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I am not sure how to reconcile this with the fact that there has been a global pandemic for the past year or so. Perhaps I am missing something obvious. Can any

I am not sure how to reconcile this with the fact that there has been a global pandemic for the past year or so. Perhaps I am missing something obvious. Can anybody explain?

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
We had a global pandemic. In that pandemic, a lot of people got exposed to Covid - exposed enough that they developed antibodies.
- Metacelsus 6y ago
  Antibodies are only produced if a pathogen replicates enough to trigger the immune system. So mere "exposure" doesn't do it; actual infection does.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    In principle the absolute number of virions matters. If you are exposed to 1000 versus 100,000, does one lead to an infection while the other indices some exposure response?
lolc 6y ago
I would assume that most people have some sensitivity because they've been exposed to coronaviruses before. However this is not enough to quickly raise an immune response when the new variant shows up.
maxerickson 6y ago
They didn't study whether the reactive antibodies were protective, just whether they were there. The thing the study establishes is that most adults have antibodies that will react to some parts of the pandemic virus. And then that's it. They didn't establish whether it was protective or not or anything like that.
ArkanExplorer 6y ago
The world gets hit with various 'Asian' superflus roughly once a decade: https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-deaths-1851.jpg https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-... This is just the first one that has hit at a time when it was politically and technically possible to shut down whole societies in fear of them.
- hire_charts 6y ago
  It doesn't need to be a global/political conspiracy for people to be more sensitive to a large amount of people dying after almost 20 years of significantly lower death rates. Edit: Also, looking at overall deaths per million is not anything like comparing actual mortality rates of those infected. The baseline mortality in 1918 was already way higher and the pandemic amplified that, despite actually being less deadly than COVID-19 at an individual level. So I'd argue that the response to this pandemic was more than merited and was appropriate to the nature of the virus itself. It was not just another "asian flu."
  - ArkanExplorer 6y ago
    Deaths in Sweden are only 6% higher in 2020 than in 2018: https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-... It would seem unlikely that the population would notice a 6% increase against the base annual death rate. We previously tolerated hospital overcrowding and death spikes from influenza waves. Most other countries around the world are showing a 4-6% increase. There seems to be a correlation to severity of lockdown and increased number of deaths, presumably due to factors like interruptions to regular medical treatments, and individual health deteriorating during lockdown.
    - hire_charts 6y ago
      See my edit above. Looking at a country's overall death rates is not how you should compare virulence.
    - randomopining 6y ago

I am not sure how to reconcile this with the fact that there has been a global pandemic for the past year or so. Perhaps I am missing something obvious. Can anybody explain?

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

We had a global pandemic. In that pandemic, a lot of people got exposed to Covid - exposed enough that they developed antibodies.

Metacelsus 6y ago
Antibodies are only produced if a pathogen replicates enough to trigger the immune system. So mere "exposure" doesn't do it; actual infection does.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  In principle the absolute number of virions matters. If you are exposed to 1000 versus 100,000, does one lead to an infection while the other indices some exposure response?

lolc 6y ago

I would assume that most people have some sensitivity because they've been exposed to coronaviruses before. However this is not enough to quickly raise an immune response when the new variant shows up.

maxerickson 6y ago

They didn't study whether the reactive antibodies were protective, just whether they were there. The thing the study establishes is that most adults have antibodies that will react to some parts of the pandemic virus. And then that's it. They didn't establish whether it was protective or not or anything like that.

ArkanExplorer 6y ago

The world gets hit with various 'Asian' superflus roughly once a decade: https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-deaths-1851.jpg https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-... This is just the first one that has hit at a time when it was politically and technically possible to shut down whole societies in fear of them.

hire_charts 6y ago
It doesn't need to be a global/political conspiracy for people to be more sensitive to a large amount of people dying after almost 20 years of significantly lower death rates. Edit: Also, looking at overall deaths per million is not anything like comparing actual mortality rates of those infected. The baseline mortality in 1918 was already way higher and the pandemic amplified that, despite actually being less deadly than COVID-19 at an individual level. So I'd argue that the response to this pandemic was more than merited and was appropriate to the nature of the virus itself. It was not just another "asian flu."
- ArkanExplorer 6y ago
  Deaths in Sweden are only 6% higher in 2020 than in 2018: https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-... It would seem unlikely that the population would notice a 6% increase against the base annual death rate. We previously tolerated hospital overcrowding and death spikes from influenza waves. Most other countries around the world are showing a 4-6% increase. There seems to be a correlation to severity of lockdown and increased number of deaths, presumably due to factors like interruptions to regular medical treatments, and individual health deteriorating during lockdown.
  - hire_charts 6y ago
    See my edit above. Looking at a country's overall death rates is not how you should compare virulence.
  - randomopining 6y ago