5 ms·

Maybe? Back in July, 94% of english adults had antibodies! Their cases peaked and are rising again. This 94% doesn’t include kids, but with plenty of cases and

by graeme 5y ago

Maybe? Back in July, 94% of english adults had antibodies! Their cases peaked and are rising again. This 94% doesn’t include kids, but with plenty of cases and vaccinations since then, not obvious high prior immunity makes it like flu. Influenza is basically dead right now with our current precautions, incidentally. The UK is in summer, snd the virus is still spreading at near record rates with 94% adult immunity. On what basis do you believe it to be like the flu? This isn’t doomerism btw. My position is SARS-Cov-2 likely isn’t livable, and we should eliminate it. Multiple societies have succeeded at it. Readily possible. Maybe the winter will prove you right, but if it doesn’t I’m hoping people will come round to actually trying to get rid of the thing. Basically every country that tried to succeeded. It’s possible. Frankly the people who say we can’t beat it seem like the pessimists to me. https://gizmodo.com/whopping-94-of-adults-in-england-have-covid-19-antibod-1847515379 https://gizmodo.com/whopping-94-of-adults-in-england-have-co...

lamontcg 5y ago
I can't find the methodology of that survey but if its not controlled for demographics it may oversample the vaccinated population. And kids count and I really mean 100%. Also, if 20 year olds only have an 80% rate due to less vaccine uptake it'll still spread in that subpopulation of the UK and the near 100% vaccination rate of 80 year olds doesn't affect that spread because 80 years old aren't at the nightclubs where 20 year olds are spreading the virus. Also obviously if kids under 16 in the UK only have a seropositivity of ~20% due to no vaccination then the virus will happily spread in that reservoir, particularly through the schools where kids are in close proximity to hundreds of other kids, before "hopping back" into adults. Much like a reservoir species (which incidentally is the reason why eradication of this virus is impossible)
- graeme 5y ago
  We’ll see how it goes in the UK. Could be they’ll just decline over winter, I admit that’s certainly possible. Regarding animal reservoirs, has there been a single confirmed or suspected case anywhere? Especially in a place that had transmission, like Wuhan, or Nova Scotia. Or with good contact tracing like South Korea. That’s certainly possible, but I don’t know it’s proven to be a certain problem. You’d expect lower animal transmission if it wasn’t rampant in humans too.
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    40% of white tailed deer in the US are seropositive for SARS-CoV-2: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02110-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02110-8 In the case of the mink cluster 5 there were confirmed cases of the mink-adapted SARS-CoV-2 genome in infected workers on the farms. Without similar genotyping its impossible to say if there's other similar events happening with other species, but the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects enough other species to be considered promiscuous.
    - graeme 5y ago
      I’d heard of the mink. That would be easy enough to control with herd isolation and culls. Deer are trickier, but as the article notes we don’t know the state of active transmission. On the basis of existing evidence I think it’s premature just to give up and say it’s impossible, without having tried.
      - lamontcg 5y ago
        The point isn't to fixate on the deer or the mink. The problem is multispecies and there's dozens of them at least. It is large enough to not be solvable. I'd love it if we'd just give up entirely world-wide on mink farming already, but eradicating wild species is a non-starter. And we will likely never even identify all the species out there which could be reservoirs. You'd need to fully survey African nations and we still can't figure out where Ebola is coming from. There's going to be many times more species of animals that can be infected and be reservoirs of this virus that we don't know about than we do know about. And all those species in Africa count every bit as much as the minks closer to home.

by graeme 5y ago

lamontcg 5y ago

I can't find the methodology of that survey but if its not controlled for demographics it may oversample the vaccinated population. And kids count and I really mean 100%. Also, if 20 year olds only have an 80% rate due to less vaccine uptake it'll still spread in that subpopulation of the UK and the near 100% vaccination rate of 80 year olds doesn't affect that spread because 80 years old aren't at the nightclubs where 20 year olds are spreading the virus. Also obviously if kids under 16 in the UK only have a seropositivity of ~20% due to no vaccination then the virus will happily spread in that reservoir, particularly through the schools where kids are in close proximity to hundreds of other kids, before "hopping back" into adults. Much like a reservoir species (which incidentally is the reason why eradication of this virus is impossible)

graeme 5y ago
We’ll see how it goes in the UK. Could be they’ll just decline over winter, I admit that’s certainly possible. Regarding animal reservoirs, has there been a single confirmed or suspected case anywhere? Especially in a place that had transmission, like Wuhan, or Nova Scotia. Or with good contact tracing like South Korea. That’s certainly possible, but I don’t know it’s proven to be a certain problem. You’d expect lower animal transmission if it wasn’t rampant in humans too.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  40% of white tailed deer in the US are seropositive for SARS-CoV-2: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02110-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02110-8 In the case of the mink cluster 5 there were confirmed cases of the mink-adapted SARS-CoV-2 genome in infected workers on the farms. Without similar genotyping its impossible to say if there's other similar events happening with other species, but the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects enough other species to be considered promiscuous.
  - graeme 5y ago
    I’d heard of the mink. That would be easy enough to control with herd isolation and culls. Deer are trickier, but as the article notes we don’t know the state of active transmission. On the basis of existing evidence I think it’s premature just to give up and say it’s impossible, without having tried.
    - lamontcg 5y ago
      The point isn't to fixate on the deer or the mink. The problem is multispecies and there's dozens of them at least. It is large enough to not be solvable. I'd love it if we'd just give up entirely world-wide on mink farming already, but eradicating wild species is a non-starter. And we will likely never even identify all the species out there which could be reservoirs. You'd need to fully survey African nations and we still can't figure out where Ebola is coming from. There's going to be many times more species of animals that can be infected and be reservoirs of this virus that we don't know about than we do know about. And all those species in Africa count every bit as much as the minks closer to home.