Approaching herd immunity?

[tundraboomer]

Some researchers in Germany and Sweden think we are getting close but recovery statistics in the U.S. are being suppressed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcYcmIPkgak

[balgor]

In a word, NO. 3 Words, Not Even Close.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden-strategy/swedish-antibody-study-shows-long-road-to-immunity-as-covid-19-toll-mounts-idUSKBN22W2YC

Only a few towns in northern Italy and some prisons are at the 60% herd immunity threshold.

[tundraboomer]

Reuters article (sigh) is from May. Try again.

[sd_shooter]

Sweden and Italy yes.

In the United States the mask wearers are hindering progress.

[balgor]

Sweden and Italy yes.

In the United States the mask wearers are hindering progress.

What you basing your suppositions on? Sweden's last round had their infection prevalence at 2.8% nationwide in May. So it went from 2.8% to 60% in May/June? The testing data doesn't suggest a absolutely massive spike in infections.

And by Italy, you mean a few towns in Northern Italy? I believe Bergamo came in at over 50%.

My post from may:

Link to press release:

https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/nyheter-och-press/nyhetsarkiv/2020/maj/forsta-resultaten-fran-pagaende-undersokning-av-antikroppar-for-covid-19-virus/

They tested 1,104 people week 18 (April 27th-May 3rd) and the test found roughly 5% of their population had Covid-19. Their test had a 98.3% (1.7% false negative, pretty good) sensitivity and a 97.7% specificity (2.3% false positive pretty bad). The 2.3% false positive rate causes the test to overestimate the true % of the population infected.

Synthetic example: 1000 people with 50 of the 1000 infected, using the Swedish test: 50*0.983 + 950*(0.023) = 71 people positive or a 7.1% test positive rate vs a true positive rate of 5%

As prevalence increases, the false positive rate matters less, but at low levels of prevalence it badly skews your results.

Using a similar calculation, but working backwards, one can estimate the "true" Swedish positive rate:

(Pop - Not_Iinfected)*Sensitivity + (Pop-Infected)*Specificity = Tested#Infected

Pop = Not_Infected + Infected

Substituting in known variables and solving for Infected gives:

Estimated # "True" Infected = 31.02 or 31.02/1104 = 2.81%

If (BIG IF), the sample is truly representative and the test specificity and sensitivity are accurate, then approximately only 3% of the Swedish population had coronavirus in April. I really wish they used a test with a lower false negative rate. Using 2,667 deaths from May 1st, we get a 0.93% IFR.

[Endless]

Some researchers in Germany and Sweden think we are getting close but recovery statistics in the U.S. are being suppressed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcYcmIPkgak

Not even close.

Anyone that thinks that places have herd immunity right now or in June are clueless. End of story.

These same people keep saying Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election and she should be president. LOL Damn liberals. Lmao

[sd_shooter]

What you basing your suppositions on? <snip>

I always just look at the death count, it's the only metric that's truly meaningful. If people get sick but recover and go back to work then we're doing ok (eg. no one misses 80k old people during the annual flu season) Even today we're done with the covid for all intents and purposes.

We forget that in the USA we have 60k deaths every week from "all causes." How many are dead from covid each week? 2500? It's in the noise.

Do we ever have "herd immunity" from the Flu? Some would say we do, we "only" have 80k annual deaths (and that's with the vaccine cocktail.) After facing a brand new virus I'd say humankind is doing rather well. Global covid deaths have only recently reached parity with Flu deaths.

What's we've learned, globally:
- A very moderate response yields acceptable results (2x deaths vs Flu) [Sweden]
- Getting caught with your pants down creates massive hot spots [Italy]
- Corollary: The above also lets the virus burn out [Italy]
- Total lockdown indeed stops the virus [New Zealand] (but they may face it again later...)
- Aggressive mask-wearing indeed works [Japan] (at least with rule-followers)
- Putting your head in sand causes lots of suffering [China]

Sweden


Italy


USA

[longhairchris]

It will take a lot of infections, complications and deaths before herd immunity is a thing. Vaccine is still a long way off, if it even really happens. The possibility of no vaccine is a frightening reality.

[longhairchris]

I like how Ron Paul says that nature wants us to have herd immunity. Nature, it seems, wants to thin the herd. By this same logic, we should bring back polio.

We must not interfere, for it is nature's way.

[Sousuke]

I had posted something last week regarding the possibility that herd immunity may actually require a much lower percentage of exposure. They aren't sure exactly why but when a place gets closer to 20%, cases start to decline.

Conjecture had a few theories as to why this happened:

1. If you get the most mobile infected and recover it naturally impacts the R value.

2. If say 50% of the population doesn't have any signs of the virus after infection, then you only need a certain percentage of those it does impact to get it in concert with the unaffected.

This may relate to CA who locked down ahead of NY and close to Italy etc. Those areas aren't seeing a resurgence as we have here.

[therealnickb]

I like how Ron Paul says that nature wants us to have herd immunity. Nature, it seems, wants to thin the herd. By this same logic, we should bring back polio.

We must not interfere, for it is nature's way.

Hmm? While nature does want To kill us, we want to survive. So we do. Naturally.

[stonefly-2]

I guess I must have missed a thread or 2,

was there some evidence found speaking to herd immunity for Wuflu as a fact to any degree?


It would be nice if the Wuflu turned out to be the coronavirus that H.I. can be had for.

[smashycrashy]

I guess I must have missed a thread or 2,

was there some evidence found speaking to herd immunity for Wuflu as a fact to any degree?


It would be nice if the Wuflu turned out to be the coronavirus that H.I. can be had for.

Not really. In fact, the opposite is coming out today (still all theory)

It is not a “safe bet” to rely on immunity to Covid-19 as a strategy for coping with the pandemic, one expert has warned, adding that herd immunity strategies were “probably never going to work.”

...
“And immunity to this thing looks rather fragile — it looks like some people might have antibodies for a few months and then it might wane, so it’s not looking like a safe bet,” he said. “It’s a very deceitful virus and immunity to it is very confusing and rather short-lived.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/06/immunity-to-coronavirus-is-fragile-and-short-lived-expert-warns.html

[Hammertime]

[balgor]

https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-06-05/spains-macro-study-show-just-52-of-population-has-contracted-the-coronavirus.html

Spain one the hardest hit places in the world went from 5% in May to 5.2% prevalence in June. Nowhere other than a few isolated places (prisons, bergamo, etc) is anywhere near herd immunity.