Herd Immunity Vs Flatten the Curve

[Hotone + 412]

Perhaps Trump and Fox is correct after all, and just let herd Immunity take is course.  It would be interesting to see what happens in Sweden.

 

Edited April 11, 2020 by Hotone

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,129]

Sweden will be just fine.  Old people need to socially distance, quarantine themselves from society.  Everyone else?  You are ~ fine, little worse for wear on average.  The people dying of 19 virus are mostly the exact same people who would have been dying from the Flu anyways.  Now throw in the fact that no one is truly medically examining everyone for cause of  death and the west has forgotten what actually needs to be done to safeguard doctors nurses from disease up front instead of treating AFTERWARDS....  Only true numbers we can have for actual effects are death rates of previous years flu seasons compared to Covid-19.  Now is it worse than the normal FLU?  Yes.  How much?  No one knows.  Shutting down the entire world is smart?  No.  Just shut in the old people would be the smart thing to do, but no... that would be a rational response to a bad flu pandemic............  Grrrr. 

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

From what I can decipher on this forum, the way forward is relatively simple:

First, you identify someone who has definitely developed an immunity to this thing. You then wait in a dark alley and grab this person as they walk by.

You drag them into the alley, and with as much medical cleanliness as you can muster, you drain them of their blood, throw away the carcass and hotfoot it to Dr. Frankenstein’s lab.

There, you pay the good doctor to replicate this ‘immune’ blood by the ton.

You then distribute it internationally and give a transfusion to anyone who even looks like they have a fever!

Simple really...

Can you tell that I attended the @WombatSchool of Medicine and Hot Dog Emporium?😂

[Marcin2 + 724]

7 hours ago, Hotone said:

Perhaps Trump and Fox is correct after all, and just let herd Immunity take is course.  It would be interesting to see what happens in Sweden.

What we already know for sure is that current death rate in regions affected the most by the virus is at 0.1% ( but still increasing)!and number of cases about 1% of population.

It depends how you look at it, on one hand it is not much but on the other hand it means additional 330,000 deaths in US , more than half of US war casualties since and including WW2. For the country size of China or India it would be close to 1 million, somehow unacceptable.

Edited April 11, 2020 by Marcin2
Typo

[surrept33 + 609]

Keep in mind that part of the Swedish response is due to limited governmental powers. There just wasn't any existing legal framework under Swedish law to declare public emergencies in peace time:

https://www.thelocal.se/20200409/analysis-swedens-coronavirus-strategy-is-a-matter-of-policy-history-tradition-and-culture

The Swedish parliament (with a reduced quorum) has been passing laws to amend this as as the outbreak has grown in Stockholm.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

5 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

First, you identify someone who has definitely developed an immunity to this thing. You then wait in a dark alley and grab this person as they walk by.

You drag them into the alley, and with as much medical cleanliness as you can muster, you drain them of their blood, throw away the carcass and hotfoot it to Dr. Frankenstein’s lab.

That pretty much as been the modus operandi of the Communists in control of China for the last half-dozen decades.  They mug the population by arresting them for all manner of flimsy excuses, such as "agitating against the State," or "tax evasion," whatever is handy;  the "trial" lasts about five minutes with a guilty verdict guaranteed;  off into the back of the truck with the others, to a field on the outskirts of town, no appeal of course;  take them off the truck and shoot them in the back of the head;  immediately harvest the internal organs, for sale by the party bureaucrats who keep the cash;  burn the evidence in mass pits, compliments of some gasoline.   Lovely society.  And you want to do business with these people?  [general rhetorical question]

Edited April 11, 2020 by Jan van Eck

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

Everyone reading this thread should understand that, underneath the pompous and self-righteous tome of that "professor," lies a deep and absolutist religious streak.   This is not "medicine," this is "retribution from [God/Allah - take your pick]. 

The crass idea of deliberately infecting the entire population, and let the fittest survive, is anathema to real medicine.  For starters, probably 30% of the adult population has a co-factor of risk that would put them in grave danger.  Much better is to snuff out the virus and not let it ashore.  That approach worked reasonably well with the SARS virus. This guy is a dangerous quack. Revoke his medical degree, assuming he has one. 

[0R0 + 6,251]

6 hours ago, Marcin2 said:

What we already know for sure is that current death rate in regions affected the most by the virus is at 0.1% ( but still increasing)!and number of cases about 1% of population.

It depends how you look at it, on one hand it is not much but on the other hand it means additional 330,000 deaths in US , more than half of US war casualties since and including WW2. For the country size of China or India it would be close to 1 million, somehow unacceptable.

We know that prevalence rates vary geographically very greatly. We are just starting to get general sample testing done. 

From the Copenhagen blood bank tests we have 2.7% prevalence  for Copenhagen Metro, and <0.4% in small town/rural Denmark (0 of 246). So we can attribute all the cases to the 2 million Copenhagen Metro. That is 6k cases and 260 dead so far. Out of 2 mil. X 2.7% infected giving us a symptomatic to infected ratio of 11% now (vs 9% at the time of the sampline) and a mortality rate of 0.5% per infection. 

The CFR and disease rate are small potatoes epidemiologically. The Infection fatality rate is what we are really after, and hospitalizations per infection,

Of course, in billion scale populations we expect millions of people to die every year as a matter of the natural course of things. We don't live forever. In the case of China we will find there being unusually fewer people around from the advanced age cohorts  next census, that have somehow failed to show up as dead in the national statistics. Then we might get an idea of actual mortality in China's leg of the first wave of this pandemic. 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

7 hours ago, Marcin2 said:

What we already know for sure is that current death rate in regions affected the most by the virus is at 0.1%

I rather doubt that assertion.  The death rate in sleepy, rural Vermont is running at 5%. 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

20 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

I rather doubt that assertion.  The death rate in sleepy, rural Vermont is running at 5%. 

Has "sleepy, rural Vermont" tested everyone for the virus? Your numerator is given, deaths attributed to this disease (quibbles about accuracy of cause of death ignored). Just leaves the denominator, people known to have been infected in sleepy little Vermont. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

10 hours ago, Marcin2 said:

What we already know for sure is that current death rate in regions affected the most by the virus is at 0.1% ( but still increasing)!and number of cases about 1% of population.

It depends how you look at it, on one hand it is not much but on the other hand it means additional 330,000 deaths in US , more than half of US war casualties since and including WW2. For the country size of China or India it would be close to 1 million, somehow unacceptable.

20,400 so far. How do you come up with such an absurdity? Oh yeah, trusting the elite scientists and the mainstream media useful idiots.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

10 hours ago, Marcin2 said:

What we already know for sure is that current death rate in regions affected the most by the virus is at 0.1% ( but still increasing)!and number of cases about 1% of population.

It depends how you look at it, on one hand it is not much but on the other hand it means additional 330,000 deaths in US , more than half of US war casualties since and including WW2. For the country size of China or India it would be close to 1 million, somehow unacceptable.

We may have no choice but to accept it.

[El Nikko + 2,145]

18 hours ago, Marcin2 said:

What we already know for sure is that current death rate in regions affected the most by the virus is at 0.1% ( but still increasing)!and number of cases about 1% of population.

It depends how you look at it, on one hand it is not much but on the other hand it means additional 330,000 deaths in US , more than half of US war casualties since and including WW2. For the country size of China or India it would be close to 1 million, somehow unacceptable.

That is assuming that everyone or most people catch it.

I'm not medically trained but are we sure that is remotely likely? I would imagine that far less percentage of the population would catch it, I would like to know what percentage of a population catches the common cold for example since that is also quite infectious, there is no vaccine for it and it mutates in to a new strain yearly.

The estimated number of cases of swine flu (yes I know it's different but it's the last pandemic we have data for) in the UK during the 2009 epidemic was 800,000 from what I found doing a very quick search. That's less than 1 is 65 people. My feeling is the numbers could be similar maybe a bit higher but 80% of the population? I feel that would be extraordinary.

[El Nikko + 2,145]

Would anyone care to look at some data?

Here's the weekly deaths registered in the UK. Deaths per week have been falling since Jan 2020 as one would expect coming out of winter & flu season. The week ending the 27th of March deaths stand at 11,141 down from 12,254 week ending Jan 3rd 2020. For the most part the data shows below average weekly deaths except for the last week which has an increase of ~1000.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales

The top two columns show the weekly death rate and then below that is the 5 year average.

We blew the economy up for this?

Edited April 12, 2020 by El Nikko

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

40 minutes ago, El Nikko said:

That is assuming that everyone or most people catch it.

I'm not medically trained but are we sure that is remotely likely? I would imagine that far less percentage of the population would catch it, I would like to know what percentage of a population catches the common cold for example since that is also quite infectious, there is no vaccine for it and it mutates in to a new strain yearly.

The estimated number of cases of swine flu (yes I know it's different but it's the last pandemic we have data for) in the UK during the 2009 epidemic was 800,000 from what I found doing a very quick search. That's less than 1 is 65 people. My feeling is the numbers could be similar maybe a bit higher but 80% of the population? I feel that would be extraordinary.

Who comes up with these statistics? We are not testing everyone, and there is absolutely no way to test a ‘representative’ cross-section of any city or State, that I am aware of.

I recently saw the comment exclaiming that the US had now passed Italy in infections and deaths. I have been accused of being a math(s) idiot on this forum, but assuming that the virus acts the same in Italy and the US, then considering the relative sizes of the populations, wouldn’t that be expected?

Finally, I read an article which claimed that the deaths being reported from causes other than Covid-19 are miraculously decreasing. Makes me think that these ‘deaths from other causes’ are inaccurately being dumped into the Covid-19 statistics.

[El Nikko + 2,145]

29 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Who comes up with these statistics? We are not testing everyone, and there is absolutely no way to test a ‘representative’ cross-section of any city or State, that I am aware of.

I recently saw the comment exclaiming that the US had now passed Italy in infections and deaths. I have been accused of being a math(s) idiot on this forum, but assuming that the virus acts the same in Italy and the US, then considering the relative sizes of the populations, wouldn’t that be expected?

Finally, I read an article which claimed that the deaths being reported from causes other than Covid-19 are miraculously decreasing. Makes me think that these ‘deaths from other causes’ are inaccurately being dumped into the Covid-19 statistics.

I agree with the problems of statistics especially as in the UK 2009 swine flu epidemic they had only tested around 30,000 people. According to the NHS if you get flu these days it's likely to be swine flu as it's now become one of the 'normal flues'.

I think based on Italy we can safely assume that 100% of the population won't catch it and that so far the number of deaths from it are fairly small given the population.

I'm also not sure if it is scientific to put Covid-19 on the death certificate but it apparently is being recorded anyway, from what I understand X people die from complications due to regular flu each year yet most of the time the cause of death is very specific i.e. pneumonia and they don't write influenza on the death certificate. I have seen several doctors questioning the logic of this.

What do they say again? "There are lies, damn lies and statistics"

Edit: they had only recorded 30,000 positive cases from their tests

Edited April 12, 2020 by El Nikko

[Marcin2 + 724]

On 4/12/2020 at 1:04 AM, Jan van Eck said:

I rather doubt that assertion.  The death rate in sleepy, rural Vermont is running at 5%. 

I meant 0.1% of entire population not that infected / hospitalized f.e. case of Lombardy or San Marino or probably New York.

Edited April 12, 2020 by Marcin2
Typo

[UNC12345 + 171]

I continue to be amazed that such a variety of people on here continue to deny the severity of this outbreak and attribute it to the main stream media.  Scary.

[TooSteep + 142]

Since nobody has preexisting immunity to this, if it were allowed to circulate, yes 80% of the population getting infected is not unreasonable. In SIR modelling, with a long R like this one, everyone can actually get infected quite quickly!

Interesting data from Gangelt, Germany showing a 0.4% CFR:

https://reason.com/2020/04/09/preliminary-german-study-shows-a-covid-19-infection-fatality-rate-of-about-0-4-percent/

 

It clearly needs to be modulated based on air quality:

"We found that an increase of only 1 g/m3 in PM2.5 is associated with a 15% increase in the COVID-19 death rate, 95% confidence interval (CI) (5%, 25%)."

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/covid-pm/files/pm_and_covid_mortality.pdf

That is dramatic. Wuhan, NYC, Milan all have poor air quality.

[Yoshiro Kamamura + 274]

5 hours ago, UNC12345 said:

I continue to be amazed that such a variety of people on here continue to deny the severity of this outbreak and attribute it to the main stream media.  Scary.

That's because those are mostly members of the Trump cult, mentally conditioned to dismiss uncomfortable facts. They just do as their leader does, and say as they leader says. You can observe it - they now blame WHO, but not before he started doing it, and not after. Before, it was Hydrochloroquine - totally unscientific long shot, yet it generated walls and walls of convoluted reasoning from users like 0R0 who clearly don't get the simplest aspect of the situation i.e. why is it critical to slow the spread of the virus. He blurt something out in a momentary "inspiration" (because you can clearly see he has no strategy nor prepared plan, conflicting his own older statements almost every day), yet his cultist write books full of broken logic to turn these "mental pot shots" into commandments that should have universal validity. 

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

6 minutes ago, Yoshiro Kamamura said:

That's because those are mostly members of the Trump cult, mentally conditioned to dismiss uncomfortable facts. They just do as their leader does, and say as they leader says. You can observe it - they now blame WHO, but not before he started doing it, and not after. Before, it was Hydrochloroquine - totally unscientific long shot, yet it generated walls and walls of convoluted reasoning from users like 0R0 who clearly don't get the simplest aspect of the situation i.e. why is it critical to slow the spread of the virus. He blurt something out in a momentary "inspiration" (because you can clearly see he has no strategy nor prepared plan, conflicting his own older statements almost every day), yet his cultist write books full of broken logic to turn these "mental pot shots" into commandments that should have universal validity. 

I guess you’re right...hard to argue with such irrefutable logic from the smartest man on the forum.

How do you get that big head through door when you’ve got to visit the toilet? All that squeezing and scraping....you’d think that it would give you cauliflower ears!🤔

[El Nikko + 2,145]

9 hours ago, UNC12345 said:

I continue to be amazed that such a variety of people on here continue to deny the severity of this outbreak and attribute it to the main stream media.  Scary.

Scrutinising data and the claims made by 'experts' is not denying anything, it's scientific to want to verify theories and data. The UK's medical officer claimed 250,000 could die and in the US, Fauci (Trump's guy) claimed that millions could die and that it is 10x more deadly that influenza/swine flu.

From day one some people had doubts about these figures and so far they do not appear to be realistic. Does that mean it's not serious? Of course not.

I also have some concern that people who die with it and not because of it are being added to the death figures, that is not how deaths should be recorded and the woman medical expert in Trump's team confirmed that was the case in the US, it's probably true in the UK and we know they were being generous with assigning the cause of death to Covid-19 in Italy.

If you read some of the posts and discussions you would see people just want to verify the claims for themselves because yes the MSM and politicians do exagerate all the time. In the UK during the swine flu epidemic 2009 government advisors estimated 750,000 deaths due to it, in the end 371 died from it.

[El Nikko + 2,145]

https://medium.com/@jbgeach/eight-reasons-to-end-the-lockdowns-as-soon-as-possible-b7bb0bc94f00

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

Curve flattening and herd immunity are not independent ideas.

Pretty much everyone will get it to some extent eventually.  The flattening part is just to slow the rate of herd immunity development.

It's certainly not one or the other.

[El Nikko + 2,145]

19 minutes ago, Enthalpic said:

Curve flattening and herd immunity are not independent ideas.

Pretty much everyone will get it to some extent eventually.  The flattening part is just to slow the rate of herd immunity development.

It's certainly not one or the other.

Why do you think everyone will get it?

Colds and flus (the latter has vaccines so slightly different) mutate regularly and not everyone catches a cold (or flu) each year. For myself (my wife was a teacher and we had a young daughter so you would think it almost certain I'd catch a yearly cold at least) I get a cold every few years and I've only had flu once in my life and don't get vaccinated even though I'm supposed to.