The Sweden paper results matches the Bay Area to a T.
(My estimate is that the Bay Area already reached herd immunity in March based on corona arriving in Dec. and flat hospital rates in the local dashboard.)
I'm sorry, but the estimates of covid-19 IFR range to over 1% to 0.1%. Out of ~2M people in Santa Clara County, the death toll is 129 as of today. Bump that up because some people died at home, but let's start with 129. If the IFR is ~0.5%, that means ~26K infections. 26K / 2M is 1.3% infected. And you think we've reached herd immunity here? The blog post predicts herd immunity at ~25%.
The same as you assume some people died at home, some people got infected without symptoms at home and are now recovered. Unless you do a mass test of antibodies it will be hard to estimate the real number of infected and recovered people.
Considering that the estimated population fatality rate in Bergamo Province is ~0.6 percent (from e.g. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.15.20067074v...), either the IFR there must be much higher than elsewhere (maybe an older sicklier population or something)? or ~50-60% of the province must have been infected.
I am interested in the predictions of herd immunity from mass agent-based simulations, such as the CityCOVID model used by modelers at Argonne national lab (can't really find a good public reference and the slide deck I've seen about it is not public, but it's based on https://github.com/Repast/chiSIM).
It seems that Lewis is "independent" but managing to more formally support these activities, writing papers with Curry.
Which doesn't mean that what he writes now in this article shouldn't be evaluated on its own merit -- it's just that everybody's "prior" for the expectations can be reasonably adjusted: personally, my first reaction was "well, interesting". My second reaction was "now, let's see who's this guy". My third reaction was... I've decided I personally won't spend much time investigating his claims, and I won't hope for much to turn out to be true, based on these (my own) priors. But it's only my own preference.
Also personally, the first time I've read the arguments "Sweden was soo different in measures" I almost believed it. But then I've just checked myself: their universities and schools were also closed at the time when most of the Europe had theirs closed too (the kindergartens weren't -- that's at least something different). Their workers also worked from homes. There was a lot of limiting of the contacts, even when politicians didn't made laws or orders or something for that. I could conclude that what happened in Sweden was definitely not what seemed that those who made the "difference" claims implied.
So reader beware. Check what is claimed as premises, and check if even that is true, before proceeding. Also carefully compare the real numbers. The last time I've checked, Sweden had more deaths per capita from Covid-19 than the U.S. and it's still open how much they have not counted and not reported: still, even comparing these reported, there were something like 4 dead Swedes for every 3 dead U.S. Americans, on average, even if it appears that Swedes do live a bit more healthy (~3 years longer life expectation, before). At least they did 40% more tests per capita than the U.S. up to now.
Maybe someone here knows the answer but doesn't the 'herd immunity' theory assume we build a long term immunity to the disease in question after being infected? What happens if COVID turns out to be like the influenza virus and constantly mutates or like ebola where our immunity is temporary?
Imagine a world where only 1% of population is ever leaving homes and 99% is forever chained to their desks.
It would seem that it would be enough for only that 1% of population to build immunity to largely stop transmission of the virus. Of course, it would still be possible for somebody to move the virus from home to home without getting infected, but the idea is that you will not get a pandemic from that because it would not be enough to sustain it.
The whole premise of article is that the population is not homogenous and different people are responsible for transporting viruses in different way. If a small proportion of population that is outsize contribution into transmission gets immunity, then the entire population benefits much more than if these people were part of completely homogenous population described by simple equations.
Due to people getting infected, dying and public recommendations, Sweden and other places lower R by behaving as in lockdown, even when partially they still get hit hard twice. Don't see this paper adress change of behaviour after "Italy".
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 28.8 ms ] threadThe Sweden paper results matches the Bay Area to a T.
(My estimate is that the Bay Area already reached herd immunity in March based on corona arriving in Dec. and flat hospital rates in the local dashboard.)
https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#ho...
On the link I provided, you can see the actual testing results. 10% of those tested have/had corona.
No need to make up stats.
I am interested in the predictions of herd immunity from mass agent-based simulations, such as the CityCOVID model used by modelers at Argonne national lab (can't really find a good public reference and the slide deck I've seen about it is not public, but it's based on https://github.com/Repast/chiSIM).
Overloaded ICUs as far as I'm aware.
Italy Cremona https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfkbv_WQtn0 Italy Bergamo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_suhYeWEcJg
With the lack of integrity in testing, I don`t see any of the reported data being useful at all.
It almost sounds like they need more people to experiment on with all of the dubious advice available.
I wonder what would Darwin do in this situation???
Herd immunity isn't about curing anything, what? Don't just insult people. Make a coherent argument.
Darwin and innocuous sarcasm rarely line up this well.
Do you even Darwin bro?
That is, this Lewis is Lewis from all "Lewis and Curry" papers, which are known to be among the favorites of various climate denialists.
Here is a non-inclusive list of Curry's misinformation:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Judith_Curry.htm
It seems that Lewis is "independent" but managing to more formally support these activities, writing papers with Curry.
Which doesn't mean that what he writes now in this article shouldn't be evaluated on its own merit -- it's just that everybody's "prior" for the expectations can be reasonably adjusted: personally, my first reaction was "well, interesting". My second reaction was "now, let's see who's this guy". My third reaction was... I've decided I personally won't spend much time investigating his claims, and I won't hope for much to turn out to be true, based on these (my own) priors. But it's only my own preference.
Also personally, the first time I've read the arguments "Sweden was soo different in measures" I almost believed it. But then I've just checked myself: their universities and schools were also closed at the time when most of the Europe had theirs closed too (the kindergartens weren't -- that's at least something different). Their workers also worked from homes. There was a lot of limiting of the contacts, even when politicians didn't made laws or orders or something for that. I could conclude that what happened in Sweden was definitely not what seemed that those who made the "difference" claims implied.
So reader beware. Check what is claimed as premises, and check if even that is true, before proceeding. Also carefully compare the real numbers. The last time I've checked, Sweden had more deaths per capita from Covid-19 than the U.S. and it's still open how much they have not counted and not reported: still, even comparing these reported, there were something like 4 dead Swedes for every 3 dead U.S. Americans, on average, even if it appears that Swedes do live a bit more healthy (~3 years longer life expectation, before). At least they did 40% more tests per capita than the U.S. up to now.
It would seem that it would be enough for only that 1% of population to build immunity to largely stop transmission of the virus. Of course, it would still be possible for somebody to move the virus from home to home without getting infected, but the idea is that you will not get a pandemic from that because it would not be enough to sustain it.
The whole premise of article is that the population is not homogenous and different people are responsible for transporting viruses in different way. If a small proportion of population that is outsize contribution into transmission gets immunity, then the entire population benefits much more than if these people were part of completely homogenous population described by simple equations.