11 ms·

Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

65 points by alister 6y ago

WaitWaitWha 6y ago
I am truly baffled why the epidemiology community ever thought herd immunity will work. There is ample evidence that it is not a panacea. e.g. influenzae, hepatitis, meningitis, measles, mumps, rubella, yellow fever.
- Trasmatta 6y ago
  Did the epidemiology community ever think that? I remember as early as March of last year, epidemiologists saying that herd immunity was not the way forward, and that this would likely become endemic. It seemed to mostly be reporters and politicians who pushed the herd immunity angle.
  - WaitWaitWha 6y ago
    I can believe that. I have not dug much into the historical herd immunity statements, so it is possible they were not, although purported to be, by experts.
  - bmitc 6y ago
    It was also a fair amount of HNers pushing the herd immunity thing as well.
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      I don't want to necessarily attribute it to "epidemiologists" but there has been a pretty clear line from policymakers since about three weeks into the lockdowns (which was as long as we were initially told they would need to last to "flatten the curve") that we needed to stay locked down, keep wearing masks and distancing etc. until vaccines could be given to enough people to effectively end Covid transmission. There's a whole movement of prominent policy & medical leading lights that you can find with the #ZeroCovid hashtag on Twitter pushing this line.
  - mtberatwork 6y ago
    From the article: > and many scientists had thought that once people started being immunized en masse, herd immunity would permit society to return to normal.
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      > many scientists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word#Forms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word#Forms
  - caturopath 6y ago
    It's really difficult to tell from the sidelines the difference between Cassandras and the Trelawneys. Is there a concrete way to get the pulse of the epidemiologists over time?
  - simonh 6y ago
    For a while early on allowing the virus to spread through the population, with limited distancing and lockdown measures to control the rate of spread, in order to achieve herd immunity was official British government policy. I'm not knocking them to be honest. In the early months so little was known for sure that it was a matter of making best estimates, and as better data came in they quickly adapted their strategy.
- Retric 6y ago
  Because COVID doesn’t spread very easily. Mumps has a basic reproduction factor of 10-12, Covid is closer to 3-5. Cut Mumps transmission by 80% and nothing happens, cut COVID by 80% and it goes away fairly quickly. Other coronavirus are endemic in China, but they rarely spread outside the country.
- Cerium 6y ago
  In this context I think herd immunity counts vaccine driven immunity. That is how we successfully control diseases such as measles, mumps, and rubella.
- hobofan 6y ago
  They possibly thought based on previous outbreaks in Asian countries that people would see the severity of the problem and that it could be contained enough (and with that likelihood of mutations lowered) until vaccination efforts have reached their threshold. The probably didn't expect that multiple big countries would just let people go about their daily lives normally for a long time and spread the virus in that proportion.
- libertine 6y ago
  I think there was a glimpse of hope for a global effort to not add a new virus to that list, because it's not like we don't have enough of them. But I always thought that window closed in April 2020 last year when the stance of the majority was to live with the virus, the whole "new normal" campaign. Some thought the virus was slow enough to mutate to still handle it, but they forgot that with millions of people being virus factories it would be a matter of time.
- caturopath 6y ago
  Most of the diseases you list are examples of herd immunity working in developed world communities. People without immunity to them are pretty safe from them. Herd immunity isn't eradication, it's just a reduction of the likelihood of infection among people who aren't immune themselves.
  - soperj 6y ago
    All of those got to herd immunity by vaccination, not by actually contracting the disease.
    - caturopath 6y ago
      It wasn't clear to me that you meant "flatten the curve and ride this out to herd immunity", since this article was about herd immunity via vaccination.
- jfengel 6y ago
  This article isn't about natural herd immunity from everybody getting the disease, with most recovering and becoming immune. The article is worrying that even with vaccination, we may not be able to reach herd immunity. Too many variants; too slow deployment; too many vaccinated people still transmitting the disease.
- pbreit 6y ago
  I'm not baffled since there's a good chance we'll reach effective immunity as with all of those mentioned except flu.
- corty 6y ago
  Well, the pox, diphteria and polio are gone or almost gone due to vaccinations, at one point or the other we had herd immunity with those. Its just that some small pockets of society refused to vaccinate and played incubators, so the rest of us wouldn't miss all the "fun"... Quite the same for all the other diseases you enumerated, just that we never managed to get herd immunity due to antivaxxers ruining it.
  - call_me_dana 6y ago
    Or even worse than antivaxxers, the actual vaccinations being given in a mass rollout: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/08/25/905884740/africa-declares-wild-polio-is-wiped-out-yet-it-persists-in-vaccine-derived-cases https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/08/25/9058847... "It's actually an interesting conundrum. The very tool you are using for [polio] eradication is causing the problem"
    - corty 6y ago
      Yes, the oral polio vaccine is a live vaccine that can cause polio. More advanced vaccines, practically everything in use in developed countries nowadays, don't contain live virus. It's just that third-world countries cannot afford better vaccines. So yes, you are right that there are some corner cases.
- sp332 6y ago
  Herd immunity doesn't mean eradication. It means keeping outbreaks small.
sadmann1 6y ago
Alright what's the way forward then
- throwaway122378 6y ago
  Constant moving of the goal posts until full vaccinated proof is required to be a part of “normal” society
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Spivak 6y ago
  Everyone or as many 9’s as possible getting vaccinated and regular testing of anyone who can’t get the vaccine. Like it doesn’t have to be obnoxious but people who can’t get the vaccine should get tested when any symptoms show. It’s gonna be like the flu, but ya know deadlier, where the name of the game is control and stamping out outbreaks aggressively.
  - Uehreka 6y ago
    My gut feeling is that it would take strong and probably obnoxious enforcement to get us to one 9, we probably can’t even get two 9s (as in 99%, since some people think that means 99.99%) due to the number of people medically ineligible. And all that’s after approving any vaccine for kids, which we haven’t done yet.
    - Spivak 6y ago
      I mean you think that 30+ million people in the US will be medically ineligible? Every single vaccine in my state is being administered as fast as they can ship them out. And after a while kids will have to be vaccinated to go to school same as we do with other vaccines. There is no current prediction that the vaccine won't be safe for kids. The biggest groups that are ineligible are people with vaccine allergies and people with some autoimmune diseases which is vanishingly small.
- nickysielicki 6y ago
throwaway12031 6y ago
full court press! be sure not to allow anyone to believe in the innate wisdom of the body
hdyideudxuedhb 6y ago
Ignoring for a moment the devastatingly irresponsible act of promoting vaccines that might be leaky; the fact is that this is a disease that has animal reservoirs, can mutate in animals and humans, and it's mutations allow it to bypass antibodies from vaccines or prior infection. It will be with us forever, and everyone is going to catch it eventually. Participation in evolution is not optional. I don't think most people can accept this. Admitting that putting the entire world under medical martial law didn't accomplish anything would cause a crises of faith that most governments can't afford.
- throwaway12031 6y ago
  enjoy your downvotes comrade! > Participation in evolution is not optional great line
cyptus 6y ago
even if we reach a herd immunity, won’t the virus just mutate in animals until it is effective against our vaccines?
- caturopath 6y ago
  This remains to be seen, and some of the experts guess this isn't a major risk. (Obviously it's possible, but there are scads of other viruses that could mutate until they're deadly in humans, too.)
- Spivak 6y ago
  Right now the vaccines are effective against current mutations but yes! It’s very likely that we’ll see more than one covid vaccine during our lifetimes as it mutates.
  - rolph 6y ago
    @OP [cyptus] this is a good question, there is no need for animal resivoir to establish variants/mutation as this happens concurrent with human infection as well. @spivak you sound on track, the current thought in the lab is polyvalent vaccine. The problems include mRNA duplex interference, meaning 2 species of mRNA may anneal at complementary regions of the sequence to produce localized folding that derails the translation enzymes of the host.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- soperj 6y ago
  they are already making booster shots for the current mutations.
ping_pong 6y ago
First and foremost SARS-CoV-2 will never go away because it infects animals. Because it is so infectious, it will go through an entire herd or farm within days and eventually cause mutations and jump back to humans. So it will never go away and we need to prepare for it. The main goal is to make it survivable, ie. akin to the flu, and not cause hospitals to get overrun like we have seen so many times around the world in the last year.
- codeulike 6y ago
  Because it is so infectious, it will go through an entire herd or farm within days and eventually cause mutations and jump back to humans. Citation needed
  - roywiggins 6y ago
    https://www.who.int/csr/don/06-november-2020-mink-associated-sars-cov2-denmark/en/ https://www.who.int/csr/don/06-november-2020-mink-associated...
  - s_dev 6y ago
    The culling of the Mink Farms in Denmark should be evidence enough that it can travel through animals. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/05/pollution-fears-over-mink-buried-after-covid-culling-in-denmark https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/05/pollution-fear... The fact that it already mutated going through a bat or pangolin before going back to humans suggests this is based in sound evidence.
    - seneca 6y ago
      > The culling of the Mink Farms in Denmark should be evidence enough that it can travel through animals. Not that I think you're wrong, but that's circular logic. "Minks were culled because it can travel through animals. Minks being culled is evidence it can travel through animals."
    - rowanG077 6y ago
      Not saying I don't believe it. But a government doing something is not even close to proof.
heavyset_go 6y ago
The word for probably impossible is improbable.
- quesera 6y ago
  There's a huge difference between "probably impossible" and "improbable".
  - ngngngng 6y ago
    Rather, "improbable" denotes a wide range of probability where the likelihood is less than 50%. "Probably impossible" denotes likelihood much closer to 0%.
  - commandlinefan 6y ago
    And there's a huge difference between finite improbability and infinite improbability.
- chadash 6y ago
  While we are arguing semantics (and I agree that improbable would be a better word for the title) there is a difference. Improbable refers to odds. Probably impossible refers to odds of some binary outcome. My winning the lottery is improbable. We all agree I have a shot at it, but it's very unlikely. But it's definitely not impossible, assuming it's not rigged. Solving an NP problem with a P time algorithm is probably impossible. Either it can be done or it can't be. We suspect the latter, but we don't know 100%. Once we prove it one way or the other, it will will either be possible or impossible, in a binary sense.
- ncallaway 6y ago
  I disagree with this. I think think there's a significant difference between: "This event is certainly possible, but only has a 10% chance of occurring" and "This event may or may not be possible we don't yet know, but our best guess is that it is not possible, and we are 90% confident in that prediction"
sandworm101 6y ago
>> "Israel began vaccinating its citizens in December 2020 [...] Now the problem is that young people don’t want to get their shots,” Aran says, so local authorities are enticing them with things such as free pizza and beer. Forget the pizza. I would pay good money for a vaccination but in my area (Canada) vaccination is still only open to the elderly. At work I am doing double shifts to cover for all the people who are "working from home". I haven't seen my parents or other extended family in over a year. It has been six months since I've eaten in a sit-down restaurant. I've had to cut my own hair since christmas. If the kids in Israel aren't accepting the vaccine then ship those does to me and I'll give them to people who actually want this all to end.
AtlasBarfed 6y ago
"vaccine hesitancy" Is that anti-vaxxers / laziness? Also, the US still has a very poorly designed system to promote herd immunity. Basically, you are charging people to contribute to herd immunity, rather than paying people to contribute to herd immunity. COVID isn't even some "perfect bug" that maximizes the strategic/policy failures of US healthcare and preys on our self-interest. It's a very very mild pandemic compared to 20-40% death rate pandemics of yore. Maybe a death rate at those levels would spur "healthcare consumer self-interest" to vaccinate... but if there was an outright 3% death rate, would people's behavior change? 5%? 10%? And for god sakes, stop letting perfect be the enemy of good. "Herd Immunity" isn't necessarily 100% resistance. We can achieve a great reduction with vaccinations even if it isn't perfect. Edit: I was reading that I would be charged a 40-100$ administration fee. I guess that is being charged back to the government. ... this time.
- ahupp 6y ago
  > you are charging people to contribute to herd immunity At least in my area (SF), vaccines are all free.
- zamfi 6y ago
  > Basically, you are charging people to contribute to herd immunity, rather than paying people to contribute to herd immunity. No one in the US is being directly charged for any COVID vaccine.
- thehappypm 6y ago
  What is your argument here? The US has a poorly designed system for herd immunity? Free shots, huge supply, most shots given in the world, one of the highest vaccination rates in the world?
- corty 6y ago
  "Vaccine hesitancy" is the term for antivaxxers plus people who would not refuse in principle, but prefer to wait for more results, are too lazy or something like that. The high death rate of pandemics of yore is also due to the healthcare system of yore being shit. You just couldn't properly ventilate people during the spanish flu, not to speak of ECMO or useful drugs like cortical steroids. I would guess that of those people hospitalized for COVID-19, at least half would have died back then. Of those put on a ventilator nowadays, all would have died back then. And hospitalization rates would maybe also have been higher, because where nowadays the doc sends you back to home quarantine with an asthma inhaler, back then they could just watch you suffocate...
nradov 6y ago
HCoV-OC43 is an endemic betacoronavirus very similar to SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). We don't have significant herd immunity to it. Instead most people get infected as youths and develop a level of immunity which protects against severe symptoms during subsequent reinfections. But it still kills frail elderly and immunocompromised patients. We don't have proof of when HCoV-OC43 first emerged but circumstantial evidence indicates that it probably caused the 1889-1890 pandemic and killed about 0.06% of the world population. If we allowed SARS-CoV-2 to run it’s course without vaccination then the outcome would probably be similar or a little worse because the population today is on average older with a higher incidence of co-morbid conditions. (I am not suggesting we follow that approach.) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/#!po=92.1053 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/#!po=92...
- corty 6y ago
  Well, we are already at roughly .04% worldwide deaths, and that with quite some doing to contain the disease in most of the world. I would suggest that letting COVID-19 run it's course, the numbers would be quite a bit higher, and even with current measures in place and vaccinations underway, we will certainly exceed .06% by the end of the year.
  - thesis 6y ago
    Is it possible however they are attributing death counts in 1890 are different than they are today? Maybe if they used the same standards for who dies today that they did in 1890 the n umbers back then could be higher?
    - corty 6y ago
      Maybe. But precise counts are a challenge even today, because different countries use different methods of counting. E.g. some only count corona deaths after a PCR test, some after an autopsy, some require just symptoms of COVID to be there, some count every dead infected person as corona death, even if it was a car accident, etc. So direct comparisons even between countries today are unprecise. I have no idea at all, what things looked like back then.
dukeofdoom 6y ago
I think the biggest win will be disinfecting shopping cart handles. A few years before, I even have posts about it, how it didn't make sense that these where not disinfected during Flu season. I thought it was disgusting actually since people are handling food, between touching these handles. We will probably get some innovation in face masks too. For anyone in the construction/renovation industry having access to better working face masks will help prevent all kinds of lung damaging diseases. There's probably other benefits, like more people working from home. But overall, its been terrible. I see homeless people in my city like never before. Huge surge in mental health issues too.And nursing homes with their current configurations are old people slaughter houses.
- cogman10 6y ago
  I think facemasks are going to be the biggest change to daily life that I don't see going away. 2020 had a nearly non-existent flu season and that is likely related to all the COVID restrictions (I think facemasks being a key). If I were to guess, I think people wearing facemasks when they are sick (or even just through flu season) is going to be a lot more common and socially acceptable from now on. Hopefully that will translate into less severe flu seasons from here on out.
  - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
    The biggest change will be WFH or online learning when you feel like you might just be a little bit sick. That alone should put a huge dent in flu season.
  - therealjumbo 6y ago
    How are masks 99% effective against the seasonal flu, but not nearly as effective against COVID-19?
    - cogman10 6y ago
      Easy, it takes less exposure to COVID to get you ill. Meaning, it's a more infectious disease. And masks aren't ineffective against COVID-19. Everyone wearing a mask does a pretty good job at preventing the spread of disease. However, there are a lot of people that aren't as strict about following mask rules and guidelines.
a-dub 6y ago
virus spread is O(n^2) vaccination is O(n) if you want to beat the virus, seems the answer is to genetically engineer a weak variant with a bigger reproduction and let it rip? common cold with the covid-19 spike protein?
- reedjosh 6y ago
  I would prefer not to consent to a possibly dangerous 'weaker' version of COVID. This idea would completely take choice away and experiment on the human populace.
  - a-dub 6y ago
    it's a last resort, it's true... but with variants mutating, i think we have to ask ourselves how much of a existential threat does this thing pose to the species. moreover, what's the difference if vaccines become mandatory anyhow? all the vaccines do is expose humans to the spike protein... if anything, hacking the virus seems safer than hacking the human body to produce the spike protein. i suppose it's hard to stop, where you can halt a vax campaign. i don't believe it would be impossible to establish a safety profile for a modified virus that is on par with those of the vaccines. or everyone could just stay home for a month...
    - reedjosh 6y ago
      > i think we have to ask ourselves how much of a existential threat does this thing pose to the species. I'd say not as great a threat as setting the dangerous precedent of experimenting on an unwitting populace.
      - a-dub 6y ago
        under normal circumstances, sure. but iff this thing poses an existential threat, the ethics calculus changes. i'd like to know if real virologists think that we're facing an existential threat.
- anoonmoose 6y ago
throwaway8581 6y ago
People need to accept that humans are mortal and that we can’t “beat” every disease. This modern fragility is pitiful and self-destructive. Life must go on.
andred14 6y ago
"WHO acknowledges that we lack evidence that wearing a mask protects healthy persons from SARS-CoV-2 (prevention) (17)" https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817#main_botton_nav https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817#main_botton... "Conclusions. The majority of deaths in the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic likely resulted directly from secondary bacterial pneumonia caused by common upper respiratory-tract bacteria" https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/198/7/962/2192118 https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/198/7/962/2192118 https://fee.org/articles/new-danish-study-finds-masks-don-t-protect-wearers-from-covid-infection/ https://fee.org/articles/new-danish-study-finds-masks-don-t-...
rayiner 6y ago
What do we do next time? 18 months of shutting down the economy again? What if it happens again in just a few years?
- LockAndLol 6y ago
  What is it that you propose? Have you informed yourself about the effects of your proposal and considered alternatives?
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Maybe we could actually shut down next time rather than doing what we did: unenforced and ignored stay-at-home orders, unenforced and ignored business closures, and unenforced and ignored mask mandates. Do it right and then perhaps we could get rid of the disease in a shorter amount of time.
  - corty 6y ago
    Yes, so much this. Everyone was shocked about the Chinese methods in spring 2020, but looking back, the Chinese did something right there. Maybe nailing shut doors was a little excessive, but their success proves them right. (If one can trust their numbers, that is).
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Except no country that wasn’t either an island or dictatorship managed to do that, not even Germany.
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      And how many actually tried? Last spring the US was like "Hey, travel from Italy is all good, let's not worry about it" at the time when severe travel restrictions might have been effective. I'll grant that people wouldn't put up with them for long, but reasonable measures employed before the infection base gets big can have an enormous impact on the total number of people that get infected.
andred14 6y ago
Let me make it simple for you. There was no large increase in deaths in BC from 2019 to 2020. In 2019 there were 38,379 deaths in BC. In 2020 there were 41,116 deaths in BC. The overdose crisis and population rise easily account for the increase we see. Even without these there is no large increase in deaths that warrant the destruction of lives and businesses. Which you are helping to do by supporting the "safety". https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/life-events/statistics-reports/deaths https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/life-events/statistics-re...
andred14 6y ago
Here is Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize winner and inventor of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) telling us that PCR should not be used as the sole test for diagnosis. He also says we should not be taking medical advice from Dr. Fau-c1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V__Zx0qS7uI&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V__Zx0qS7uI&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cTWN_PJ8t2o&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cTWN_PJ8t2o&feature=youtu.be Here we have a vaccine maker and expert telling us that what we are doing is wrong: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJZxiNxYLpc&t=2128s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJZxiNxYLpc&t=2128s We were lied to with the ridiculous models: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/cdcs-worst-case-coronavirus-model-210m-infected-1-7m-dead.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/cdcs-worst-case-coro... We were lied to about 2 weeks to flatten the curve, we were lied to about the empty hospitals: https://www.rebelnews.com/watch_video_from_overflowing_steinbach_hospital_shows_empty_waiting_rooms https://www.rebelnews.com/watch_video_from_overflowing_stein... M4sks do nothing to help: https://rationalground.com/mask-charts/ https://rationalground.com/mask-charts/ And the vackz is killing thousands: https://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?EVENTS=on&PAGENO=1&PERPAGE=10&ESORT&REVERSESORT&VAX=%28COVID19%29&VAXTYPES=%28COVID-19%29&DIED=Yes https://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?EVENTS=on&PA... https://www.bitchute.com/video/smOWwPIF9R0w/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/smOWwPIF9R0w/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/AESXKv8U9DTX/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/AESXKv8U9DTX/ So how about these doctors and nurses why not listen to them? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c2FA9BW3_8k https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c2FA9BW3_8k https://docs4opendebate.be/en/ https://docs4opendebate.be/en/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/dWglSvcmK8BY/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/dWglSvcmK8BY/ https://brandnewtube.com/watch/heiko-scho-ning-introduces-the-world-doctors-alliance-in-berlin-germany_iJDQBMFX92Jg7Xz.html https://brandnewtube.com/watch/heiko-scho-ning-introduces-th... You know the truth. Stop being weak and take back normal life. The bottom line is statistics show the "safety" does nothing to help and we should be demanding normal life immediately: https://rationalground.com/mask-charts/ https://rationalground.com/mask-charts/
Animats 6y ago
"Christie Aschwanden is a science journalist in Cedaredge, Colorado." This is not by an epidemiologist. It looks like Israel will be the first country to hit a very high vaccination level. 55.4 percent of Israelis have received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Over 70% of old people. The government is pushing hard on this. Pfizer says they're seeing 97% vaccine effectiveness at preventing illness. Israel cut a deal with Pfizer to get priority on vaccine shipments in exchange for sending extensive data on how it is working back to Pfizer.[1] So Israel has more than enough vaccine for their population. Already, Israel's coronavirus death rate is down to 0.15 deaths/day/100K people. It was 0.72 back in January. So watch Israel to see what happens when the vaccination percentage gets to a high level. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/3aae4345-46cc-4636-a3f9-a93a6762f87f https://www.ft.com/content/3aae4345-46cc-4636-a3f9-a93a6762f...
e79 6y ago
This is a lot less depressing when you consider that vaccines have shown astounding results so far at preventing disease. COVID is a lot less scary if you’re extremely unlikely to get very sick from it. This article touches on that a bit, but it’s buried until the end. There’s a lot of optimism to be had here, I think. Let’s not let perfect be the enemy of good — maybe we can’t eradicate COVID, but we can make it a lot more tolerable to share this planet with it.
- dennis_jeeves 6y ago
  >This is a lot less depressing when you consider that vaccines have shown astounding results so far at preventing disease. I'm less convinced by the common narrative. It appears that sanitation and nutrition played a key role in preventing diseases and co-coincided with wide spread vaccine use. Put another way vaccines did not work where sanitation + nutrition was abysmal. (Cannot find references, because I came across them a long time back))
  - thehappypm 6y ago
    You cannot find references because this is total nonsense.
subsubzero 6y ago
It will be different this time!!(says the media) <- no it won't. I like to base my findings on history and previous pandemics and how they were dealt with. The swine flu of 1918-1919[1] which was more deadly(IFR rate 2% [2]) than covid-19(IFR rate 1.15% [3]) did in fact go away, it was the last major pandemic the world has endured and once herd immunity is reached the virus will no longer have any "tinder" to burn through as either the vaccine or catching the virus to get antibodies will stop the virus in its tracks. But what about mutations? coronaviruses mutate more slowly compared to the flu virus[4], and sequencing and testing is already underway for vaccines for the new variants[5]. Lastly the thing no one is really talking about is people die every year during flu season. The really old, the really sick etc, so I suspect that a good amount of deaths with covid are non-preventable and would have happened anyways due to the flu, which by the way is pretty much non-existent this year[6] <- with that link look at one year ago and you will see a stark change in the activity of the flu, its incredible as every state has the lowest activity the CDC measures. [1] - https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoratio... [2] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971220305117 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S120197122... [3] - https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201030/covid-19-infection-fatality-ratio-is-about-one-point-15-percent https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201030/covid-19-infection-... [4] - https://rtmagazine.com/disorders-diseases/infectious-diseases/influenza/covid-mutates-slower-flu-who/ https://rtmagazine.com/disorders-diseases/infectious-disease... [5] - https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/new-sars-cov-2-variants-how-can-vaccines-be-adapted#Adapting-vaccines-to-match-variants https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/new-sars-cov-2-var... [6] - https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm#ILIActivityMap https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm#ILIActivityMap
- lamontcg 6y ago
  The 1918 pandemic didn't "go away" until 1957, it circulated as seasonal influenza. The mutation rate of this coronavirus is also 1/4 per base pair and 1/2 per whole genome of influenza. That is fairly comparable to influenza (given that viral mutation rates span many orders of magnitude they're practically the same). The variants with the mutations in spike which have higher binding affinity to ACE2 suggest that the virus also has "room to mutate". OTOH, there are 20-ish epitopes on the spike protein and would need to mutate a bunch to achieve complete immune escape. Depending on what wild-assed-guess you take as to which of those is more important you'll come up with the likelihood of if it'll mutate to achieve immune escape or not. Anyone who says they know the answer -- no matter how many degrees they have and books and papers they've published -- is lying (they may wind up being correct, but to assert they know the answer right now is a lie). Since HCoV-NL63 has been endemic to the human race for likely centuries and similarly binds ACE2 my guess is that this coronavirus will also become endemic. Given the H1N1 is now seasonal influenza and that HCoV-NL63 is a common cold coronavirus this is likely what is going to happen to SARS-CoV-2 now: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6530/741 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6530/741
call_me_dana 6y ago
“Herd immunity is only relevant if we have a transmission-blocking vaccine. If we don’t, then the only way to get herd immunity in the population is to give everyone the vaccine,” says Shweta Bansal, a mathematical biologist at Georgetown University in Washington DC. Does... Not... Compute. She is contradicting herself in the very next sentence. Herd immunity is only possible with a transmission blocking vaccine. This makes sense, as once you’re vaccinated, you are unable to transmit the virus to someone else. With that first statement, herd immunity is now not relevant, and therefore is not possible, so why mention it as a possibility? It’s not possible, but we’re just going to vaccinate everyone anyways. Is she benefiting financially from this or something? I don’t understand. Until we have transmission blocking vaccines, the concept of herd immunity is irrelevant. That goes not just for COVID-19, but for every other vaccination campaign as well. Large scale vaccination campaigns likely decrease transmission, but it doesn’t guarantee the end of any outbreak.
Mobleysoft 6y ago
There are 3 possible scenarios related to viruses and humanity on Earth. 1) Normalcy: People live their lives as they have for thousands of years, and some percentage of people die from any number of viruses, but never enough to permanently trigger one of the other scenarios. 2) Extraterran: Humanity can no longer survive one or more of the viruses on Earth. Those of us who continue to live here must do so as if it were a foreign planet filled pathogens that will surely kill us, because they do. 3) Extinction: Humanity is ended by one or more viruses. Of these 3 possible scenarios, the 1st one seems more likely than the others, and is what we should aim for before being forced into the 2nd one to avoid the 3rd. Right now we are living somewhere between the 1st and 2nd, and my intuition tells me that all our efforts related to coronaviruses, regardless of the strain, won't be able to save those whom are genetically unlucky enough to be predisposed to die from them forever. They will mutate, and eventually infect everyone, not unlike the common cold, and humanity will move on having lost somewhere between 1% and 10% of it's population, just as it would have had no curtailing measures been taken or vaccines developed at all; no different than it has been through the vast majority of our time on earth. While a higher population and the ease of global travel does mean that the virus side of the immunological arms race is boosted, all that does is raise the bar for ours. Either we'll pass, or we wont. Finally, while the deaths that have happened, and the future deaths that are likely to happen, on our path back to normalcy are certainly tragic: they have been, and will be, part and parcel of existing as organic beings living on a wild world. We cannot expect to only exist in nature when it is convenient for us. As long as we remain natural beings, we must accept that some of us will be eaten.

65 points by alister 6y ago

I am truly baffled why the epidemiology community ever thought herd immunity will work. There is ample evidence that it is not a panacea. e.g. influenzae, hepatitis, meningitis, measles, mumps, rubella, yellow fever.

Trasmatta 6y ago
Did the epidemiology community ever think that? I remember as early as March of last year, epidemiologists saying that herd immunity was not the way forward, and that this would likely become endemic. It seemed to mostly be reporters and politicians who pushed the herd immunity angle.
- WaitWaitWha 6y ago
  I can believe that. I have not dug much into the historical herd immunity statements, so it is possible they were not, although purported to be, by experts.
- bmitc 6y ago
  It was also a fair amount of HNers pushing the herd immunity thing as well.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    I don't want to necessarily attribute it to "epidemiologists" but there has been a pretty clear line from policymakers since about three weeks into the lockdowns (which was as long as we were initially told they would need to last to "flatten the curve") that we needed to stay locked down, keep wearing masks and distancing etc. until vaccines could be given to enough people to effectively end Covid transmission. There's a whole movement of prominent policy & medical leading lights that you can find with the #ZeroCovid hashtag on Twitter pushing this line.
- mtberatwork 6y ago
  From the article: > and many scientists had thought that once people started being immunized en masse, herd immunity would permit society to return to normal.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    > many scientists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word#Forms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word#Forms
- caturopath 6y ago
  It's really difficult to tell from the sidelines the difference between Cassandras and the Trelawneys. Is there a concrete way to get the pulse of the epidemiologists over time?
- simonh 6y ago
  For a while early on allowing the virus to spread through the population, with limited distancing and lockdown measures to control the rate of spread, in order to achieve herd immunity was official British government policy. I'm not knocking them to be honest. In the early months so little was known for sure that it was a matter of making best estimates, and as better data came in they quickly adapted their strategy.
Retric 6y ago
Because COVID doesn’t spread very easily. Mumps has a basic reproduction factor of 10-12, Covid is closer to 3-5. Cut Mumps transmission by 80% and nothing happens, cut COVID by 80% and it goes away fairly quickly. Other coronavirus are endemic in China, but they rarely spread outside the country.
Cerium 6y ago
In this context I think herd immunity counts vaccine driven immunity. That is how we successfully control diseases such as measles, mumps, and rubella.
hobofan 6y ago
They possibly thought based on previous outbreaks in Asian countries that people would see the severity of the problem and that it could be contained enough (and with that likelihood of mutations lowered) until vaccination efforts have reached their threshold. The probably didn't expect that multiple big countries would just let people go about their daily lives normally for a long time and spread the virus in that proportion.
libertine 6y ago
I think there was a glimpse of hope for a global effort to not add a new virus to that list, because it's not like we don't have enough of them. But I always thought that window closed in April 2020 last year when the stance of the majority was to live with the virus, the whole "new normal" campaign. Some thought the virus was slow enough to mutate to still handle it, but they forgot that with millions of people being virus factories it would be a matter of time.
caturopath 6y ago
Most of the diseases you list are examples of herd immunity working in developed world communities. People without immunity to them are pretty safe from them. Herd immunity isn't eradication, it's just a reduction of the likelihood of infection among people who aren't immune themselves.
- soperj 6y ago
  All of those got to herd immunity by vaccination, not by actually contracting the disease.
  - caturopath 6y ago
    It wasn't clear to me that you meant "flatten the curve and ride this out to herd immunity", since this article was about herd immunity via vaccination.
jfengel 6y ago
This article isn't about natural herd immunity from everybody getting the disease, with most recovering and becoming immune. The article is worrying that even with vaccination, we may not be able to reach herd immunity. Too many variants; too slow deployment; too many vaccinated people still transmitting the disease.
pbreit 6y ago
I'm not baffled since there's a good chance we'll reach effective immunity as with all of those mentioned except flu.
corty 6y ago
Well, the pox, diphteria and polio are gone or almost gone due to vaccinations, at one point or the other we had herd immunity with those. Its just that some small pockets of society refused to vaccinate and played incubators, so the rest of us wouldn't miss all the "fun"... Quite the same for all the other diseases you enumerated, just that we never managed to get herd immunity due to antivaxxers ruining it.
- call_me_dana 6y ago
  Or even worse than antivaxxers, the actual vaccinations being given in a mass rollout: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/08/25/905884740/africa-declares-wild-polio-is-wiped-out-yet-it-persists-in-vaccine-derived-cases https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/08/25/9058847... "It's actually an interesting conundrum. The very tool you are using for [polio] eradication is causing the problem"
  - corty 6y ago
    Yes, the oral polio vaccine is a live vaccine that can cause polio. More advanced vaccines, practically everything in use in developed countries nowadays, don't contain live virus. It's just that third-world countries cannot afford better vaccines. So yes, you are right that there are some corner cases.
sp332 6y ago
Herd immunity doesn't mean eradication. It means keeping outbreaks small.

sadmann1 6y ago

Alright what's the way forward then

throwaway122378 6y ago
Constant moving of the goal posts until full vaccinated proof is required to be a part of “normal” society
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Spivak 6y ago
Everyone or as many 9’s as possible getting vaccinated and regular testing of anyone who can’t get the vaccine. Like it doesn’t have to be obnoxious but people who can’t get the vaccine should get tested when any symptoms show. It’s gonna be like the flu, but ya know deadlier, where the name of the game is control and stamping out outbreaks aggressively.
- Uehreka 6y ago
  My gut feeling is that it would take strong and probably obnoxious enforcement to get us to one 9, we probably can’t even get two 9s (as in 99%, since some people think that means 99.99%) due to the number of people medically ineligible. And all that’s after approving any vaccine for kids, which we haven’t done yet.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    I mean you think that 30+ million people in the US will be medically ineligible? Every single vaccine in my state is being administered as fast as they can ship them out. And after a while kids will have to be vaccinated to go to school same as we do with other vaccines. There is no current prediction that the vaccine won't be safe for kids. The biggest groups that are ineligible are people with vaccine allergies and people with some autoimmune diseases which is vanishingly small.
nickysielicki 6y ago

throwaway12031 6y ago

full court press! be sure not to allow anyone to believe in the innate wisdom of the body

hdyideudxuedhb 6y ago

Ignoring for a moment the devastatingly irresponsible act of promoting vaccines that might be leaky; the fact is that this is a disease that has animal reservoirs, can mutate in animals and humans, and it's mutations allow it to bypass antibodies from vaccines or prior infection. It will be with us forever, and everyone is going to catch it eventually. Participation in evolution is not optional. I don't think most people can accept this. Admitting that putting the entire world under medical martial law didn't accomplish anything would cause a crises of faith that most governments can't afford.

throwaway12031 6y ago
enjoy your downvotes comrade! > Participation in evolution is not optional great line

cyptus 6y ago

even if we reach a herd immunity, won’t the virus just mutate in animals until it is effective against our vaccines?

caturopath 6y ago
This remains to be seen, and some of the experts guess this isn't a major risk. (Obviously it's possible, but there are scads of other viruses that could mutate until they're deadly in humans, too.)
Spivak 6y ago
Right now the vaccines are effective against current mutations but yes! It’s very likely that we’ll see more than one covid vaccine during our lifetimes as it mutates.
- rolph 6y ago
  @OP [cyptus] this is a good question, there is no need for animal resivoir to establish variants/mutation as this happens concurrent with human infection as well. @spivak you sound on track, the current thought in the lab is polyvalent vaccine. The problems include mRNA duplex interference, meaning 2 species of mRNA may anneal at complementary regions of the sequence to produce localized folding that derails the translation enzymes of the host.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
soperj 6y ago
they are already making booster shots for the current mutations.

ping_pong 6y ago

First and foremost SARS-CoV-2 will never go away because it infects animals. Because it is so infectious, it will go through an entire herd or farm within days and eventually cause mutations and jump back to humans. So it will never go away and we need to prepare for it. The main goal is to make it survivable, ie. akin to the flu, and not cause hospitals to get overrun like we have seen so many times around the world in the last year.

codeulike 6y ago
Because it is so infectious, it will go through an entire herd or farm within days and eventually cause mutations and jump back to humans. Citation needed
- roywiggins 6y ago
  https://www.who.int/csr/don/06-november-2020-mink-associated-sars-cov2-denmark/en/ https://www.who.int/csr/don/06-november-2020-mink-associated...
- s_dev 6y ago
  The culling of the Mink Farms in Denmark should be evidence enough that it can travel through animals. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/05/pollution-fears-over-mink-buried-after-covid-culling-in-denmark https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/05/pollution-fear... The fact that it already mutated going through a bat or pangolin before going back to humans suggests this is based in sound evidence.
  - seneca 6y ago
    > The culling of the Mink Farms in Denmark should be evidence enough that it can travel through animals. Not that I think you're wrong, but that's circular logic. "Minks were culled because it can travel through animals. Minks being culled is evidence it can travel through animals."
  - rowanG077 6y ago
    Not saying I don't believe it. But a government doing something is not even close to proof.

heavyset_go 6y ago

The word for probably impossible is improbable.

quesera 6y ago
There's a huge difference between "probably impossible" and "improbable".
- ngngngng 6y ago
  Rather, "improbable" denotes a wide range of probability where the likelihood is less than 50%. "Probably impossible" denotes likelihood much closer to 0%.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  And there's a huge difference between finite improbability and infinite improbability.
chadash 6y ago
While we are arguing semantics (and I agree that improbable would be a better word for the title) there is a difference. Improbable refers to odds. Probably impossible refers to odds of some binary outcome. My winning the lottery is improbable. We all agree I have a shot at it, but it's very unlikely. But it's definitely not impossible, assuming it's not rigged. Solving an NP problem with a P time algorithm is probably impossible. Either it can be done or it can't be. We suspect the latter, but we don't know 100%. Once we prove it one way or the other, it will will either be possible or impossible, in a binary sense.
ncallaway 6y ago
I disagree with this. I think think there's a significant difference between: "This event is certainly possible, but only has a 10% chance of occurring" and "This event may or may not be possible we don't yet know, but our best guess is that it is not possible, and we are 90% confident in that prediction"

sandworm101 6y ago

>> "Israel began vaccinating its citizens in December 2020 [...] Now the problem is that young people don’t want to get their shots,” Aran says, so local authorities are enticing them with things such as free pizza and beer. Forget the pizza. I would pay good money for a vaccination but in my area (Canada) vaccination is still only open to the elderly. At work I am doing double shifts to cover for all the people who are "working from home". I haven't seen my parents or other extended family in over a year. It has been six months since I've eaten in a sit-down restaurant. I've had to cut my own hair since christmas. If the kids in Israel aren't accepting the vaccine then ship those does to me and I'll give them to people who actually want this all to end.

AtlasBarfed 6y ago

"vaccine hesitancy" Is that anti-vaxxers / laziness? Also, the US still has a very poorly designed system to promote herd immunity. Basically, you are charging people to contribute to herd immunity, rather than paying people to contribute to herd immunity. COVID isn't even some "perfect bug" that maximizes the strategic/policy failures of US healthcare and preys on our self-interest. It's a very very mild pandemic compared to 20-40% death rate pandemics of yore. Maybe a death rate at those levels would spur "healthcare consumer self-interest" to vaccinate... but if there was an outright 3% death rate, would people's behavior change? 5%? 10%? And for god sakes, stop letting perfect be the enemy of good. "Herd Immunity" isn't necessarily 100% resistance. We can achieve a great reduction with vaccinations even if it isn't perfect. Edit: I was reading that I would be charged a 40-100$ administration fee. I guess that is being charged back to the government. ... this time.

ahupp 6y ago
> you are charging people to contribute to herd immunity At least in my area (SF), vaccines are all free.
zamfi 6y ago
> Basically, you are charging people to contribute to herd immunity, rather than paying people to contribute to herd immunity. No one in the US is being directly charged for any COVID vaccine.
thehappypm 6y ago
What is your argument here? The US has a poorly designed system for herd immunity? Free shots, huge supply, most shots given in the world, one of the highest vaccination rates in the world?
corty 6y ago
"Vaccine hesitancy" is the term for antivaxxers plus people who would not refuse in principle, but prefer to wait for more results, are too lazy or something like that. The high death rate of pandemics of yore is also due to the healthcare system of yore being shit. You just couldn't properly ventilate people during the spanish flu, not to speak of ECMO or useful drugs like cortical steroids. I would guess that of those people hospitalized for COVID-19, at least half would have died back then. Of those put on a ventilator nowadays, all would have died back then. And hospitalization rates would maybe also have been higher, because where nowadays the doc sends you back to home quarantine with an asthma inhaler, back then they could just watch you suffocate...

nradov 6y ago

HCoV-OC43 is an endemic betacoronavirus very similar to SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). We don't have significant herd immunity to it. Instead most people get infected as youths and develop a level of immunity which protects against severe symptoms during subsequent reinfections. But it still kills frail elderly and immunocompromised patients. We don't have proof of when HCoV-OC43 first emerged but circumstantial evidence indicates that it probably caused the 1889-1890 pandemic and killed about 0.06% of the world population. If we allowed SARS-CoV-2 to run it’s course without vaccination then the outcome would probably be similar or a little worse because the population today is on average older with a higher incidence of co-morbid conditions. (I am not suggesting we follow that approach.) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/#!po=92.1053 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/#!po=92...

corty 6y ago
Well, we are already at roughly .04% worldwide deaths, and that with quite some doing to contain the disease in most of the world. I would suggest that letting COVID-19 run it's course, the numbers would be quite a bit higher, and even with current measures in place and vaccinations underway, we will certainly exceed .06% by the end of the year.
- thesis 6y ago
  Is it possible however they are attributing death counts in 1890 are different than they are today? Maybe if they used the same standards for who dies today that they did in 1890 the n umbers back then could be higher?
  - corty 6y ago
    Maybe. But precise counts are a challenge even today, because different countries use different methods of counting. E.g. some only count corona deaths after a PCR test, some after an autopsy, some require just symptoms of COVID to be there, some count every dead infected person as corona death, even if it was a car accident, etc. So direct comparisons even between countries today are unprecise. I have no idea at all, what things looked like back then.

dukeofdoom 6y ago

I think the biggest win will be disinfecting shopping cart handles. A few years before, I even have posts about it, how it didn't make sense that these where not disinfected during Flu season. I thought it was disgusting actually since people are handling food, between touching these handles. We will probably get some innovation in face masks too. For anyone in the construction/renovation industry having access to better working face masks will help prevent all kinds of lung damaging diseases. There's probably other benefits, like more people working from home. But overall, its been terrible. I see homeless people in my city like never before. Huge surge in mental health issues too.And nursing homes with their current configurations are old people slaughter houses.

cogman10 6y ago
I think facemasks are going to be the biggest change to daily life that I don't see going away. 2020 had a nearly non-existent flu season and that is likely related to all the COVID restrictions (I think facemasks being a key). If I were to guess, I think people wearing facemasks when they are sick (or even just through flu season) is going to be a lot more common and socially acceptable from now on. Hopefully that will translate into less severe flu seasons from here on out.
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  The biggest change will be WFH or online learning when you feel like you might just be a little bit sick. That alone should put a huge dent in flu season.
- therealjumbo 6y ago
  How are masks 99% effective against the seasonal flu, but not nearly as effective against COVID-19?
  - cogman10 6y ago
    Easy, it takes less exposure to COVID to get you ill. Meaning, it's a more infectious disease. And masks aren't ineffective against COVID-19. Everyone wearing a mask does a pretty good job at preventing the spread of disease. However, there are a lot of people that aren't as strict about following mask rules and guidelines.

a-dub 6y ago

virus spread is O(n^2) vaccination is O(n) if you want to beat the virus, seems the answer is to genetically engineer a weak variant with a bigger reproduction and let it rip? common cold with the covid-19 spike protein?

reedjosh 6y ago
I would prefer not to consent to a possibly dangerous 'weaker' version of COVID. This idea would completely take choice away and experiment on the human populace.
- a-dub 6y ago
  it's a last resort, it's true... but with variants mutating, i think we have to ask ourselves how much of a existential threat does this thing pose to the species. moreover, what's the difference if vaccines become mandatory anyhow? all the vaccines do is expose humans to the spike protein... if anything, hacking the virus seems safer than hacking the human body to produce the spike protein. i suppose it's hard to stop, where you can halt a vax campaign. i don't believe it would be impossible to establish a safety profile for a modified virus that is on par with those of the vaccines. or everyone could just stay home for a month...
  - reedjosh 6y ago
    > i think we have to ask ourselves how much of a existential threat does this thing pose to the species. I'd say not as great a threat as setting the dangerous precedent of experimenting on an unwitting populace.
    - a-dub 6y ago
      under normal circumstances, sure. but iff this thing poses an existential threat, the ethics calculus changes. i'd like to know if real virologists think that we're facing an existential threat.
anoonmoose 6y ago

throwaway8581 6y ago

People need to accept that humans are mortal and that we can’t “beat” every disease. This modern fragility is pitiful and self-destructive. Life must go on.

andred14 6y ago

"WHO acknowledges that we lack evidence that wearing a mask protects healthy persons from SARS-CoV-2 (prevention) (17)" https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817#main_botton_nav https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817#main_botton... "Conclusions. The majority of deaths in the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic likely resulted directly from secondary bacterial pneumonia caused by common upper respiratory-tract bacteria" https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/198/7/962/2192118 https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/198/7/962/2192118 https://fee.org/articles/new-danish-study-finds-masks-don-t-protect-wearers-from-covid-infection/ https://fee.org/articles/new-danish-study-finds-masks-don-t-...

rayiner 6y ago

What do we do next time? 18 months of shutting down the economy again? What if it happens again in just a few years?

LockAndLol 6y ago
What is it that you propose? Have you informed yourself about the effects of your proposal and considered alternatives?
ryandrake 6y ago
Maybe we could actually shut down next time rather than doing what we did: unenforced and ignored stay-at-home orders, unenforced and ignored business closures, and unenforced and ignored mask mandates. Do it right and then perhaps we could get rid of the disease in a shorter amount of time.
- corty 6y ago
  Yes, so much this. Everyone was shocked about the Chinese methods in spring 2020, but looking back, the Chinese did something right there. Maybe nailing shut doors was a little excessive, but their success proves them right. (If one can trust their numbers, that is).
- rayiner 6y ago
  Except no country that wasn’t either an island or dictatorship managed to do that, not even Germany.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    And how many actually tried? Last spring the US was like "Hey, travel from Italy is all good, let's not worry about it" at the time when severe travel restrictions might have been effective. I'll grant that people wouldn't put up with them for long, but reasonable measures employed before the infection base gets big can have an enormous impact on the total number of people that get infected.

andred14 6y ago

Let me make it simple for you. There was no large increase in deaths in BC from 2019 to 2020. In 2019 there were 38,379 deaths in BC. In 2020 there were 41,116 deaths in BC. The overdose crisis and population rise easily account for the increase we see. Even without these there is no large increase in deaths that warrant the destruction of lives and businesses. Which you are helping to do by supporting the "safety". https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/life-events/statistics-reports/deaths https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/life-events/statistics-re...

andred14 6y ago

Here is Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize winner and inventor of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) telling us that PCR should not be used as the sole test for diagnosis. He also says we should not be taking medical advice from Dr. Fau-c1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V__Zx0qS7uI&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V__Zx0qS7uI&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cTWN_PJ8t2o&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cTWN_PJ8t2o&feature=youtu.be Here we have a vaccine maker and expert telling us that what we are doing is wrong: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJZxiNxYLpc&t=2128s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJZxiNxYLpc&t=2128s We were lied to with the ridiculous models: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/cdcs-worst-case-coronavirus-model-210m-infected-1-7m-dead.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/cdcs-worst-case-coro... We were lied to about 2 weeks to flatten the curve, we were lied to about the empty hospitals: https://www.rebelnews.com/watch_video_from_overflowing_steinbach_hospital_shows_empty_waiting_rooms https://www.rebelnews.com/watch_video_from_overflowing_stein... M4sks do nothing to help: https://rationalground.com/mask-charts/ https://rationalground.com/mask-charts/ And the vackz is killing thousands: https://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?EVENTS=on&PAGENO=1&PERPAGE=10&ESORT&REVERSESORT&VAX=%28COVID19%29&VAXTYPES=%28COVID-19%29&DIED=Yes https://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?EVENTS=on&PA... https://www.bitchute.com/video/smOWwPIF9R0w/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/smOWwPIF9R0w/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/AESXKv8U9DTX/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/AESXKv8U9DTX/ So how about these doctors and nurses why not listen to them? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c2FA9BW3_8k https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c2FA9BW3_8k https://docs4opendebate.be/en/ https://docs4opendebate.be/en/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/dWglSvcmK8BY/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/dWglSvcmK8BY/ https://brandnewtube.com/watch/heiko-scho-ning-introduces-the-world-doctors-alliance-in-berlin-germany_iJDQBMFX92Jg7Xz.html https://brandnewtube.com/watch/heiko-scho-ning-introduces-th... You know the truth. Stop being weak and take back normal life. The bottom line is statistics show the "safety" does nothing to help and we should be demanding normal life immediately: https://rationalground.com/mask-charts/ https://rationalground.com/mask-charts/

Animats 6y ago

"Christie Aschwanden is a science journalist in Cedaredge, Colorado." This is not by an epidemiologist. It looks like Israel will be the first country to hit a very high vaccination level. 55.4 percent of Israelis have received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Over 70% of old people. The government is pushing hard on this. Pfizer says they're seeing 97% vaccine effectiveness at preventing illness. Israel cut a deal with Pfizer to get priority on vaccine shipments in exchange for sending extensive data on how it is working back to Pfizer.[1] So Israel has more than enough vaccine for their population. Already, Israel's coronavirus death rate is down to 0.15 deaths/day/100K people. It was 0.72 back in January. So watch Israel to see what happens when the vaccination percentage gets to a high level. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/3aae4345-46cc-4636-a3f9-a93a6762f87f https://www.ft.com/content/3aae4345-46cc-4636-a3f9-a93a6762f...

e79 6y ago

This is a lot less depressing when you consider that vaccines have shown astounding results so far at preventing disease. COVID is a lot less scary if you’re extremely unlikely to get very sick from it. This article touches on that a bit, but it’s buried until the end. There’s a lot of optimism to be had here, I think. Let’s not let perfect be the enemy of good — maybe we can’t eradicate COVID, but we can make it a lot more tolerable to share this planet with it.

dennis_jeeves 6y ago
>This is a lot less depressing when you consider that vaccines have shown astounding results so far at preventing disease. I'm less convinced by the common narrative. It appears that sanitation and nutrition played a key role in preventing diseases and co-coincided with wide spread vaccine use. Put another way vaccines did not work where sanitation + nutrition was abysmal. (Cannot find references, because I came across them a long time back))
- thehappypm 6y ago
  You cannot find references because this is total nonsense.

subsubzero 6y ago

It will be different this time!!(says the media) <- no it won't. I like to base my findings on history and previous pandemics and how they were dealt with. The swine flu of 1918-1919[1] which was more deadly(IFR rate 2% [2]) than covid-19(IFR rate 1.15% [3]) did in fact go away, it was the last major pandemic the world has endured and once herd immunity is reached the virus will no longer have any "tinder" to burn through as either the vaccine or catching the virus to get antibodies will stop the virus in its tracks. But what about mutations? coronaviruses mutate more slowly compared to the flu virus[4], and sequencing and testing is already underway for vaccines for the new variants[5]. Lastly the thing no one is really talking about is people die every year during flu season. The really old, the really sick etc, so I suspect that a good amount of deaths with covid are non-preventable and would have happened anyways due to the flu, which by the way is pretty much non-existent this year[6] <- with that link look at one year ago and you will see a stark change in the activity of the flu, its incredible as every state has the lowest activity the CDC measures. [1] - https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoratio... [2] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971220305117 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S120197122... [3] - https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201030/covid-19-infection-fatality-ratio-is-about-one-point-15-percent https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201030/covid-19-infection-... [4] - https://rtmagazine.com/disorders-diseases/infectious-diseases/influenza/covid-mutates-slower-flu-who/ https://rtmagazine.com/disorders-diseases/infectious-disease... [5] - https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/new-sars-cov-2-variants-how-can-vaccines-be-adapted#Adapting-vaccines-to-match-variants https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/new-sars-cov-2-var... [6] - https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm#ILIActivityMap https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm#ILIActivityMap

lamontcg 6y ago
The 1918 pandemic didn't "go away" until 1957, it circulated as seasonal influenza. The mutation rate of this coronavirus is also 1/4 per base pair and 1/2 per whole genome of influenza. That is fairly comparable to influenza (given that viral mutation rates span many orders of magnitude they're practically the same). The variants with the mutations in spike which have higher binding affinity to ACE2 suggest that the virus also has "room to mutate". OTOH, there are 20-ish epitopes on the spike protein and would need to mutate a bunch to achieve complete immune escape. Depending on what wild-assed-guess you take as to which of those is more important you'll come up with the likelihood of if it'll mutate to achieve immune escape or not. Anyone who says they know the answer -- no matter how many degrees they have and books and papers they've published -- is lying (they may wind up being correct, but to assert they know the answer right now is a lie). Since HCoV-NL63 has been endemic to the human race for likely centuries and similarly binds ACE2 my guess is that this coronavirus will also become endemic. Given the H1N1 is now seasonal influenza and that HCoV-NL63 is a common cold coronavirus this is likely what is going to happen to SARS-CoV-2 now: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6530/741 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6530/741

call_me_dana 6y ago

“Herd immunity is only relevant if we have a transmission-blocking vaccine. If we don’t, then the only way to get herd immunity in the population is to give everyone the vaccine,” says Shweta Bansal, a mathematical biologist at Georgetown University in Washington DC. Does... Not... Compute. She is contradicting herself in the very next sentence. Herd immunity is only possible with a transmission blocking vaccine. This makes sense, as once you’re vaccinated, you are unable to transmit the virus to someone else. With that first statement, herd immunity is now not relevant, and therefore is not possible, so why mention it as a possibility? It’s not possible, but we’re just going to vaccinate everyone anyways. Is she benefiting financially from this or something? I don’t understand. Until we have transmission blocking vaccines, the concept of herd immunity is irrelevant. That goes not just for COVID-19, but for every other vaccination campaign as well. Large scale vaccination campaigns likely decrease transmission, but it doesn’t guarantee the end of any outbreak.

Mobleysoft 6y ago

There are 3 possible scenarios related to viruses and humanity on Earth. 1) Normalcy: People live their lives as they have for thousands of years, and some percentage of people die from any number of viruses, but never enough to permanently trigger one of the other scenarios. 2) Extraterran: Humanity can no longer survive one or more of the viruses on Earth. Those of us who continue to live here must do so as if it were a foreign planet filled pathogens that will surely kill us, because they do. 3) Extinction: Humanity is ended by one or more viruses. Of these 3 possible scenarios, the 1st one seems more likely than the others, and is what we should aim for before being forced into the 2nd one to avoid the 3rd. Right now we are living somewhere between the 1st and 2nd, and my intuition tells me that all our efforts related to coronaviruses, regardless of the strain, won't be able to save those whom are genetically unlucky enough to be predisposed to die from them forever. They will mutate, and eventually infect everyone, not unlike the common cold, and humanity will move on having lost somewhere between 1% and 10% of it's population, just as it would have had no curtailing measures been taken or vaccines developed at all; no different than it has been through the vast majority of our time on earth. While a higher population and the ease of global travel does mean that the virus side of the immunological arms race is boosted, all that does is raise the bar for ours. Either we'll pass, or we wont. Finally, while the deaths that have happened, and the future deaths that are likely to happen, on our path back to normalcy are certainly tragic: they have been, and will be, part and parcel of existing as organic beings living on a wild world. We cannot expect to only exist in nature when it is convenient for us. As long as we remain natural beings, we must accept that some of us will be eaten.