11 ms·

With exponential spread, the actual number of ICU beds really doesn't matter, because whatever you've got will be overwhelmed across a similar timeframe anyway.

With exponential spread, the actual number of ICU beds really doesn't matter, because whatever you've got will be overwhelmed across a similar timeframe anyway. The only way to actually fix the problem is to get the R-value below 1, which requires mass vaccinations.

disambiguation 5y ago
I can't believe people still think herd immunity is possible. Delta. Omicron. Our technology sucks and is slow, we can't achieve R < 1 this way.
- manwe150 5y ago
  It can’t be all that bleak. The mRNA technology would let us inject omicron-specific boosters tomorrow, but then there is a lot of other safety hurdles that have to be met before it gets authorized and then distribution hurdles to convince people to take it… Mathematically, we will get to R=1 this way, some day or another, with some percentage of people getting it via illness and some via vaccination. The choice is still ours on how and when.
  - disambiguation 5y ago
    Take a look at history to see how bleak it can get. At this point I'm less worried about covid and more worried about the global rise in authoritarian trends.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    At some point the classical ones are available that are not vector or mRNA vaccinations. Although there is still skepticism regarding duration of the protection.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
      > At some point the classical ones are available that are not vector or mRNA vaccinations. So you say that at some stage there will be vaccines for COVID-19 that are not nMRA (Pfizer, Moderna) or Viral vector (AstraZeneca) Why? The people who are happy with vaccines are fairly happy with these vaccines and might refine them, but not about to dump them entirely for a different technique. in fact mRNA vaccines are the new hot thing. And the people who really aren't happy with these vaccines, will never be happy. They'll find a way to object. So what's the incentive for such a classical vaccine? Who's going to root for it?
      - raxxorrax 5y ago
        What do you mean? We need better vaccines for any long term strategy.
        SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
        And those will likely also not be "classical vaccines". Moderna and Pfizer (1) and AstraZeneca (2) are getting ready for the next round, still using their current technologies. They're not planning on going back to "classical vaccines" for COVID-19. 1) https://fortune.com/2021/11/29/covid-19-omicron-vaccine-protection-modification-pfizer-biontech/ https://fortune.com/2021/11/29/covid-19-omicron-vaccine-prot... 2) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/omicron-oxford-covid-astrazeneca-cnbc-b1966749.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/omicron-oxford-covid-a...
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  I can't believe people still think that mass vaccinations is not part of the solution Vaccination is of course imperfect and cannot be the sole measure, but we can't achieve R < 1 without a lot of it.
  - account42 5y ago
    > we can't achieve R < 1 without them. So then what happened summer 2020?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
      Are you saying that we shouldn't vaccinate, because strict lockdowns worked, against the COVID-19 original strain, for a while? It's technically true that this worked then, but 2020 is gone, not to return. a) new COVID strains were inevitable and b) prolonged strict lockdowns unpalatable and c) mass vaccination has a huge benefit. As part of a multi-pronged strategy, of course. Depending on only one measure, be it lockdown or vaccination, is not going to work.
  - disambiguation 5y ago
    I can't believe people still think after 2 years we're at a point technologically and logistically that we can control nature and just make this "go away". Delta came out of India. Omicron came out of South Africa. How do mandates in the West stop variants elsewhere? And variants aside, the vaccinated are still getting sick and dying at significant rates [1]. This vaccine is not the slam-dunk our "experts" promised. Until some miracle cure comes along, R < 1 is simply not possible. If you think full vaccination is a necessary goal despite all this, OK fine. You know what might go a long way in terms of achieving mass vaccination? Open sourcing the vaccine recipe. Not just the RNA sequence. The whole recipe. This should be a no-brainer. Governments have no qualms with mandating lockdowns, masks, and vaccines for the masses.. but for some reason they hit the brakes when it comes to mandates for pharma. Not only is this a good idea in terms of improving supply side logistics, but also for the sake of re-building trust. But no, common sense is too hard and "blame and shame" is too easy. Being unvaccinated does not harm the vaccinated. Hospital collapse has been liminal for 2 years now, it's a manufactured crisis. Instead of bolstering our healthcare staff and paying our front line workers more, we have done.. the exact opposite. We funnel tons of money to pharma, while frontline workers have effectively had their pay cut in half. We're quite literally being force fed lies. But I guess that doesn't matter because at the end of the day the Milgram experiment prevails and all these attempts to question the narrative and hold authority accountable is pointless. [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1025358/Vaccine-surveillance-report-week-41.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... page 15
marton78 5y ago
The spectre of exponential spread is summoned way too often. Yes, an epidemic spreads exponentially when it starts, but also it's self limiting after a while. The 4th wave is wearing of already. Every wave so far has worn off in every country, with our without measures. As a recent example, compare Latvia and Estonia in the past few months. The former imposed strict measures, while the latter didn't, and yet the two curves match very closely.
- Zanfa 5y ago
  Estonia re-imposed strict measures as well because the ICU was becoming overwhelmed. This means mandatory masks everywhere, no public activities without proof of vaccination (restaurants, gyms etc) and limits on opening hours and strong police enforcement of these rules. The wave started leveling off about 2 weeks after and the rules are still in force. Not sure where you got your information.
- fileeditview 5y ago
  Mankind has a tendency to not accept what it cannot control. Our politicians and virologists often said something along the lines: "we need to do X to keep control of the situation". In the end we never were in control of the situation but people cannot accept that.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    Most of the measures we took were nothing more than modern day rain dances. Feeble attempts by humans arrogant enough to think they could defeat or control a natural phenomenon that is well beyond ours to control.
    - teeray 5y ago
      Yep… “There’s nothing we can do” is just flatly unacceptable to the majority of the population. That’s when religion gets invented to create rituals to ward away evil.
      - 5y ago
angelzen 5y ago
As of 12/02/2012, Robert Koch Institute, roughly the German CDC, estimates 7-day R-value at 0.92 https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/Dez_2021/2021-12-02-en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus... Index page: https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/Gesamt.html https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus...
krater23 5y ago
Not the only way. What is with the north korean way? Just shot anyone that has covid?
2-718-281-828 5y ago
not true - infection rate grows sigmoidal and not exponential. that's why at the moment you can observe a stabilization despite few changes in regulation as of now compared to the summer. infection spread saturates periodically after suceptible clusters are depleted. what would make sense is a steady and controlled Durchseuchung with specific protection of vulnerable people (like old and sick) - b/c the best immunity is gained by infection. but Durchseuchung never sounded good - that's why that term got so popular. it sounds ugly and brutal. but it's what was happening all the time with many diseases in the past thousands of years.
- 13415 5y ago
  That's a bit misleading. As long as the R value is above 1 the spreading is exponential. That follows directly from how the R-value is defined. What you mean is that the curve will take a sigmoidal shape for a while once the number of immune people has reached a certain threshold. In that case, the R-value is slowly approaching 1 again, and finally will go below 1 (which finally results in a curve that is not sigmoidal, of course). Other measures like lockdowns do the same to the curve, as is easy to observe by overlaying the measures over the curve, just not with an initial increase of cases that leads to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Estimated Infection Fatality Rates during the first Covid wave - where there was full hospital care available - ranged from 0.5% to 2%. So for Germany's 80M people that would be in the ballpark of 400,000 to 1.6M deaths - under medical care. Even if you take the original estimates of around 0.3% the results wouldn't have been flattering. In a nutshell, the German government and every other country on earth is doing what you propose, except that they are vaccinating at the same time and try to keep the curves flat (but your use of "slow" also suggests this, so it's not clear what else you're suggesting).
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Exponential implies a doubling of R value. Starting with an R value of 1.1 the length of time required for doubling of the infected population is longer than other factors which will lower the R value to under 1.
  - School-Cotton 5y ago
WinstonSmith84 5y ago
wrong - many countries kept everything opened and the curve subsided after a while. It doesn't go to the infinite.
stormking 5y ago
People who claim that "people don't understand exponential growth" don't understand it themselves, most of the time. They're so proud that they can answer the question about what happens to the pond that is half-covered by sea lilies the next day but never think about what happens the day after that. tldr: There is no persistent exponential growth in nature.
- TMWNN 5y ago
  "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." —Herbert Stein, economist, 1986
aaa_aaa 5y ago
There have never been a real shortage of ICU beds even in the worst days of Covid. Check stats, now situation is even better.
aspyct 5y ago
It doesn't requires mass vaccination. It requires people to be a little smart. What if we all respected the first confinement? 6 weeks everybody at home, period. The disease would be gone. But no, oh no. People just can't be reasonable. So instead of 6 weeks, we've been dealing with this shit for almost two years. And now you blame those who are unvaccinated, while vaccinated people go partying and spread the disease. No, you should blame unreasonable people.
- bsaul 5y ago
  this disease is also spreading through animals and wildlife. Locking down humans would have most surely not put an end to it
- vixen99 5y ago
  Why doesn't the same argument apply to other corono-viruses like influenza and the common cold? And why ignore the role of asymptomatic people (who can transmit) and those with symptoms so mild they can't be distinguished from the normal ups and downs of bodily functions. How then can one be 'smart'? These diseases wouldn't be and won't be gone. We are going to have to live with them as we've lived and thrived with untold thousands of viruses throughout our evolutionary journey.
  - idrios 5y ago
    There is also a small subset of the population who doesn't build an immunity to the disease. A friend's mom caught Covid last December before a vaccine existed. Her body isn't creating antibodies so -- as of the last time I texted that friend -- she's had it for at least 8 months. She was an incredibly friendly and social woman who has basically been turned into a Typhoid Mary that does experience Covid symptoms (and has intensely self-quarantined). I don't know how many other people this has happened to but I too have my doubts as to whether there was ever any hope of containing this.
- iggldiggl 5y ago
  > 6 weeks everybody at home, period. If taken literally, how is that supposed to work? People working for the emergency service still need to work, and they certainly can't work from home. Same for most of the medical sector, nursing services etc. and of course the various bits of infrastructure. Some industries cannot be easily shut down (you cannot stop or start a steel works on a whim). Most people involved in food production, too. Maybe you can blame people for not keeping at least two weeks of provisions (although blaming them won't change anything), but expecting them to go six weeks without buying any food or other provisions is certainly unrealistic. Things break, and not all of them can be left for up to six weeks to be fixed. (If your fridge breaks, or the heating breaks or your roof springs a leak, that cannot really wait. Same if things break in any of the critical industries and services that cannot be shutdown and need to keep working). All this residual activity still needs some amount of transportation and all the infrastructure that that entails. Etc.,etc. …

disambiguation 5y ago

I can't believe people still think herd immunity is possible. Delta. Omicron. Our technology sucks and is slow, we can't achieve R < 1 this way.

manwe150 5y ago
It can’t be all that bleak. The mRNA technology would let us inject omicron-specific boosters tomorrow, but then there is a lot of other safety hurdles that have to be met before it gets authorized and then distribution hurdles to convince people to take it… Mathematically, we will get to R=1 this way, some day or another, with some percentage of people getting it via illness and some via vaccination. The choice is still ours on how and when.
- disambiguation 5y ago
  Take a look at history to see how bleak it can get. At this point I'm less worried about covid and more worried about the global rise in authoritarian trends.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  At some point the classical ones are available that are not vector or mRNA vaccinations. Although there is still skepticism regarding duration of the protection.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    > At some point the classical ones are available that are not vector or mRNA vaccinations. So you say that at some stage there will be vaccines for COVID-19 that are not nMRA (Pfizer, Moderna) or Viral vector (AstraZeneca) Why? The people who are happy with vaccines are fairly happy with these vaccines and might refine them, but not about to dump them entirely for a different technique. in fact mRNA vaccines are the new hot thing. And the people who really aren't happy with these vaccines, will never be happy. They'll find a way to object. So what's the incentive for such a classical vaccine? Who's going to root for it?
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      What do you mean? We need better vaccines for any long term strategy.
      - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
        And those will likely also not be "classical vaccines". Moderna and Pfizer (1) and AstraZeneca (2) are getting ready for the next round, still using their current technologies. They're not planning on going back to "classical vaccines" for COVID-19. 1) https://fortune.com/2021/11/29/covid-19-omicron-vaccine-protection-modification-pfizer-biontech/ https://fortune.com/2021/11/29/covid-19-omicron-vaccine-prot... 2) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/omicron-oxford-covid-astrazeneca-cnbc-b1966749.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/omicron-oxford-covid-a...
SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
I can't believe people still think that mass vaccinations is not part of the solution Vaccination is of course imperfect and cannot be the sole measure, but we can't achieve R < 1 without a lot of it.
- account42 5y ago
  > we can't achieve R < 1 without them. So then what happened summer 2020?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    Are you saying that we shouldn't vaccinate, because strict lockdowns worked, against the COVID-19 original strain, for a while? It's technically true that this worked then, but 2020 is gone, not to return. a) new COVID strains were inevitable and b) prolonged strict lockdowns unpalatable and c) mass vaccination has a huge benefit. As part of a multi-pronged strategy, of course. Depending on only one measure, be it lockdown or vaccination, is not going to work.
- disambiguation 5y ago
  I can't believe people still think after 2 years we're at a point technologically and logistically that we can control nature and just make this "go away". Delta came out of India. Omicron came out of South Africa. How do mandates in the West stop variants elsewhere? And variants aside, the vaccinated are still getting sick and dying at significant rates [1]. This vaccine is not the slam-dunk our "experts" promised. Until some miracle cure comes along, R < 1 is simply not possible. If you think full vaccination is a necessary goal despite all this, OK fine. You know what might go a long way in terms of achieving mass vaccination? Open sourcing the vaccine recipe. Not just the RNA sequence. The whole recipe. This should be a no-brainer. Governments have no qualms with mandating lockdowns, masks, and vaccines for the masses.. but for some reason they hit the brakes when it comes to mandates for pharma. Not only is this a good idea in terms of improving supply side logistics, but also for the sake of re-building trust. But no, common sense is too hard and "blame and shame" is too easy. Being unvaccinated does not harm the vaccinated. Hospital collapse has been liminal for 2 years now, it's a manufactured crisis. Instead of bolstering our healthcare staff and paying our front line workers more, we have done.. the exact opposite. We funnel tons of money to pharma, while frontline workers have effectively had their pay cut in half. We're quite literally being force fed lies. But I guess that doesn't matter because at the end of the day the Milgram experiment prevails and all these attempts to question the narrative and hold authority accountable is pointless. [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1025358/Vaccine-surveillance-report-week-41.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... page 15

marton78 5y ago

The spectre of exponential spread is summoned way too often. Yes, an epidemic spreads exponentially when it starts, but also it's self limiting after a while. The 4th wave is wearing of already. Every wave so far has worn off in every country, with our without measures. As a recent example, compare Latvia and Estonia in the past few months. The former imposed strict measures, while the latter didn't, and yet the two curves match very closely.

Zanfa 5y ago
Estonia re-imposed strict measures as well because the ICU was becoming overwhelmed. This means mandatory masks everywhere, no public activities without proof of vaccination (restaurants, gyms etc) and limits on opening hours and strong police enforcement of these rules. The wave started leveling off about 2 weeks after and the rules are still in force. Not sure where you got your information.
fileeditview 5y ago
Mankind has a tendency to not accept what it cannot control. Our politicians and virologists often said something along the lines: "we need to do X to keep control of the situation". In the end we never were in control of the situation but people cannot accept that.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  Most of the measures we took were nothing more than modern day rain dances. Feeble attempts by humans arrogant enough to think they could defeat or control a natural phenomenon that is well beyond ours to control.
  - teeray 5y ago
    Yep… “There’s nothing we can do” is just flatly unacceptable to the majority of the population. That’s when religion gets invented to create rituals to ward away evil.
    - 5y ago

angelzen 5y ago

As of 12/02/2012, Robert Koch Institute, roughly the German CDC, estimates 7-day R-value at 0.92 https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/Dez_2021/2021-12-02-en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus... Index page: https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/Gesamt.html https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus...

krater23 5y ago

Not the only way. What is with the north korean way? Just shot anyone that has covid?

2-718-281-828 5y ago

not true - infection rate grows sigmoidal and not exponential. that's why at the moment you can observe a stabilization despite few changes in regulation as of now compared to the summer. infection spread saturates periodically after suceptible clusters are depleted. what would make sense is a steady and controlled Durchseuchung with specific protection of vulnerable people (like old and sick) - b/c the best immunity is gained by infection. but Durchseuchung never sounded good - that's why that term got so popular. it sounds ugly and brutal. but it's what was happening all the time with many diseases in the past thousands of years.

13415 5y ago
That's a bit misleading. As long as the R value is above 1 the spreading is exponential. That follows directly from how the R-value is defined. What you mean is that the curve will take a sigmoidal shape for a while once the number of immune people has reached a certain threshold. In that case, the R-value is slowly approaching 1 again, and finally will go below 1 (which finally results in a curve that is not sigmoidal, of course). Other measures like lockdowns do the same to the curve, as is easy to observe by overlaying the measures over the curve, just not with an initial increase of cases that leads to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Estimated Infection Fatality Rates during the first Covid wave - where there was full hospital care available - ranged from 0.5% to 2%. So for Germany's 80M people that would be in the ballpark of 400,000 to 1.6M deaths - under medical care. Even if you take the original estimates of around 0.3% the results wouldn't have been flattering. In a nutshell, the German government and every other country on earth is doing what you propose, except that they are vaccinating at the same time and try to keep the curves flat (but your use of "slow" also suggests this, so it's not clear what else you're suggesting).
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Exponential implies a doubling of R value. Starting with an R value of 1.1 the length of time required for doubling of the infected population is longer than other factors which will lower the R value to under 1.
- School-Cotton 5y ago

WinstonSmith84 5y ago

wrong - many countries kept everything opened and the curve subsided after a while. It doesn't go to the infinite.

stormking 5y ago

People who claim that "people don't understand exponential growth" don't understand it themselves, most of the time. They're so proud that they can answer the question about what happens to the pond that is half-covered by sea lilies the next day but never think about what happens the day after that. tldr: There is no persistent exponential growth in nature.

TMWNN 5y ago
"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." —Herbert Stein, economist, 1986

aaa_aaa 5y ago

There have never been a real shortage of ICU beds even in the worst days of Covid. Check stats, now situation is even better.

aspyct 5y ago

It doesn't requires mass vaccination. It requires people to be a little smart. What if we all respected the first confinement? 6 weeks everybody at home, period. The disease would be gone. But no, oh no. People just can't be reasonable. So instead of 6 weeks, we've been dealing with this shit for almost two years. And now you blame those who are unvaccinated, while vaccinated people go partying and spread the disease. No, you should blame unreasonable people.

bsaul 5y ago
this disease is also spreading through animals and wildlife. Locking down humans would have most surely not put an end to it
vixen99 5y ago
Why doesn't the same argument apply to other corono-viruses like influenza and the common cold? And why ignore the role of asymptomatic people (who can transmit) and those with symptoms so mild they can't be distinguished from the normal ups and downs of bodily functions. How then can one be 'smart'? These diseases wouldn't be and won't be gone. We are going to have to live with them as we've lived and thrived with untold thousands of viruses throughout our evolutionary journey.
- idrios 5y ago
  There is also a small subset of the population who doesn't build an immunity to the disease. A friend's mom caught Covid last December before a vaccine existed. Her body isn't creating antibodies so -- as of the last time I texted that friend -- she's had it for at least 8 months. She was an incredibly friendly and social woman who has basically been turned into a Typhoid Mary that does experience Covid symptoms (and has intensely self-quarantined). I don't know how many other people this has happened to but I too have my doubts as to whether there was ever any hope of containing this.
iggldiggl 5y ago
> 6 weeks everybody at home, period. If taken literally, how is that supposed to work? People working for the emergency service still need to work, and they certainly can't work from home. Same for most of the medical sector, nursing services etc. and of course the various bits of infrastructure. Some industries cannot be easily shut down (you cannot stop or start a steel works on a whim). Most people involved in food production, too. Maybe you can blame people for not keeping at least two weeks of provisions (although blaming them won't change anything), but expecting them to go six weeks without buying any food or other provisions is certainly unrealistic. Things break, and not all of them can be left for up to six weeks to be fixed. (If your fridge breaks, or the heating breaks or your roof springs a leak, that cannot really wait. Same if things break in any of the critical industries and services that cannot be shutdown and need to keep working). All this residual activity still needs some amount of transportation and all the infrastructure that that entails. Etc.,etc. …