I feel like we're gonna have trouble reaching that amount for years to come. Getting a working vaccine is only step 1 towards eradication path, not the end goal.

breakfastduck 6y ago
Overly cautious about the herd immunity stuff here. We're not going to eliminate the virus completely. That's a given, we should stop aiming for that. If we get to a point where there's a stable number of daily deaths then we're good. (like we have for literally every single fatal illness.)
- SECProto 6y ago
  > (like we have for literally every single fatal illness) Smallpox. And if you consider within the borders of a given country, a dozen others (polio, measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox).
  - 0xffff2 6y ago
    Which countries have eliminated the latter 4? I would consider an illness "eradicated" if the vaccine is no longer regularly given. At least 10 years ago (when I was in the field), MMR and Chickenpox vaccines were still regularly administered in the US.
    - SECProto 6y ago
      > I would consider an illness "eradicated" if the vaccine is no longer regularly given Fair enough. I would consider a virus eradicated when the general population gives zero thought to it, and effectively no one dies from it. Doesn't meet the strict medical definition, but I thought the description of "If we get to a point where there's a stable number of daily deaths then we're good" was overly pessimistic.
    - ksk 6y ago
      >I would consider an illness "eradicated" if the vaccine is no longer regularly given. That's not how it works. Just because you don't see an outbreak for a while, that is never a reason to stop immunizing children. Pathogens can and do have natural reservoirs. This is why when some idiots stopped taking the Measles vaccines we had an outbreak here in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_reservoir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_reservoir
      - 0xffff2 6y ago
        Of course that's how it works. We don't regularly administer small pox vaccines anymore because it has been eradicated except for a couple of very tightly controlled samples. That's what "eradication" means. My memory is slightly hazy, but I think we might have skipped Polio as well for anyone not going oversees, because Polio largely meets the definition of "eradicated" in the US. Meanwhile, we continue to administer MMR and Chickenpox vaccines because those diseases still exist in the wild. The very fact that Measles has returned is ipso facto proof that it was never eradicated, and the fact that (normal) people never stopped giving that vaccine to their kids is proof that no one ever believed it was.
  - breakfastduck 6y ago
    None of those are a common type of Flu, which we've never been able to cure, though.
    - SECProto 6y ago
      Covid-19 isn't a "common type of flu" either. The diseases I mentioned were certainly widespread and endemic. And they're all different types of virus.
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      How can people possibly still think COVID is a type of flu? This was perhaps forgivable in February, but...
  - artursapek 6y ago
    COVID-19 is a slice of apple pie compared to Smallpox
- nradov 6y ago
  The moving average of daily deaths in the US has been stable or declining for the past two months. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
  - ffdjjjffjj 6y ago
    That was true until last week. Deaths are now rising again, and daily new cases are approaching the level of the summer peak.
    - irq11 6y ago
      There has been a slight uptick in weekly deaths, roughly on par with what was observed in the last week of September. Given the trend of the line and the delayed reporting from most states, it’s more accurate to say that deaths have flattened: https://covid-19.direct/US?tab=daily https://covid-19.direct/US?tab=daily
    - breakfastduck 6y ago
      Daily new cases means nothing - it's a completely artificial figure that can be inflated or deflated by simply changing how many tests are conducted. Deaths is the only relevant measure.
      - ffdjjjffjj 6y ago
        It doesn’t “mean nothing”, it’s another data point. If you see test positivity rate remaining low but cases increasing - which we do in many areas with sufficient testing - then it does suggest more people are getting the virus. You can also corroborate this by comparing it to new hospitalizations, which are also up. “Deaths is the only relevant measure” - not sure where to start with this except to say that this is not at all what epidemiologists seem to think and I won’t address it further without some very dramatic reasoning and evidence.
        irq11 6y ago
- komali2 6y ago
  Doing so would ignore the sometimes dramatic effects survivors experience - from the people I know alone, this ranges anywhere from previous marathon runners still huffing and puffing their way up stairs despite having been otherwise symptom free for 6 months, to a man who survived by the skin of his teeth and it now appears will never be able to taste or smell again. I don't know about you but I'm feeling like simply "getting to a stable number of daily deaths" doesn't cut it. Also, that statement alone doesn't make sense to me - a fatality rate of 50% could potentially maintain a stable rate of daily deaths... Of thousands.
impendia 6y ago
Various experts are predicting that the winter will be quite bad. See for example: https://covid19.healthdata.org/global?view=infections-testing&tab=trend&test=infections https://covid19.healthdata.org/global?view=infections-testin... https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view=infections-testing&tab=trend&test=infections https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view... But notice, in the latter chart, that in the US the number of infections is predicted to peak in January and then start going down. It seems plausible that by March, we'll achieve some level of herd immunity, relative to the precautions that are currently being taken. We might have a situation like Europe over this pas summer, with small numbers of cases until a second spike in Fall/Winter 2021. That would buy us the spring and summer to roll out a vaccine. Of course, I'm far from sure that this is what will happen -- but it certainly seems plausible to me.
- Jemm 6y ago
  Those charts are already inaccurate. I wouldn't rely on them.
  - impendia 6y ago
    Rely on them? I agree, certainly not. But at least they describe a plausible scenario.
- halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
  It's been estimated that 80% of the population needs to have been infected to achieve herd immunity. That means ~240 million people in the United States need to be infected. We're at 8.7 million infected. No way we get herd immunity anytime soon.
  - impendia 6y ago
    Herd immunity is relative. For example, I'm a professor at the University of South Carolina. Here we've had around 2,500 confirmed Covid cases, and perhaps around 10,000 cases in actuality. Nearly all of them happened in the first few weeks of the semester, and now the positive test rate is extremely low. Looking around town, it's pretty clear what happened. There are some students that have acted like nothing is happening, partying and drinking constantly. That population has presumably hit herd immunity already. Meanwhile, there are many students (and staff) that are exercising precautions, and not venturing out a lot, and probably few of them have contracted the disease. Now, we can't just go back to normal, or else cases would spike among this second group -- but locally it seems that we can afford to relax a bit. And, also, we're at 8.8 million confirmed infected -- the actual numbers are presumably much higher.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jariel 6y ago
COVID is special though in that if it were only as deadly to the young as it were to everyone, I don't think we'd be referring to this as a pandemic. Literally, right now we are seeing case rates explode, but the number of casualties is paradoxically very low because it's mostly the younger cohorts getting sick - which is probably a social function of things like 'back school' and 'risky behaviours' among younger groups. If we could get everyone 50+ vaccinated, we may be largely safe - maybe not 'back to normal safe' - but the combination of 'partial herd immunity', 'much lower rates of hospitalization' etc. may mean we can 'kind of get back to normal'.
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  Some of the longer term effects are scary though - I suspect that younger people might not be so blasé about chronic illness. At minimum younger people who have had covid are looking at a lot more regular check-ups for the rest of there life.
  - logicchains 6y ago
    > Some of the longer term effects are scary though - I suspect that younger people might not be so blasé about chronic illness. There's not a single peer-reviewed study showing a significantly higher frequency of long-term adverse effects in healthy individuals compared to other respiratory illnesses.
    - TheButlerian 6y ago
      Don't ruin the doomer parade, thank you.
    - C1sc0cat 6y ago
      There's initial results that indicate that its likely - you wont get hard data for another decade plus - but take it from me you don't want to get CKD or similar organ damage.
gadders 6y ago
Given the low fatality rate for COVID, wouldn't you just want to concentrate vaccination on those most at risk? i.e. the elderly, people with underlying conditions etc. You don't need to eradicate the virus, just stop it affecting the most vulnerable. Everybody else can then carry on as normal (albeit with a slight chance of getting a nasty flu-like illness).
- Jemm 6y ago
  Vaccination is not 100% (more like 50%) effective and will really only help if we achieve herd immunity.
- warp 6y ago
  There some risk of permanent or long lasting damage even if you do not die from the virus. (So it is more risky than just a nasty flu). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Covid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Covid
  - anoncake 6y ago
    There is evidence that recovery sometimes takes more than a few weeks, but none for permanent damage (except in rare cases). The risk is overblown.
- input_sh 6y ago
  Even if we vaccinate every vulnerable group, no vaccine has 100% success rate. That's why every vaccine we ever had relied on a huge majority of people having it to prevent the virus from reaching those whose vaccine failed. Not to mention that we already know about long term side effects that have nothing to do with a specific age group, and that there's a chance of re-infection.
  - rhino369 6y ago
    Sure but it would reduce the number of deaths by a lot. If we just vaccinated 65+ year olds, we'd cut deaths by 80X%, where X is the effectivelness of the vaccine. Even if the vaccine was only 80% effective, that's still 65% reduction. Add in people with dangerous conditions, heart conditions, cancer, morbidly obese, etc., and you could probably knock it down further. And as the percent of the population with immunity rises, the spread will slow quite a bit. We don't need heard immunity to open back up.
wang_li 6y ago
Pfizer is already mass producing their vaccine and are saying they’ll have 100 million doses available this year and are targeting 1.3 billion next year. The US has five million people who tested positive and have recovered. Likely also another 30-50 million who were never tested because their symptoms were to minor. And another 66-165 million who have cross reactive T-cells. Some researchers have concluded that the herd immunity threshold for sars-cov-2 could be as low as 10% or as high as 50%. I don’t think anyone sees it as high as 80%. https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563 https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563
- celticninja 6y ago
  https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/herd-immunity-and-coronavirus/art-20486808 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i... The mayo clinic suggests it could be 70%, and I have seen others suggest 80%. I have not seen anyone suggest as low as 10/20% so I think that suggestion is a huge outlier and even the paper you link says as much.
  - bart_spoon 6y ago
    There actually has been several papers posted to r/COVID19 that have suggested that the herd immunity threshold is likely overestimated. This is because vulnerability to infection isn't uniform across the population. Some people will be more likely to be infected, either due to biological reasons, like a weaker immune system, or sociological ones, like living or working in an area where transmission is far more likely. Most of the higher estimates of a herd immunity threshold of 70-80% are based on transmission dynamics from early in the pandemic, which mostly consisted of these people with higher probabilities of infection. Once this population starts to get burned out, the transmission of the virus also slows, which means that the herd immunity barrier also drops. One of the papers hypothesized that this demonstrates why areas like NYC got hit so hard initially and have remained stable since. Seroprevalence surveys back in the early summer indicated that between 20-30% of NYC residents had contracted Covid already. The lockdowns obviously blunted the surge, but unlike other areas of the country, as NYC has opened back up, there hasn't been much of a second wave at all. With more than 2/3rds of the population still without any kind of exposure to the virus, you would expect a dense city like NYC to see a large increase. The paper concluded that this is evidence that might suggest that the herd immunity barrier is far lower than initially estimated. I've seen some papers suggest something closer to 20-50%, but nothing so low as 10%. I'll see if I can dig up some of the preprints to post here.
krona 6y ago
As with any vaccine, you'd need about 80% of the population to vaccinate in order for herd immunity to kick in. Wrong. The herd immunity threshold (HIT) for influenza is 33%-44%. HITs are different for every infectious disease. Current estimates for COVID-19 are 60-75%.
- tgb 6y ago
  Isn't that a different number, though? You have to factor in that vaccines aren't 100% effective at preventing disease. Wikipedia spells it out in the vaccine section here [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity
  - krona 6y ago
    True but you're also not taking in to account that far less than 100% of the population appear susceptible to the virus, especially in e.g. Japan and Germany, for various reasons.
    - wbl 6y ago
      Do you have a credible source? I've heard these claims multiple times and they done seem to be borne out by events or supported by repudiable epidemiologist.
      - krona 6y ago
        Here is a summary of at least 6 articles on pre existing t-cell immunity. https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563 https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563 Furthermore, I know of at least 3 leading statisticians that hypothesized (very early on) that the variance of infection trends pointed to pre-existing immunity in various populations. The evidence supporting this is mounting.
        russholmes 6y ago
        The BMJ is not a credible source, it is the Daily Mail of medical journals. The author of that article, Peter Doshi, has form: "I think the first thing we to review is who is Peter Doshi? And why is he so insistent on getting this data? Peter Doshi received his BA in anthropology from Brown University, MA in East Asian studies from Harvard University, and Ph.D. in history, anthropology, and science, technology and society from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Those would be fine credentials for someone who is going to teach history or anthropology." https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/peter-doshi-anti-vaccine-false-authority/ https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/pete...
artursapek 6y ago
> dealing with those who will refuse to vaccinate What's there to deal with? Let people make that personal choice and leave them alone.
bleepblorp 6y ago
None of the vaccines currently on the table are even remotely good enough for 'back to normalish.' The attack rate for this virus is so high that a vaccine good enough (i.e. multiple 9s effectiveness) to allow 'back to normal' almost certainly isn't possible. The most we're going to get out of a vaccine is a tool that can be used in conjunction with physical distancing, and masks, to keep the infection rate and hospitalization rate sustainable. Even with a vaccine, COVID-19 will remain one of the leading causes of death among the sick and elderly. The percentage of chronically ill people who live, and the percentage of people who make it past age 65, will plummet. Everyone who's alive now will almost certainly need to socially distance (and should wear an N95/KN95 mask in public indoor spaces) for the rest of their lives. What's happening now is humanity's normal.
- lbeltrame 6y ago
  > None of the vaccines currently on the table are even remotely good enough for 'back to normalish.' The attack rate for this virus is so high that a vaccine good enough (i.e. multiple 9s effectiveness) to allow 'back to normal' almost certainly isn't possible. Is it? Current studies, AFAIK, give very variable attack rates, from low zeros to around 30%. Only higher if due to close contacts for longer periods of time (carriers, fishing boats, meat packing plants). This preprint on trasmission dynamics and evidence from September[1] has lower figures. > Everyone who's alive now will almost certainly need to socially distance (and should wear an N95/KN95 mask in public indoor spaces) for the rest of their lives. I wonder how we're even supposed to build a society that can live without any or very reduced form of contact. I think it's socially unsustainable. [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3692807 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3692807
- giantDinosaur 6y ago
  No offense, but this is one of the worst comments I've ever read on hackernews. You have not a single piece of evidence for any of your claims, and they fly directly in the face of all reasoning about how a disease like this is most likely to work once it becomes long-term endemic.

breakfastduck 6y ago

Overly cautious about the herd immunity stuff here. We're not going to eliminate the virus completely. That's a given, we should stop aiming for that. If we get to a point where there's a stable number of daily deaths then we're good. (like we have for literally every single fatal illness.)

SECProto 6y ago
> (like we have for literally every single fatal illness) Smallpox. And if you consider within the borders of a given country, a dozen others (polio, measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox).
- 0xffff2 6y ago
  Which countries have eliminated the latter 4? I would consider an illness "eradicated" if the vaccine is no longer regularly given. At least 10 years ago (when I was in the field), MMR and Chickenpox vaccines were still regularly administered in the US.
  - SECProto 6y ago
    > I would consider an illness "eradicated" if the vaccine is no longer regularly given Fair enough. I would consider a virus eradicated when the general population gives zero thought to it, and effectively no one dies from it. Doesn't meet the strict medical definition, but I thought the description of "If we get to a point where there's a stable number of daily deaths then we're good" was overly pessimistic.
  - ksk 6y ago
    >I would consider an illness "eradicated" if the vaccine is no longer regularly given. That's not how it works. Just because you don't see an outbreak for a while, that is never a reason to stop immunizing children. Pathogens can and do have natural reservoirs. This is why when some idiots stopped taking the Measles vaccines we had an outbreak here in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_reservoir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_reservoir
    - 0xffff2 6y ago
      Of course that's how it works. We don't regularly administer small pox vaccines anymore because it has been eradicated except for a couple of very tightly controlled samples. That's what "eradication" means. My memory is slightly hazy, but I think we might have skipped Polio as well for anyone not going oversees, because Polio largely meets the definition of "eradicated" in the US. Meanwhile, we continue to administer MMR and Chickenpox vaccines because those diseases still exist in the wild. The very fact that Measles has returned is ipso facto proof that it was never eradicated, and the fact that (normal) people never stopped giving that vaccine to their kids is proof that no one ever believed it was.
- breakfastduck 6y ago
  None of those are a common type of Flu, which we've never been able to cure, though.
  - SECProto 6y ago
    Covid-19 isn't a "common type of flu" either. The diseases I mentioned were certainly widespread and endemic. And they're all different types of virus.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    How can people possibly still think COVID is a type of flu? This was perhaps forgivable in February, but...
- artursapek 6y ago
  COVID-19 is a slice of apple pie compared to Smallpox
nradov 6y ago
The moving average of daily deaths in the US has been stable or declining for the past two months. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
- ffdjjjffjj 6y ago
  That was true until last week. Deaths are now rising again, and daily new cases are approaching the level of the summer peak.
  - irq11 6y ago
    There has been a slight uptick in weekly deaths, roughly on par with what was observed in the last week of September. Given the trend of the line and the delayed reporting from most states, it’s more accurate to say that deaths have flattened: https://covid-19.direct/US?tab=daily https://covid-19.direct/US?tab=daily
  - breakfastduck 6y ago
    Daily new cases means nothing - it's a completely artificial figure that can be inflated or deflated by simply changing how many tests are conducted. Deaths is the only relevant measure.
    - ffdjjjffjj 6y ago
      It doesn’t “mean nothing”, it’s another data point. If you see test positivity rate remaining low but cases increasing - which we do in many areas with sufficient testing - then it does suggest more people are getting the virus. You can also corroborate this by comparing it to new hospitalizations, which are also up. “Deaths is the only relevant measure” - not sure where to start with this except to say that this is not at all what epidemiologists seem to think and I won’t address it further without some very dramatic reasoning and evidence.
      - irq11 6y ago
komali2 6y ago
Doing so would ignore the sometimes dramatic effects survivors experience - from the people I know alone, this ranges anywhere from previous marathon runners still huffing and puffing their way up stairs despite having been otherwise symptom free for 6 months, to a man who survived by the skin of his teeth and it now appears will never be able to taste or smell again. I don't know about you but I'm feeling like simply "getting to a stable number of daily deaths" doesn't cut it. Also, that statement alone doesn't make sense to me - a fatality rate of 50% could potentially maintain a stable rate of daily deaths... Of thousands.

impendia 6y ago

Various experts are predicting that the winter will be quite bad. See for example: https://covid19.healthdata.org/global?view=infections-testing&tab=trend&test=infections https://covid19.healthdata.org/global?view=infections-testin... https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view=infections-testing&tab=trend&test=infections https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view... But notice, in the latter chart, that in the US the number of infections is predicted to peak in January and then start going down. It seems plausible that by March, we'll achieve some level of herd immunity, relative to the precautions that are currently being taken. We might have a situation like Europe over this pas summer, with small numbers of cases until a second spike in Fall/Winter 2021. That would buy us the spring and summer to roll out a vaccine. Of course, I'm far from sure that this is what will happen -- but it certainly seems plausible to me.

Jemm 6y ago
Those charts are already inaccurate. I wouldn't rely on them.
- impendia 6y ago
  Rely on them? I agree, certainly not. But at least they describe a plausible scenario.
halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
It's been estimated that 80% of the population needs to have been infected to achieve herd immunity. That means ~240 million people in the United States need to be infected. We're at 8.7 million infected. No way we get herd immunity anytime soon.
- impendia 6y ago
  Herd immunity is relative. For example, I'm a professor at the University of South Carolina. Here we've had around 2,500 confirmed Covid cases, and perhaps around 10,000 cases in actuality. Nearly all of them happened in the first few weeks of the semester, and now the positive test rate is extremely low. Looking around town, it's pretty clear what happened. There are some students that have acted like nothing is happening, partying and drinking constantly. That population has presumably hit herd immunity already. Meanwhile, there are many students (and staff) that are exercising precautions, and not venturing out a lot, and probably few of them have contracted the disease. Now, we can't just go back to normal, or else cases would spike among this second group -- but locally it seems that we can afford to relax a bit. And, also, we're at 8.8 million confirmed infected -- the actual numbers are presumably much higher.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jariel 6y ago

COVID is special though in that if it were only as deadly to the young as it were to everyone, I don't think we'd be referring to this as a pandemic. Literally, right now we are seeing case rates explode, but the number of casualties is paradoxically very low because it's mostly the younger cohorts getting sick - which is probably a social function of things like 'back school' and 'risky behaviours' among younger groups. If we could get everyone 50+ vaccinated, we may be largely safe - maybe not 'back to normal safe' - but the combination of 'partial herd immunity', 'much lower rates of hospitalization' etc. may mean we can 'kind of get back to normal'.

C1sc0cat 6y ago
Some of the longer term effects are scary though - I suspect that younger people might not be so blasé about chronic illness. At minimum younger people who have had covid are looking at a lot more regular check-ups for the rest of there life.
- logicchains 6y ago
  > Some of the longer term effects are scary though - I suspect that younger people might not be so blasé about chronic illness. There's not a single peer-reviewed study showing a significantly higher frequency of long-term adverse effects in healthy individuals compared to other respiratory illnesses.
  - TheButlerian 6y ago
    Don't ruin the doomer parade, thank you.
  - C1sc0cat 6y ago
    There's initial results that indicate that its likely - you wont get hard data for another decade plus - but take it from me you don't want to get CKD or similar organ damage.

gadders 6y ago

Given the low fatality rate for COVID, wouldn't you just want to concentrate vaccination on those most at risk? i.e. the elderly, people with underlying conditions etc. You don't need to eradicate the virus, just stop it affecting the most vulnerable. Everybody else can then carry on as normal (albeit with a slight chance of getting a nasty flu-like illness).

Jemm 6y ago
Vaccination is not 100% (more like 50%) effective and will really only help if we achieve herd immunity.
warp 6y ago
There some risk of permanent or long lasting damage even if you do not die from the virus. (So it is more risky than just a nasty flu). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Covid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Covid
- anoncake 6y ago
  There is evidence that recovery sometimes takes more than a few weeks, but none for permanent damage (except in rare cases). The risk is overblown.
input_sh 6y ago
Even if we vaccinate every vulnerable group, no vaccine has 100% success rate. That's why every vaccine we ever had relied on a huge majority of people having it to prevent the virus from reaching those whose vaccine failed. Not to mention that we already know about long term side effects that have nothing to do with a specific age group, and that there's a chance of re-infection.
- rhino369 6y ago
  Sure but it would reduce the number of deaths by a lot. If we just vaccinated 65+ year olds, we'd cut deaths by 80X%, where X is the effectivelness of the vaccine. Even if the vaccine was only 80% effective, that's still 65% reduction. Add in people with dangerous conditions, heart conditions, cancer, morbidly obese, etc., and you could probably knock it down further. And as the percent of the population with immunity rises, the spread will slow quite a bit. We don't need heard immunity to open back up.

wang_li 6y ago

Pfizer is already mass producing their vaccine and are saying they’ll have 100 million doses available this year and are targeting 1.3 billion next year. The US has five million people who tested positive and have recovered. Likely also another 30-50 million who were never tested because their symptoms were to minor. And another 66-165 million who have cross reactive T-cells. Some researchers have concluded that the herd immunity threshold for sars-cov-2 could be as low as 10% or as high as 50%. I don’t think anyone sees it as high as 80%. https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563 https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563

celticninja 6y ago
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/herd-immunity-and-coronavirus/art-20486808 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i... The mayo clinic suggests it could be 70%, and I have seen others suggest 80%. I have not seen anyone suggest as low as 10/20% so I think that suggestion is a huge outlier and even the paper you link says as much.
- bart_spoon 6y ago
  There actually has been several papers posted to r/COVID19 that have suggested that the herd immunity threshold is likely overestimated. This is because vulnerability to infection isn't uniform across the population. Some people will be more likely to be infected, either due to biological reasons, like a weaker immune system, or sociological ones, like living or working in an area where transmission is far more likely. Most of the higher estimates of a herd immunity threshold of 70-80% are based on transmission dynamics from early in the pandemic, which mostly consisted of these people with higher probabilities of infection. Once this population starts to get burned out, the transmission of the virus also slows, which means that the herd immunity barrier also drops. One of the papers hypothesized that this demonstrates why areas like NYC got hit so hard initially and have remained stable since. Seroprevalence surveys back in the early summer indicated that between 20-30% of NYC residents had contracted Covid already. The lockdowns obviously blunted the surge, but unlike other areas of the country, as NYC has opened back up, there hasn't been much of a second wave at all. With more than 2/3rds of the population still without any kind of exposure to the virus, you would expect a dense city like NYC to see a large increase. The paper concluded that this is evidence that might suggest that the herd immunity barrier is far lower than initially estimated. I've seen some papers suggest something closer to 20-50%, but nothing so low as 10%. I'll see if I can dig up some of the preprints to post here.

krona 6y ago

As with any vaccine, you'd need about 80% of the population to vaccinate in order for herd immunity to kick in. Wrong. The herd immunity threshold (HIT) for influenza is 33%-44%. HITs are different for every infectious disease. Current estimates for COVID-19 are 60-75%.

tgb 6y ago
Isn't that a different number, though? You have to factor in that vaccines aren't 100% effective at preventing disease. Wikipedia spells it out in the vaccine section here [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity
- krona 6y ago
  True but you're also not taking in to account that far less than 100% of the population appear susceptible to the virus, especially in e.g. Japan and Germany, for various reasons.
  - wbl 6y ago
    Do you have a credible source? I've heard these claims multiple times and they done seem to be borne out by events or supported by repudiable epidemiologist.
    - krona 6y ago
      Here is a summary of at least 6 articles on pre existing t-cell immunity. https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563 https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563 Furthermore, I know of at least 3 leading statisticians that hypothesized (very early on) that the variance of infection trends pointed to pre-existing immunity in various populations. The evidence supporting this is mounting.
      - russholmes 6y ago
        The BMJ is not a credible source, it is the Daily Mail of medical journals. The author of that article, Peter Doshi, has form: "I think the first thing we to review is who is Peter Doshi? And why is he so insistent on getting this data? Peter Doshi received his BA in anthropology from Brown University, MA in East Asian studies from Harvard University, and Ph.D. in history, anthropology, and science, technology and society from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Those would be fine credentials for someone who is going to teach history or anthropology." https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/peter-doshi-anti-vaccine-false-authority/ https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/pete...

artursapek 6y ago

> dealing with those who will refuse to vaccinate What's there to deal with? Let people make that personal choice and leave them alone.

bleepblorp 6y ago

None of the vaccines currently on the table are even remotely good enough for 'back to normalish.' The attack rate for this virus is so high that a vaccine good enough (i.e. multiple 9s effectiveness) to allow 'back to normal' almost certainly isn't possible. The most we're going to get out of a vaccine is a tool that can be used in conjunction with physical distancing, and masks, to keep the infection rate and hospitalization rate sustainable. Even with a vaccine, COVID-19 will remain one of the leading causes of death among the sick and elderly. The percentage of chronically ill people who live, and the percentage of people who make it past age 65, will plummet. Everyone who's alive now will almost certainly need to socially distance (and should wear an N95/KN95 mask in public indoor spaces) for the rest of their lives. What's happening now is humanity's normal.

lbeltrame 6y ago
> None of the vaccines currently on the table are even remotely good enough for 'back to normalish.' The attack rate for this virus is so high that a vaccine good enough (i.e. multiple 9s effectiveness) to allow 'back to normal' almost certainly isn't possible. Is it? Current studies, AFAIK, give very variable attack rates, from low zeros to around 30%. Only higher if due to close contacts for longer periods of time (carriers, fishing boats, meat packing plants). This preprint on trasmission dynamics and evidence from September[1] has lower figures. > Everyone who's alive now will almost certainly need to socially distance (and should wear an N95/KN95 mask in public indoor spaces) for the rest of their lives. I wonder how we're even supposed to build a society that can live without any or very reduced form of contact. I think it's socially unsustainable. [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3692807 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3692807
giantDinosaur 6y ago
No offense, but this is one of the worst comments I've ever read on hackernews. You have not a single piece of evidence for any of your claims, and they fly directly in the face of all reasoning about how a disease like this is most likely to work once it becomes long-term endemic.