Does Sweden have herd immunity? They didn't lock down, but they did implement social distancing recommendations.
Does Belarus have herd immunity? No lockdown, no social distancing to speak of, basically nobody wears a mask, er, anywhere. I see people in the centre of Minsk having face-to-face conversations all day long. And now there are tens of thousands of people protesting/yelling/hugging each other without masks.
I very much hope the answer is yes and these countries do have something close to herd immunity. But that feels like wishful thinking.
This is what the MIT Tech has to say about Sweden (and I agree): "Lessons from Sweden
Outside the US, researchers are also closely tracking the role of population immunity in national responses. Sweden, for example, did not impose a strict lockdown, and saw a large number of deaths starting in April. Since then, however, the number of new infections has declined. The nation’s leaders said last week that children would go back to school unmasked.
“I would say in Sweden there is no doubt that immunity plays an important role, more than in other countries,” says Britton. “Now this epidemic is slowly stopping.” https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/11/1006366/immunity...
Did you see the COVID death graph of Sweden? It is laughable and is heavily manipulated. It does not in anyway resemble the daily infection graph and doctored to look like the peak happened in April, and as if it had long been past by the time Tegnell made his daily briefings in July. God knows when we'll see the deaths that happened in July on that graph.
As another comment said there is some implication that prior exposure to other coronaviruses (which would usually be identified as the common cold) can enable an effective immune response.
If that works I wonder if such exposure is evenly distributed around the world or if it's clustered in certain populations?
FWIW here in Australia Melbourne has had a fairly significant outbreak but Sydney hasn't, from what I can tell it's basically dumb luck it didn't happen the other way around.
The situation with Belarus (as it is in almost every dictatorship), that both death statistics and infection are highly unreliable. Belarus might have actually acquired herd immunity, but then the death rate must be much, much higher than claimed by their government. Bishkek, in Kyrgyzstan also seem to be in a stable equilibrium, but they still have restriction measures.
Sweden is a master manipulator with their stats. Look at their daily death graph, which does not in any way resemble the daily infection graph. They seem to have small second wave right now BTW.
They may have herd immunity, and there is nothing embarrassing about this term. What is more interesting though, is how Finland in Norway have actually almost zero deaths these days, yet nowhere near the seroprevalence of Sweden.
Should it be called herd immunity if it depends on current social practices of physical distancing and masking? Sure, you might have "effective herd immunity" in some regions, but those herd immunity percentage targets go up if people start interacting more.
So you're saying that places like NYC have reached natural herd immunity and can safely be opened back up? They reached an estimated R0 of 5.6 early on due to their population density. From that number, they'd have to reach > 80% infected to hit herd immunity. They got hit hard, but they're nowhere near that level. If they went back to normal all of a sudden, there'd be a lot more death.
Oh I never said anywhere could be safely opened back up- that's a leap. I say quite the opposite- people should be careful and not open schools until cases drop to near zero.
Eventually we will be able to but cases should drop further. Herd immunity doesn't mean zero spread, it means R<1 and dropping cases that will eventually become close to zero.
There are parts of NYC with 68% positive antibodies a month ago- so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot more people in NY have been infected than is reported. But not sure I'm following your math from R0 5.6->80%?
Well, R0 is by definition different for different populations - density, demographics, etc. R0 and the herd immunity threshold have a clear mathematical relationship; it's just a restating of the definition. So if you argue the threshold is lower for a subpopulation, you're also arguing that R0 is lower for that same subpopulation.
It also depends on the interconnectedness of the population. Person A may not be very connected, only being particularly likely to infect their own household, and maybe one or two other people outside. Person B might be highly connected and in a position to infect dozens of people. If you had a population of 80% "Person A" and 20% "Person B", this might average out to an R0 of around 6 -- but the actual reproductive rate would drop rapidly as "Person B"s gain immunity.
That makes intuitive sense to me, that over the lifetime of an unrestrained virus propagation, the R0 value would start out higher and slowly decrease until the herd immunity threshold is reached. Not sure if that is commonly observed in the epi community but it wouldn't surprise me.
CDC Data from mid June had NYC at only 20% prevalence. Considering their low new daily cases since then, it's hard to believe they are anywhere near 68%.
So, I think the proposed math is something like: 1/3rd of infected don't show antibodies so that 20% means 30% were infected. Another study showed pre-existing T cell reactivity (maybe immunity?) in 40% of people, so if you combine those you're at 70%.
I find it hard to believe, with the R0 numbers we were seeing initially, that 40% had a significant level of immunity. If the numbers were that high, then R0 among those without memory T-cell immunity would have been significantly higher, which suggests that the level of exposure/immunity necessary for herd immunity to set in would be significantly higher as well.
What you're saying makes sense. Looking at some tables of it, it seems like if we imagine it in a naive population having a 50% higher reproduction number, it seems like it only bumps the herd immunity number by about 10% because it is such a high proportion already, if I'm understanding the charts right. It isn't clear if the numbers come together, but it does make me wonder if it could be close.
68% tested positive at a clinic in one neighborhood. Getting tested, without proper controls, is highly subject to self-selection bias. People were sick, couldn't get a test at the time, want to know if it was COVID, go in for an antibody test later. The people who were healthy, unless selected for a prevalence study, would much less likely to be tested in the first place.
Even in your first link, the highest percent positive is the Bronx reporting 33%. Not sure where you're getting 51% from, but it very much seems like you're trying to cherry pick data to support your argument.
That's from one clinic, for people seeking an antibody test.
Anyway, the first link I mention is the broader dataset from all the clinics like this, so it helps smooth out anomalies. But, the big caveat in all of this is that these suffer from selection bias - it's not a randomized sampling of people in each borough. It's still useful data, but it's far from being able to tell one the incidence rate to a reasonable degree of precision. Still, many reasonable inferences one can make.
This isn’t necessarily the case. It’s true in a model in which everyone is equally susceptible, equally likely to interact with any other given person, etc. Modeling an epidemic this way is like modeling a cow as a sphere.
There’s an idea that is almost as oversimplified, makes a big assumption, and comes up with a much lower percentage: suppose that each person is just as likely to interact with any other given person, but that people come in two types: susceptible and naturally immune. Then the initial R0 in fact represents a more contagious disease than the first model (as the probability of infecting a susceptible contact needs to be higher for a given R0), but the disease stops increasing exponentially at a lower infection rate. In particular, once the entire susceptible population has gotten the disease, it’s over, and that’s less than 100% of people.
Both of these models are hugely oversimplified, and neither one is likely to be fully correct.
I think using herd immunity to apply to temporary network states is going to be more confusing than helpful. There will be some fuzziness at the edges - some of the changes and adaptations we make during this pandemic will probably persist longer term.
R₀ is used to describe that (roughly anyway, I think it doesn't align exactly with what you are saying).
Herd immunity means that enough people are immune to drive R₀ below 1, absent other factors. So the number of infections would decrease without social distancing and without mask wearing and so on.
The reason herd immunity gets so much attention is because it is the threshold where things can go back to normal. If you redefine it to include mitigations, then you need another term for when you can reasonably safely cease those mitigations.
(Hopefully we can get herd immunity with a safe vaccine, rather than the majority of the population getting infected)
> This analysis and the conclusions that I have drawn are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the wider scientific and medical communities.
That’s an important point because the wider scientific and medical communities don’t agree with this analysis at all.
They only seem to agree with the weaker claim that immunity plays a role in the patterns we're seeing, not the stronger claim that general herd immunity has been achieved anywhere. And it's a very brief superficial article, not exactly comparable to peer-reviewed studies that tend to reflect a nearly opposite conclusion.
You go first. You claimed there were others that agree with you, but that doesn't really seem to be true. Provide a serious citation, and I'll reciprocate.
The Tech quotes peer reviewed science like the lay press. But they generally do a better job of quoting quality science and conveying the research accurately (as opposed to politically). I think the issue here is speed. Most of the research informing this pandemic is scientist opinion, back of the envelope calculation, and pre-prints. The reason for this is that peer review lives in the world of years and we need information in the world of days to weeks to make good decisions for public health. If we wait for peer review, the pandemic will be over or the conclusions will be obsolete.
No one is discrediting MIT. MIT Technology Review simply isn't a science journal. Nothing is peer reviewed. It wasn't intended to be, no one thinks it is. It's an interesting technology magazine.
In the absence of peer reviewed data, which takes at the very least 3 months, rendering it obsolete for a pandemic, the Tech is much better than say the NYT or the Atlantic. It largely does not misconstrue or report bad science. Here is a link to a talk by the scientist quoted in the Tech at UCSF's medical grand rounds. It starts at minute 38. It supports with more detailed evidence what I have been saying and in the timeframe we need it, a talk in front of a knowledgeable audience from respected scientists is about as good as we have. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew2MEF4XX8w.
Then maybe just quote the person who wrote the article. You are missing the point: If you want to appeal to an authority in science, it's a high bar. I read the MIT Technology Review. I like it. I respect it for what it is. But, it's simply not good enough in a science discussion to say "MIT Technology Review says X". The bar is higher. It's not a function of politics or existing narratives or anything of that nature.
That wasn't a suggestion that peer review is the answer. Saying "MIT Technology Review says X" doesn't add to your position, it weakens it. You are going to have to make the argument from first principles and data, not by appealing to authority. Appealing to authority when said authority isn't trusted as an authority makes you sound naive. I don't think you are, but you are saying some things which sound that way.
Regardless, I stand by my original point. I prefer peer-reviewed analysis. The alternative is a free-for-all where junk claims equal weight with legitimate science. Such a system is usually supported by folks whose work can’t make it through the traditional system.
Oof now we are saying that my work is not of publishable quality? The data are from two days ago so it would be hard to get it peer reviewed in that time. But I do plan on publishing. I am putting it out there so people can make more informed decisions (about schools etc) in real time.
Not the original commenter, but no, I'd hope not, in its current state. It's a shallow analysis, and it does a poor job of analyzing the data to try to understand causality in explaining case trends.
For example:
> Why would Floridas numbers start to decrease if not for herd immunity? We know they aren’t being more careful. Disney land reopened and there is a police sheriff who literally made a rule that police officers and people going into the station were not allowed to wear masks.
As I mentioned in another comment:
> For example, bars opened in early June in Florida. They closed on June 26th after cases started spiking.
To miss a policy change this significant in such a piece is pretty egregious if you are claiming that this is publishable quality.
I'll assume this was a good faith effort, but the piece has many flaws and draws conclusions that aren't well supported.
Actually, yes this is the point. I think this thread has been very useful feedback for the most part and has made me feel pretty optimistic about the utility of crowd sourced review. The "oof" is more reaction to the framing of that particular feedback, which felt more like a personal insult than constructive critique- it basically said that I wasn't a good enough scientist to be published. And of course the post isn't a publication- it's a blog post- so perhaps different standards in a lot of regards.
It depends a lot on the area. In math it is common to have a looooooooooooong review time, sometimes years if you are unlucky. In sane areas the time is much shorter and you can start to get impatient after a month without updates.
Yeah I had a paper in review at Nature Communications for two years, so yeah. Reviewers can ask for complicated follow up experiments that take time to do.
Ioannidis' paper was published in 2005, time enough for us to realize the currently "accepted" methodology does not work.
Hnrobert42 says>"The alternative is a free-for-all where junk claims equal weight with legitimate science. Such a system is usually supported by folks whose work can’t make it through the traditional system."<
If Ioannidis is right (and I think he is), science isn't working out very well. We need to find another implementation of "science" that does work - what we have is a massive failure. Not only is it wrong, it is wrong and slow.
[Aside: some of the following is sarcasm]
I'm starting to believe that much of "science" is fraudulent, a massive, circus-like free-for-all for funding that has no justification other than the egos and livelihood of those embedded in it. We need a "Savanarola of Science" to burn some "scientists" at the stake and straighten the path of "science" just as religion was cleansed in Renaissance Florence:
Well it's crowd review. Wikipedia itself is actually very accurate for science information. The concept would be the same but for new research instead of well established research. I think this could work well actually. It's basically what happens at scientific meetings.
I think it would fail pretty hard for new research. Frequency of updates in a fast changing environment are not conducive to reaching the best conclusion. This is because our brains latch on to a conclusion at a specific point in time, and it's very difficult to change our minds after more evidence comes in.
Not to mention that a lot of harm can be done during the time it takes to figure out the truth.
A lot of harm is done when waiting around forever. People don't hear of potential life saving drugs. We don't know what to do in a pandemic. etc. Of course caveats should be explained and risk/reward examined.
Here is the extreme case- an astroid is barreling towards the earth and we don't know if shooting a missile at it will save us. Do we do nothing because asteroid missile research has not yet been peer reviewed? Or do we take our best guess based on the science we do have?
Some up to date news regarding T-cells and their implications suggest this in fact could be a thing with some of the harder hit states. Apparently T-cells will "remember" an infection after a person is exposed to and recovers from covid-19[1]. This is a huge development as it suggests that neutralizing antibodies are not the only defense against a reinfection of covid-19(and these antibodies only last a few months) whereas T-cell memory of infections lasts years.
Also, there are some signs that other cornavirus family of viruses(common colds, not covid-19) could trigger a memory with these t cells, this is a possibility why some have extreme cases and others show no signs of sickness[2]. Couple these points with data showing 40% of people who contract the virus are asymptomatic[3] this leads to the idea that alot more people have had the virus than what is reported, which in this case is a good thing as its closer to herd immunity(if all the above is found to be true).
yes agree. And the CDC reports there are 10X the cases of COVID than has been reported based on antibody studies. And there are many more deaths than have been reported https://realscience.community/2020/08/16/why-a-lot-more-peop.... All reasons that we are closer to herd immunity than is the common perception.
Doesn’t herd immunity for a country of 350 million need somewhere on the order of 220 million to have been exposed and recovered? I don’t think we’re anywhere near that yet.
We are at around 50,000,000 cases. It is looking like herd immunity or at least R<1 is happening at around 30%. There are five states so far that have reached that point- NY, NJ, LA, FL, and AZ. So we have 45 more states to go. As a nation we aren't there yet. I would guess that in a few months we will be given the pace at which this is happening.
This has been reported from a number of places as a possibility.
Coronaviruses are a member of the virus group that give us common cold and one theory is that the common cold has cross reactivity with Covid immunologically.
So there may be a huge population with built in immunity.
Sweden has had tiny amounts of deaths for weeks, New Zealand, I think Italy and some other countries as well.
Where is that number coming from? If you were talking about United States, you were off by a factor of 10! If you’re talking about the whole world, you’re still off by a factor of two! At least as far as confirmed cases goes.
We can all assume the number of actual cases is greater than the number of confirmed cases. How much greater, it’s really hard to say, especially as testing has ramped up significantly and I even know Americans who are getting multiple tests with quick responses in certain locations. So you can’t just make up a number as a guess and then use it as evidence.
The CDC has said we are underestimating infection rates by a factor of 10 based on antibody testing. We have undertested the population and therefore have only captured 10% of the cases.
It’s an estimate based on the probability of a virus finding new hosts. the higher the proportion of potential hosts that are immune, the less likely the virus is to spread.
Herd immunity is the threshold where the replication rate falls below 1. It's not the point at which transmission stops. The disease will continue beyond that point.
Thats, uhm, very limited understanding. Currently behavioral changes (mask, etc) are much larger factors affecting R0 and none of them have any bearing on hwrd immunity.
Plus we are finding that traditional herd immunity (aka just let the disease rampage) may come at the cost of heart disease in a majority of cases.
The huge development is that they found this T-cell mechanism active already in relation to covid-19 for a large percentage of sampled populations. Current antibody tests are only looking at B-cells.
Can you think of another reason? The states with above ~30% infection rates are now trending down. They are not being more careful. Sometimes logic is that simple.
"they are not being more careful" is likely a flawed assumption. Many, many more people are wearing masks now. Where I am, the % of people wearing masks went from low single digits in april/may to 90%+. I've visited a couple different cities and it's the same - massive increase in mask wearing. People are being more careful in many places.
I think mask wearing and social distancing is slowing the spread in some places. CA and OH for example have seen a slow when more stringent policies were put into place. But I don't think Louisiana and Florida are being more careful and they are seeing a drop in cases.
Observational research is not good enough for public policy. Look at the spike in cases in Japan. It completely destroys the correlation.
> What do scientists do in the face of uncertainty on the value of global interventions? Usually, they seek an answer with adequately designed and swiftly implemented clinical studies as has been partly achieved with pharmaceuticals. We consider it is unwise to infer causation based on regional geographical observations as several proponents of masks have done. Spikes in cases can easily refute correlations, compliance with masks and other measures is often variable, and confounders cannot be accounted for in such observational research.
The fundamental issue I see in the piece is a conflation of what herd immunity means. Normally, it's used in the context of normal activity levels - as in, if everyone went back to normal pre-pandemic routines, would we see cases go up or down? But, you're using it in the context of current activity levels, which are still significantly different than pre-pandemic activity levels.
All you are effectively saying is that, given the current mitigation measures and given the current level of population immunity, R is less than 1 in these places. But, that's not really a revelation.
What one would expect is likely to be the case is that some areas have had enough exposure that it has a non-zero impact on their current R, as in NY and NJ. This means there may be more buffer to relax mitigation measures without seeing R rise above 1, but it doesn't necessarily mean they are at herd immunity.
OK I was in Ocean City NJ at the beach a month ago. This is just not true. I was in the women's bathroom- no masks, 6 inches from other people, no airflow. I'd say about 1/10 wearing masks. People crowded together.
Dozens of reasons. Biology rarely ever is so simple.
- Mutation/Infectiousness changes
- Behavioral changes
- Testing changes (more/less/precision)
- Reporting Changes (like changing all reporting from CDC)
- Political interference/ Wishful thinking
- Non-linearity (the virus has tagged the easier victims and is now moving slower into the more distanced population)
- Seasonal patterns
- Any combination of the above.
Frankly, its insanity to assume herd immunity at this point in time, especially with uncertainty about length of immune protection from primary and t-cell response.
Its a virus, it writes the rules and we barely have managed to decipher some of them, this article reads like a perverted Mission Accomplished on an aircraft carrier.
So I think we have ruled out those reasons. I could go into each one of them but that would take a while. That is with the exception of data corruption by politicians-- I am concerned about that and planning to look further into it. "It writes the rules and we barely have managed to decipher some of them"- this I strongly disagree with. The media has portrayed it that way. But from the science community perspective, it hasn't been mysterious at all. It's just that the media and the politicians are translating to the public- and those translations are highly corrupt and motivated by money.
Also, how exactly would you prove herd immunity when we don't know the antibody threshold required? We also don't know that antibodies are the primary mode of immunity- could be T cells. So I'm not sure what kind of analysis you are looking for.
[Note: You can edit your post here for a short time. It is useful to add some small afterthought or a small correction. Just don't abuse these feature to change completely the meaning of your comments, specially if someone has replied.]
[EDIT: For major amends. Mark it so it is clear that you made a change.]
Reading my comment again, it is confusing. I didn't want to say that you edited your comments.
I was only suggesting that you can edit your comments. Instead of posting two comments as replies, like here, you can edit your first comment and add the second part in the same comment.
So first you wrote the argument of "look at this trend, it must be herd immunity because I can't think of any other reason for it". And when someone points that out your response is "of course that's the extent of the analysis I've done, I can't think of another analysis that would prove the point".
It means they'd have less to panic over. It means that everyone in this country would be in a better place (including Trump and that's not permissible to be said in this political environment).
I don't think it's an unreasonable submission (which, just to pre-empt some objections, is an orthogonal question to agree vs. disagree), and it's a bonus that the author is here to comment. We'll turn off the flags for now.
Isn't this hypothesis pretty easy to validate/falsify?
Just take a random sample of 1K NY residents and test them for antibody/t-cell presence. 1K is plenty to make a statistically significant sample size when you're suggesting the true infection rate is double digits.
Why do we NOT know what the population infection rate is? It seems relatively easy to do.
I have some ideas about why the last released Antibody data from NYC was in mid April. I'm pretty sure it's to do with politics and not science. Herd immunity is a bad look for a politician. But that is pure speculation.
That crossed my mind as well, but if this were the case, surely a member of the opposing party would fund such a study. Given that this also hasn't happened, I wonder if there's another reason. Is it not as simple as paying 1K random ppl $100 to come in and take a test?
But we also don't know what antibody/T-cell levels, which btw testing for Tcells is not widely available or commercial, would = herd immunity. So there is no result that would prove herd immunity.
> But we also don't know what antibody/T-cell levels... would = herd immunity.
OK, but wouldn't a random sampling at least provide an answer to what pct of the population was infected at some point? That seems like a great starting point.
Yes, and for some reason, NYC and the CDC are not releasing results later than mid April. It is very suspicious imo. They were releasing antibody results and then abruptly stopped without explanation.
The antibody test results for this data set don't seem representative of the population at large. Reason being, if you look at the antibody positivity rate, it consistently drops as time goes on (whereas everything I've read suggests it should increase with time as more ppl have been infected).
My guess is that at the beginning, hospitals were only testing COVID-sick patients, and as time went on testing became more widespread.
Or the initial antibodies drop in people that have had COVID over time (which they probably do). The antibody tests test for the kind of antibodies that are present immediately- over time a previously infected person will have less of those antibodies and more of the back up Tcell kind. You can read a review on this here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02400-7.
Seroprevalence studies[1] in Italy, France, and Spain indicated we were a very long way off form herd immunity. They were in the range of 11-15%, where herd immunity would only start kicking in at about 70%. Based on cases per capita, the US might be 2-3 times higher than western Europe, but not yet at 70%.
I think the flaw in the piece is the author greatly underestimates the impact of the drastic measures we've taken to get those trends down. A lot of people are working from home, kids largely aren't back in school, and many of our other contact points outside of our households have been modified to minimize the risk of transmission. Seeing what happened to Israel when they reopened schools does not bode well for the US. [2]
Edit: NYC had ~20% prevalence in mid-June [3], after they had come back down from their peak. They've had many more cases per capita than anywhere else in the US, but their new cases have been flat since then, meaning prevalence has not increased significantly. Prevalence elsewhere in the US is likely in the 5-10% range.
How are you sampling people? Unless you track people down and knock on doors and have them submit a sample right there, it won't be random, but a subset of people willing to take time out of their life to participate in a research study.
Sorry for hijacking this thread, but it'd be great if some serious science/politics show hosts an extended debate from both POVs and have a serious scientific conversation about what's next in covid? herd immunity or not?
Can someone explain to me why every Covid submission that makes it to the front page of HN seems to take the 'denialist' perspective? Is an agenda being pushed? There must be so much important science being done right now, surely we would rather hear about that.
I haven't been counting, but HN has had lots of covid-related submissions and I'm pretty sure most have been from a majority perspective.
It's dangerous to make generalizations like "every $foo that makes it to the front page of HN". Such perceptions are notoriously subject to bias, for example the bias where people are more likely to notice (and put more weight on) posts that they dislike/disagree with than posts they like/agree with. If you think about it, that phenomenon would predict that all sides feel like the site is biased against their perspective, which is exactly what we observe.
The idea is that if we have reached herd immunity then we can all go back to work/school and forget about Covid. This is a very dangerous line of thinking, and indeed is self fulfilling - ignoring Covid will sure enough result in herd immunity (assuming we get lasting immunity - unlike the common cold coronavirus!), but at the cost of thousands of lives and serious long term health effects.
I was really suspicious about this article not for the content but rather about the actions of the poster. They created an account just to post this article. They have no other comments on any other articles. Their screen name is similar to the article's author's name. The site was just registered at the end of July. I try to always be hyper aware of who posts what and this looks like it's someone trying to make a name for their new site by posting something somewhat controversial but optimistic.
Yall gotta know that life is almost totally normal in the Netherlands and has been for months. Almost no one is dying. It's likely because people get so many colds in the winter, so there is general immunity.
NYC had only 20% prevalence in mid-June[1], after they had contained the initial outbreak[2]. Therefore, the drop in new cases is very unlikely to be from herd immunity, which would need prevalence to be in the 80% range.
The author seems to ignore that most people are interacting with far fewer people because they are working from home, kids mostly aren't in school, and our other interactions with people outside our household have been limited and altered to decrease the chances of transmission.
It's nice to think that some people had memory T-cells that could deal with the virus, and it seems some people do, but based on the original R0 numbers, it would be foolish to think that is the case for enough of the population to conclude that we've reached herd immunity.
Also, the JHU map is a poor indicator, as they are clearly basing the colors on suspect data, as in this case in Nebraska, which apparently had negative new cases yesterday.
Oh sometimes that happens because states make mistakes in reporting and want to correct them. I would guess that's the case here. It also happens in the other direction- big spikes are sometimes a backlog of cases all reported at once.
While true, that map and a photo of an outdoor space with people in it are poor pieces of data to hinge your entire argument on.
You completely failed to take into account people working from home, schools delaying opening and not having been in session since March or April, and all of the other measures that have been put in place to decrease transmission (masks, barriers, decreased social interactions, restaurant closings, other indoor spaces being closed, etc, etc, etc).
Your conclusion is flawed because you left all of these factors out of your analysis.
I don't think this could explain the huge jump in cases and then decline post-reopening in Fl,Az, and LA. They aren't being more careful now than they were in early June. Disney world is open, people are outright refusing to distance or wear masks, the beaches are packed and yet we are seeing a drop in cases.
> They aren't being more careful now than they were in early June.
Source? This is a significant claim. Early June was a low point in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Lots of states were at peak reopening around then, as things seemed to be on the right track.
For example, bars opened in early June in Florida. They closed on June 26th after cases started spiking.
Louisiana was similar. The state started reopening May 15th. Later in June, bars were then closed back down again, and a mask mandate went into effect.
In Arizona, the story is similar, with gyms, bars and movie theaters shutting back down in July after having opened in May.
What sure seems to be the pattern is: things open up, cases rise, things close back down, cases drop. I'm not so sure that your "they aren't being more careful now than they were in early June" statement is accurate, and I think this is causing you to misattribute the cause of the drops in cases.
Mmmm You can see the timeline of orders that were put into place and the correlation. Here is Florida https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/state-timeline/new-confirme.... No mask mandate at all. Disney world is open. Beaches are open. The only order was bars are shut down. Without other distancing or masks, it's hard to believe that would stop spread.
In just this list, we're up to mask mandates that cover counties that account for 10 million people, 47% of Florida's population, and accounting for the densest population centers. A number of additional counties also enacted mask mandates, but it got a bit tedious listing them all out.
In other words, in the June-July period, mask mandates were enacted for a majority of the population of Florida.
In another comment, I critiqued this piece as being a shallow analysis. Your comment here is an example of that.
And even if mask laws are lifted and infection rates continue going down, it does not show that masks are ineffective nor that the OP was correct. After a mask mandate, some people will continue wearing masks and social distancing. As with immunity, the efficacy is in the numbers, with a critical mass necessary to protect the "herd".
So this is a good point. I was just talking with a colleague about this. Some of the herd immunity models take factors like how mobile people are into account. It seems like masks could be a factor in the models of herd immunity. This might be a semantic argument. If population characteristics such as age are part of herd immunity (which is a moving target depending on population), then mask wearing could be considered a population characteristic and included in the model. This would net "drop" herd immunity levels.
The distinction comes down to factors that change (behaviors, mandates, regulations, etc.) and those that don't (age, gender, etc.).
Saying we've reached herd immunity given behavioral changes is largely meaningless, as most people do not want to continue these behavioral changes indefinitely. One of the biggest changes that you failed to acknowledge is that people are not in contact with nearly as many people in their day to day life as they were before. Working from home, kids not in school, limited social interactions, etc.
It's not herd immunity if a return to previous behaviors negates the immunity.
Behavior is a variable that can and should be included in a herd immunity model. The percent immunity needed to achieve Herd immunity will change with behavior. That doesn't negate that it's happening. Louisiana and Florida are pretty much open and seeing a drop in cases. Bars aren't open indoors- but I think we can live with that for a little while?
What's going to be interesting is: after coronavirus is over and we're down to non pandemic levels of infections in the states, restrictions are lifted, and people start going about their pre-pandemic business, I wonder what the explanation will be as to why there's a permanent immunity.
How long will people continue to flog the 'people are continuing to be responsible' horse?
What will it take to finally accept that there's a physiological immunity taking place giving herd immunity?
I also took a roadtrip across the northeast a month ago so I saw a lot of how careful people were being. Ocean City, NJ was packed and almost no one was wearing masks. The upper east side was packed in NYC. I got a chicken sandwich at an indoor take out place where the guy serving me had one glove on and gave me the sandwich with the hand without the glove. Central park was full of people not wearing masks. Fireworks and protests all night. The argument that people are taking this seriously is just not true in NY and NJ. I can't imagine Florida is better than that.
I agree that i haven't quantified how careful people are being though. There has to be a way to do this. I know there was some drone plan to see how many masks were being worn in parts of the country. It might be worth getting some numbers for this.
Your observations are quite subjective and flawed. Yes, Disney world is open, that is hardly the end of it. Is it the same Disney World as before the pandemic? It’s not a binary situation. You can’t just point out that because a place is now open, instead of closed, therefore there are no precautions being taken. We can be debate whether they are taking enough precautions, but you can’t just use this the way you have in this article.
This whole article is just a gut check without real evidence.
Beaches are outdoors and while they make look crowded, people often maintain more than 6 feet between each other at the beach anyway.
The numbers are going down in Florida because people finally got a taste of how serious it is and changed their behavior.
The fact that you keep downplaying behavioral changes and completely ignoring other changes like people working from home and schools being out shows you are wedded to your conclusion. Unfortunately, it is fundamentally flawed.
You've made a extraordinary claim, the onus is on you to back it up with extraordinary evidence. A couple graphs of new cases going down and a photo of a boardwalk (where nearly everyone is in a mask) is not sufficient to support your claim.
In Miami-Dade County in Florida, it's not only bars that are closed but all indoor dining is not allowed. Restaurants had opened for dining for a short while but that was banned again in July. And masks are required in public everywhere, even outdoors. And a strict countywide curfew has been in place since July.
It's very hard to trust these low prevalance numbers when, for example, I know a few people who are close friends with people in medical fields who tested positive but they themselves didn't get tested but had mild symptoms. I myself had mild symptoms that I'm 99% sure is covid and didn't get tested.
Just because you and your friends weren't tested, doesn't mean the statistics are invalid. The link above was from random antibody testing and has a high confidence interval.
I've been sick twice during this time. Thought it had to be COVID, but two PCR tests and an antibody test all came back negative. Maybe the tests are flawed, sure, but it's far more likely I just had something else.
> Back in February, Lipsitch gave a very rough estimate that, absent intervention, herd immunity might happen after 40 to 70 percent of the population had been infected.
Which is actually a mischaracterization of what the previous article[1] said:
> Lipsitch predicts that within the coming year, some 40 to 70 percent of people around the world will be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19.
At no point does he mention herd immunity. So, no, he's not saying herd immunity at 40%.
The theory was that some large percentage of population is either immune or at least significantly more resistant to covid. Do once the initial 20% get it the other 50-% are resistant so you get your 70% number that way
Barring concrete evidence that is the case, it's a very dangerous assertion to make. It would also mean that the transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 is much higher than we originally thought, amongst those without "natural immunity".
Even if it were the case that half the population was naturally immune, we would want to understand why. The leading explanation at the moment is T-cells and previous exposure to other coronaviruses. Problem is, there's a good chance that previous exposures would be less likely in certain populations, like children, which could be especially problematic as we're debating sending kids back to school.
At the very least, we need more data on T-cell prevalence/reactance to SARS-CoV-2 before we can jump to the conclusion that people are already immune.
But right now, it's far more likely that we've seen drops because of the drastic measures that have been taken and the changes in daily behavior across the population.
While kids are less likely to get sick from it (less likely doesn't mean zero cases or even deaths btw), they can sure as hell spread it. There was some research suggesting that they're spreading the virus as much as (or not detectably less than) adults [1]. Yet at the same time, there are also some indications that kids might be less likely to become infected [2]. How that will affect school reopenings is anyone's guess.
It's still a stretch to say that the virus is "harmless" to children.
But that's beside the point. The real point about children is that they can spread the virus just as well, even when they don't get sick - especially since it's also really hard for at least smaller children to keep distance or wear masks.
When herd immunity is reached new cases don't hum along at a lower but steady rate, as they are in New York State. Herd immunity means that infected individuals can't find enough non-infected people to infect, R0 is well below 1, meaning that cases exponentially drop to zero. Check out the chart for New York's new cases, it isn't happening.
Herd immunity is not in reality a single cutoff, it's a spectrum. So there is some point- looking like ~30% where R<1 and cases dip. But the > the %, the more immunity.
Sure. That is the technical definition. My point is that the rate at which cases will drop is proportional to the percent of the population that is immune. It's not a binary.
Also, States are not uniformly immune. NYC is more immune than the rest of the state so some of the continued daily new cases are in upstate new york and other areas. We need to look at a county level to accurately parse.
NY has 1,300 deaths per million, and NJ has 1,800 deaths per million currently. Let's take the average and say that they reached herd immunity with 1,500 deaths per million.
Great.
For the entire US (320 million), that implies 480,000 deaths before reaching herd immunity.
It's not good, no. But I am not suggesting that this was a good plan. I am just saying it is the plan that is happening. I think the US government took a really bad route in handling the pandemic. New Zealand had the best model imo- shut down hard and early and eradicated. Hardly any deaths. Were able to reopen in 6 weeks.
Does the US approach mean countries like New Zealand need to stay isolated until a vaccine is found? Or would herd immunity eventually eradicate the virus in US?
They should definitely have anyone abroad strictly quarantine for at least 14 days upon entering the country. Herd immunity would slow it to a crawl but it seems like it could pop back up in odd pockets of previously unexposed people. We also still don't know how long immunity will last- scientists are hopeful that it will last until a vaccine is produced but that's not a guarantee.
It doesn't sound good, but I think it would be a attractive.
The current death toll is around 170K, so we are talking a 300k difference.
Deaths associated with loss of work and restricted access to healthcare will certainly exceed that by the time we lift restrictions. So the sooner we get to 480k, the better.
That said, I don't have much confidence in the 480k number.
We know that the numbers are being futz with to make things look less bad. They've artificially low, and have been since the data has been redirected through the White House, and the expressed political beliefs of the resident there. In particular, by playing with the number of tests being run.
What’s ultimately really sad beyond the current implications are the future implications of corrupting data. Scientists who want to study this are going to have less reliable data to use, and therefore we may be less prepared for the next pandemic than we could have been.
There have been multiple studies now that suggest significant herd immunity kicks in around 20-30% infection rate. We should see in a couple of weeks but if every state and country continues to hit an infection wall around 30%, it bodes well that the end is near.
It also suggests that even 10-50M vaccines (in the US) can make an enormous impact and this thing may be over (as a severe widespread issue) in 2020.
I'm excited to see the next 4-6 weeks of data on this.
"Herd Immunity" is a spectrum, as some already commented. It depends highly on the introduced restrictions measures. So for some limited masking it will appear at the earlier moment, but once people stop wearing them, the threshold will go up.
That first paragraph, where the author seems to, even in jest, place blame on his college professor, all the wording and weird emphasis on that, it’s just really really strange. I certainly would not want to be his college professor.
It's a common type of tongue-in-cheek comment, one can find in tons of writings. "Blame X who inspired me to study Y, and led me down this path".
There's no actual blame, it's just praise for his professor (and that's immediately understood as such).
There's nothing "really really strange" about it, and there's no "weird emphasis" (it's a mere passing line in a big post). If anything, your pointing it out is weird.
Eh, I read it differently. It’s not just one line, it’s three sentences followed by a reference to the political climate. I think it’s a bit much and it threw me off while I was reading it. I’ve seen those kinds of jesting comments in other blogs, but this one is more awkwardly phrased. When they write “Sorry Dr.Hume” I do actually feel sorry for his professor!
> Why would Floridas numbers start to decrease if not for herd immunity? We know they aren’t being more careful. Disney land reopened and there is a police sheriff who literally made a rule that police officers and people going into the station were not allowed to wear masks.
This is idiotic. Rather than “herd immunity” one could, in fact, be seeing the impact of large numbers of people having been scared straight simply avoiding further contact.
The author’s conjecture could be correct but they offer no proof.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadDoes Belarus have herd immunity? No lockdown, no social distancing to speak of, basically nobody wears a mask, er, anywhere. I see people in the centre of Minsk having face-to-face conversations all day long. And now there are tens of thousands of people protesting/yelling/hugging each other without masks.
I very much hope the answer is yes and these countries do have something close to herd immunity. But that feels like wishful thinking.
If that works I wonder if such exposure is evenly distributed around the world or if it's clustered in certain populations?
FWIW here in Australia Melbourne has had a fairly significant outbreak but Sydney hasn't, from what I can tell it's basically dumb luck it didn't happen the other way around.
Sweden is a master manipulator with their stats. Look at their daily death graph, which does not in any way resemble the daily infection graph. They seem to have small second wave right now BTW.
They may have herd immunity, and there is nothing embarrassing about this term. What is more interesting though, is how Finland in Norway have actually almost zero deaths these days, yet nowhere near the seroprevalence of Sweden.
If NYC is that high - I missed that - then maybe parts of NYC are actually close to the target.
Even in your first link, the highest percent positive is the Bronx reporting 33%. Not sure where you're getting 51% from, but it very much seems like you're trying to cherry pick data to support your argument.
Oh, I see where the 68% comes from - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/nyregion/nyc-coronavirus-...
That's from one clinic, for people seeking an antibody test.
Anyway, the first link I mention is the broader dataset from all the clinics like this, so it helps smooth out anomalies. But, the big caveat in all of this is that these suffer from selection bias - it's not a randomized sampling of people in each borough. It's still useful data, but it's far from being able to tell one the incidence rate to a reasonable degree of precision. Still, many reasonable inferences one can make.
There’s an idea that is almost as oversimplified, makes a big assumption, and comes up with a much lower percentage: suppose that each person is just as likely to interact with any other given person, but that people come in two types: susceptible and naturally immune. Then the initial R0 in fact represents a more contagious disease than the first model (as the probability of infecting a susceptible contact needs to be higher for a given R0), but the disease stops increasing exponentially at a lower infection rate. In particular, once the entire susceptible population has gotten the disease, it’s over, and that’s less than 100% of people.
Both of these models are hugely oversimplified, and neither one is likely to be fully correct.
Herd immunity means that enough people are immune to drive R₀ below 1, absent other factors. So the number of infections would decrease without social distancing and without mask wearing and so on.
The reason herd immunity gets so much attention is because it is the threshold where things can go back to normal. If you redefine it to include mitigations, then you need another term for when you can reasonably safely cease those mitigations.
(Hopefully we can get herd immunity with a safe vaccine, rather than the majority of the population getting infected)
That’s an important point because the wider scientific and medical communities don’t agree with this analysis at all.
There's nothing you can say to make this person consider your viewpoint.
But like a lot of intelligent ideas now days...if it doesn't fit someone's narrative it's immediately discredited and discarded.
Only the experts who agree with the narrative are to be taken seriously.
It's become a real problem to discredit ideas that disagree with ones narrative even if they're from expert sources.
Regardless, I stand by my original point. I prefer peer-reviewed analysis. The alternative is a free-for-all where junk claims equal weight with legitimate science. Such a system is usually supported by folks whose work can’t make it through the traditional system.
For example:
> Why would Floridas numbers start to decrease if not for herd immunity? We know they aren’t being more careful. Disney land reopened and there is a police sheriff who literally made a rule that police officers and people going into the station were not allowed to wear masks.
As I mentioned in another comment:
> For example, bars opened in early June in Florida. They closed on June 26th after cases started spiking.
To miss a policy change this significant in such a piece is pretty egregious if you are claiming that this is publishable quality.
I'll assume this was a good faith effort, but the piece has many flaws and draws conclusions that aren't well supported.
You can think of all the feedback here as equivalent to the feedback submitters get from their peer reviewers. IIUC, that's the point of the website?
It depends a lot on the area. In math it is common to have a looooooooooooong review time, sometimes years if you are unlucky. In sane areas the time is much shorter and you can start to get impatient after a month without updates.
This is what "peer-reviewed analysis" has given us:
"Why Most Published Research Findings Are False"
by John P. A. Ioannidis
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
Ioannidis' paper was published in 2005, time enough for us to realize the currently "accepted" methodology does not work.
Hnrobert42 says>"The alternative is a free-for-all where junk claims equal weight with legitimate science. Such a system is usually supported by folks whose work can’t make it through the traditional system."<
If Ioannidis is right (and I think he is), science isn't working out very well. We need to find another implementation of "science" that does work - what we have is a massive failure. Not only is it wrong, it is wrong and slow.
[Aside: some of the following is sarcasm]
I'm starting to believe that much of "science" is fraudulent, a massive, circus-like free-for-all for funding that has no justification other than the egos and livelihood of those embedded in it. We need a "Savanarola of Science" to burn some "scientists" at the stake and straighten the path of "science" just as religion was cleansed in Renaissance Florence:
Girolamo Savonarola
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamo_Savonarola
[Aside aside: probably wouldn't solve the problem but likely would do much good by culling out (mostly) from the bottom 50%. Maybe rinse, repeat...]
Not to mention that a lot of harm can be done during the time it takes to figure out the truth.
Also, there are some signs that other cornavirus family of viruses(common colds, not covid-19) could trigger a memory with these t cells, this is a possibility why some have extreme cases and others show no signs of sickness[2]. Couple these points with data showing 40% of people who contract the virus are asymptomatic[3] this leads to the idea that alot more people have had the virus than what is reported, which in this case is a good thing as its closer to herd immunity(if all the above is found to be true).
[1] - https://www.businessinsider.com/long-term-coronavirus-immuni...
[2] - https://www.livescience.com/common-cold-coronaviruses-t-cell...
[3] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/08/08/asymptomati...
Coronaviruses are a member of the virus group that give us common cold and one theory is that the common cold has cross reactivity with Covid immunologically.
So there may be a huge population with built in immunity.
Sweden has had tiny amounts of deaths for weeks, New Zealand, I think Italy and some other countries as well.
It's not just the U.S. it's other countries.
Where is that number coming from? If you were talking about United States, you were off by a factor of 10! If you’re talking about the whole world, you’re still off by a factor of two! At least as far as confirmed cases goes.
We can all assume the number of actual cases is greater than the number of confirmed cases. How much greater, it’s really hard to say, especially as testing has ramped up significantly and I even know Americans who are getting multiple tests with quick responses in certain locations. So you can’t just make up a number as a guess and then use it as evidence.
Plus we are finding that traditional herd immunity (aka just let the disease rampage) may come at the cost of heart disease in a majority of cases.
That is not a "huge development". The basic workings of the immune system have been known for decades. I used to think this was common knowledge.
It's good news and nobody talks about it.
Younger males in particular are much less likely to seek treatment for a mild infection.
> What do scientists do in the face of uncertainty on the value of global interventions? Usually, they seek an answer with adequately designed and swiftly implemented clinical studies as has been partly achieved with pharmaceuticals. We consider it is unwise to infer causation based on regional geographical observations as several proponents of masks have done. Spikes in cases can easily refute correlations, compliance with masks and other measures is often variable, and confounders cannot be accounted for in such observational research.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-...
All you are effectively saying is that, given the current mitigation measures and given the current level of population immunity, R is less than 1 in these places. But, that's not really a revelation.
What one would expect is likely to be the case is that some areas have had enough exposure that it has a non-zero impact on their current R, as in NY and NJ. This means there may be more buffer to relax mitigation measures without seeing R rise above 1, but it doesn't necessarily mean they are at herd immunity.
Same with the beaches you photo'd.
People in NY/NJ are NOT hanging out together inside. They're not in schools, not in offices, etc.
So YES, they are being more careful.
- Mutation/Infectiousness changes - Behavioral changes - Testing changes (more/less/precision) - Reporting Changes (like changing all reporting from CDC) - Political interference/ Wishful thinking - Non-linearity (the virus has tagged the easier victims and is now moving slower into the more distanced population) - Seasonal patterns - Any combination of the above.
Frankly, its insanity to assume herd immunity at this point in time, especially with uncertainty about length of immune protection from primary and t-cell response.
Its a virus, it writes the rules and we barely have managed to decipher some of them, this article reads like a perverted Mission Accomplished on an aircraft carrier.
[EDIT: For major amends. Mark it so it is clear that you made a change.]
I was only suggesting that you can edit your comments. Instead of posting two comments as replies, like here, you can edit your first comment and add the second part in the same comment.
Just take a random sample of 1K NY residents and test them for antibody/t-cell presence. 1K is plenty to make a statistically significant sample size when you're suggesting the true infection rate is double digits.
Why do we NOT know what the population infection rate is? It seems relatively easy to do.
OK, but wouldn't a random sampling at least provide an answer to what pct of the population was infected at some point? That seems like a great starting point.
My guess is that at the beginning, hospitals were only testing COVID-sick patients, and as time went on testing became more widespread.
I think the flaw in the piece is the author greatly underestimates the impact of the drastic measures we've taken to get those trends down. A lot of people are working from home, kids largely aren't back in school, and many of our other contact points outside of our households have been modified to minimize the risk of transmission. Seeing what happened to Israel when they reopened schools does not bode well for the US. [2]
Edit: NYC had ~20% prevalence in mid-June [3], after they had come back down from their peak. They've had many more cases per capita than anywhere else in the US, but their new cases have been flat since then, meaning prevalence has not increased significantly. Prevalence elsewhere in the US is likely in the 5-10% range.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972...
[2] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ees8MesX0AAbDE2?format=png&name=... https://www.wsj.com/articles/israelis-fear-schools-reopened-...
[3] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/comm...
It's dangerous to make generalizations like "every $foo that makes it to the front page of HN". Such perceptions are notoriously subject to bias, for example the bias where people are more likely to notice (and put more weight on) posts that they dislike/disagree with than posts they like/agree with. If you think about it, that phenomenon would predict that all sides feel like the site is biased against their perspective, which is exactly what we observe.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Or we are all about to die...?
Often if I was running on the sidewalk and encountered another person they would cross to the other side of the road (or I would).
On my street there were 3-4 parties every week. I work late so loud music didn't effect my sleep much.
Generally I felt like people kept their distance although I think compliance is a big issue with lockdowns everywhere.
The author seems to ignore that most people are interacting with far fewer people because they are working from home, kids mostly aren't in school, and our other interactions with people outside our household have been limited and altered to decrease the chances of transmission.
It's nice to think that some people had memory T-cells that could deal with the virus, and it seems some people do, but based on the original R0 numbers, it would be foolish to think that is the case for enough of the population to conclude that we've reached herd immunity.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/comm...
[2] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases-50-states/new-yor...
[1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/uakm0cfgn2hv94r/Nebraska.png?dl=0
You completely failed to take into account people working from home, schools delaying opening and not having been in session since March or April, and all of the other measures that have been put in place to decrease transmission (masks, barriers, decreased social interactions, restaurant closings, other indoor spaces being closed, etc, etc, etc).
Your conclusion is flawed because you left all of these factors out of your analysis.
Source? This is a significant claim. Early June was a low point in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Lots of states were at peak reopening around then, as things seemed to be on the right track.
For example, bars opened in early June in Florida. They closed on June 26th after cases started spiking.
Louisiana was similar. The state started reopening May 15th. Later in June, bars were then closed back down again, and a mask mandate went into effect.
In Arizona, the story is similar, with gyms, bars and movie theaters shutting back down in July after having opened in May.
What sure seems to be the pattern is: things open up, cases rise, things close back down, cases drop. I'm not so sure that your "they aren't being more careful now than they were in early June" statement is accurate, and I think this is causing you to misattribute the cause of the drops in cases.
Miami Dade county enacted a mandatory mask mandate on July 2nd: https://www.miamidade.gov/global/initiatives/coronavirus/eme...
Palm Beach county enacted a mandatory mask mandate on June 25th: https://discover.pbcgov.org/PDF/COVID19/PBC-EO-12.pdf
Hillsborough county enacted a mandatory mask mandate on June 22nd (if I'm reading it right): https://web.archive.org/web/20200706143937/https://www.hills...
Broward county enacted a mandatory mask mandate on July 8th: https://www.broward.org/CoronaVirus/Documents/EmergencyOrder...
Orange county enacted a mandatory mask mandate on June 20th: https://www.orangecountyfl.net/portals/0/library/Emergency-S...
Pinellas county enacted a mandatory mask mandate on June 24th: https://covid19.pinellascounty.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/0...
In just this list, we're up to mask mandates that cover counties that account for 10 million people, 47% of Florida's population, and accounting for the densest population centers. A number of additional counties also enacted mask mandates, but it got a bit tedious listing them all out.
In other words, in the June-July period, mask mandates were enacted for a majority of the population of Florida.
In another comment, I critiqued this piece as being a shallow analysis. Your comment here is an example of that.
In one study showed that mask laws decreased infections by around 2% after 21 days.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/pdf/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.0...
So there's a good chance that masks don't account for the massive decrease in infections you're seeing in Florida.
I think time will tell if you're correct or OP is correct.
If mask laws are lifted, and infection rate still continues to decrease, that means masks are ineffective and OP is correct.
If mask laws are lifted and infection rates increase again that means you are correct as masks did have an effect.
And even if mask laws are lifted and infection rates continue going down, it does not show that masks are ineffective nor that the OP was correct. After a mask mandate, some people will continue wearing masks and social distancing. As with immunity, the efficacy is in the numbers, with a critical mass necessary to protect the "herd".
Saying we've reached herd immunity given behavioral changes is largely meaningless, as most people do not want to continue these behavioral changes indefinitely. One of the biggest changes that you failed to acknowledge is that people are not in contact with nearly as many people in their day to day life as they were before. Working from home, kids not in school, limited social interactions, etc.
It's not herd immunity if a return to previous behaviors negates the immunity.
How long will people continue to flog the 'people are continuing to be responsible' horse?
What will it take to finally accept that there's a physiological immunity taking place giving herd immunity?
My 5th grade teacher wouldn't have accepted that as homework much less should it be a mainstream news article.
You can believe what you want though
That aside.
Your point is basically that people will continue to wear masks and social distance even if laws are lifted.
I think thats wrong as evidenced by packed beaches, college parties, and black lives protests.
People are not going to be responsible, what's stopping most of these people presently is laws...and barely.
The reason the numbers are going to continue to go down is not due to behavior it's due to physiological immunity.
But you set yourself up with an unprovable argument either way with no evidence for your claims other than 'people are responsible'.
When it's abundantly clear that people are not.
This whole article is just a gut check without real evidence.
Disney is open with drastic changes to how they operate: https://www.tampabay.com/life-culture/entertainment/theme-pa...
Beaches are outdoors and while they make look crowded, people often maintain more than 6 feet between each other at the beach anyway.
The numbers are going down in Florida because people finally got a taste of how serious it is and changed their behavior.
The fact that you keep downplaying behavioral changes and completely ignoring other changes like people working from home and schools being out shows you are wedded to your conclusion. Unfortunately, it is fundamentally flawed.
You've made a extraordinary claim, the onus is on you to back it up with extraordinary evidence. A couple graphs of new cases going down and a photo of a boardwalk (where nearly everyone is in a mask) is not sufficient to support your claim.
I've been sick twice during this time. Thought it had to be COVID, but two PCR tests and an antibody test all came back negative. Maybe the tests are flawed, sure, but it's far more likely I just had something else.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/herd-immu...
Which is actually a mischaracterization of what the previous article[1] said:
> Lipsitch predicts that within the coming year, some 40 to 70 percent of people around the world will be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19.
At no point does he mention herd immunity. So, no, he's not saying herd immunity at 40%.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/covid-vac...
Even if it were the case that half the population was naturally immune, we would want to understand why. The leading explanation at the moment is T-cells and previous exposure to other coronaviruses. Problem is, there's a good chance that previous exposures would be less likely in certain populations, like children, which could be especially problematic as we're debating sending kids back to school.
At the very least, we need more data on T-cell prevalence/reactance to SARS-CoV-2 before we can jump to the conclusion that people are already immune.
But right now, it's far more likely that we've seen drops because of the drastic measures that have been taken and the changes in daily behavior across the population.
[1]: https://zoonosen.charite.de/fileadmin/user_upload/microsites... [2]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0962-9
But that's beside the point. The real point about children is that they can spread the virus just as well, even when they don't get sick - especially since it's also really hard for at least smaller children to keep distance or wear masks.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/new-york/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Overshoot
NY has 1,300 deaths per million, and NJ has 1,800 deaths per million currently. Let's take the average and say that they reached herd immunity with 1,500 deaths per million.
Great.
For the entire US (320 million), that implies 480,000 deaths before reaching herd immunity.
Does 480,000 deaths sound good to anyone?
The current death toll is around 170K, so we are talking a 300k difference.
Deaths associated with loss of work and restricted access to healthcare will certainly exceed that by the time we lift restrictions. So the sooner we get to 480k, the better.
That said, I don't have much confidence in the 480k number.
In the bay area only 3% of deaths are due to covid.
Sadly US will not be one of those.
Longer explanation here (not mine): http://martinhillortiz.blogspot.com/2020/08/coronavirus-case...
It also suggests that even 10-50M vaccines (in the US) can make an enormous impact and this thing may be over (as a severe widespread issue) in 2020.
I'm excited to see the next 4-6 weeks of data on this.
It's a common type of tongue-in-cheek comment, one can find in tons of writings. "Blame X who inspired me to study Y, and led me down this path".
There's no actual blame, it's just praise for his professor (and that's immediately understood as such).
There's nothing "really really strange" about it, and there's no "weird emphasis" (it's a mere passing line in a big post). If anything, your pointing it out is weird.
https://ibb.co/3rwkydy
This is idiotic. Rather than “herd immunity” one could, in fact, be seeing the impact of large numbers of people having been scared straight simply avoiding further contact.
The author’s conjecture could be correct but they offer no proof.