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> We're feeling pretty good right now because it's the summer. But come winter, if we still have a significant percentage of the population that is unvaccinated
by mdasen 5y ago
> We're feeling pretty good right now because it's the summer. But come winter, if we still have a significant percentage of the population that is unvaccinated, we're going to see this virus surge again
Does anyone have more information on why it's a bigger issue in the winter? Is it because people spend more time indoors in the winter where spread will be more likely while in the summer people will spend their time outside where spread is less likely?
- bobbylarrybobby 5y agoYep, that’s the theory. You can look to this past winter as an example — things got way worse than they were over the summer
- toomanyrichies 5y agoI have to guess that the busy travel season of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year plays a part as well. These are peak crowd-gathering holidays, at least in the U.S. Lots of visiting relatives, lots of transiting through crowded airports, lots of cramped airliner cabins and recycled air, etc.
- Consultant32452 5y agoThe strange truth is we don't know why disease waxes and wanes with the seasons. There's a lot of hypothesis but they've mostly been disproven. In particular any thoughts about the weather and how it impacts behavior are eliminated due to the fact that we have two hemispheres that are in opposite seasons and constant international travel.
- whoisburbansky 5y agoI’d love sources/anything to show how the seasonal hypotheses have been disproven.
- Consultant32452 5y ago"Eliminated" was probably too strong, but here's some relevant scientists talking about how we don't understand why seasonal disease is seasonal. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/why-do-dozens-diseases-wax-and-wane-seasons-and-will-covid-19 https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/why-do-dozens-diseas... >Even for well-known seasonal diseases, it’s not clear why they wax and wane during the calendar year. “It’s an absolute swine of a field,” says Andrew Loudon, a chronobiologist at the University of Manchester. Investigating a hypothesis over several seasons can take 2 or 3 years. “Postdocs can only get one experiment done and it can be a career killer,” Loudon says. The field is also plagued by confounding variables. “All kinds of things are seasonal, like Christmas shopping,” says epidemiologist Scott Dowell, who heads vaccine development and surveillance at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and in 2001 wrote a widely cited perspective that inspired Martinez’s current study. And it’s easy to be misled by spurious correlations, Dowell says.
- lambdaba 5y agoMy belief is it's simply that immunity tends to be more depressed with the cold. Less sun, less vitamin d, perhaps some ingrained cycle due to expected lower food availability, slower metabolism, etc. Basically hibernation.
- refurb 5y agoSo rather than a straightforward explanation you think it’s wrong and rather it’s “depressed immunity” of which there is no data to back up?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sudosysgen 5y agoViruses degrade much slower in the cold, which is almost certainly part of it too.
- BurningFrog 5y agoSunlight also gives us vitamin D, and kills airborne viruses.