Corona

[Shannon SteelSlave]

Total Cases 38,304,172 , Global Deaths 1,088,463
Where do we stand on acquired immunity?

Acquired immunity might not be the answer we are looking for to combat this pandemic.

I read the other day that there have been a number (albeit a small number) of documented cases of people getting Covid twice. The viral signature on each occasion was unique so it was not just a recurrence of the initial infection.

That's what I thought. One thing seems certain, and that is, that people who get it and "fully recover", return over confident and arrogant of the pandemic rules. I know someone personally who did.

[ruru67]

I read the other day that there have been a number (albeit a small number) of documented cases of people getting Covid twice. The viral signature on each occasion was unique so it was not just a recurrence of the initial infection.

Yep, but given the millions of infections and only a handful of double-infections, we can probably dump these cases into the "biology is weird" category. If you have a 1% infection rate in a population over a period of time, you'd expect maybe a half of 1% of those cases to be subsequently re-exposed to the infection in a way that they would have become sick had they not been previously infected.

If re-infection was common, we'd be seeing in the ballpark of a hundred thousand or so re-infections worldwide. But we're not, so we can say that the normal case is that you do acquire immunity after the first infection. People with compromised immune systems or other biological funnies might get unlucky, and we'll inevitably see sporadic cases of re-infection, but it's not a major pattern.

Also, with that many data points, it's inevitable there will be data errors, mis-diagnoses and so-forth as well. Anecdote is not data.

[Sashauk]

I really hope you are right Ruru67. According to the news article I was reading in the case in question the symptoms the second time round were far worse than in the first infection.

I have a feeling that this virus is going to be with us constantly from now on - just like flu - and all we can hope is that it will eventually mutate into something less lethal.

[OrgasmAlley]

Totally agree that the extremely small frequency of even reported second-infection instances leaves this in the "non-issue" basket. It's certainly true that we have very limited infection information... it could be the case that many undetected asymptomatic infections have reinfected asymptomatically, but that would all be speculation. Reports can be found of both more and less severe second infections. The low number thereof is well within the realm of false negative testing, which presently seems the most likely explanation for both.

SARS-COV-2 is a slow mutator. In comparison to the seasonal flu, we have observed about half the mutation rate (approximately 25 per year vs. 50 per year) and the genome is twice the size of flu. This means roughly 25% the chance of a meaningful mutation (related to infectiousness or morbidity) in a given period. It's in the world and will remain in the world, but this will not be a virus that we deal with in the same way we deal with flu... essentially new versions annually, about which we make partially accurate guesses to adapt a vaccine, and which infects an average 5 million and kills 600K each year.

[lj]

As an entirely personal opinion, what we are seeing is mass hysteria amongst a population fixated on social media and rolling news. I do not doubt corona virus is lethal, but almost entirely killing those who would have died anyway in a year or so - very sad for them and their families, but insignificant when compared with the deaths that will follow as a result of our health services pushing non-covid patients to the back of the queue, storing up thousands/millions of un-necessary deaths because treatment was witheld.

In the UK our main news channel, the BBC, feature unending stories of "cases" increasing (they would, if you test more people) but fail to mention the 99.8% of the population who either don't have the virus or have survived it. Meanwhile the economy which pays for all the treatment is going to collapse because of "lockdowns" (or whatever they are called) and mental health issues are rocketing.

rant over for now.

[Gregovic]

As an entirely personal opinion, what we are seeing is mass hysteria amongst a population fixated on social media and rolling news. I do not doubt corona virus is lethal, but almost entirely killing those who would have died anyway in a year or so - very sad for them and their families, but insignificant when compared with the deaths that will follow as a result of our health services pushing non-covid patients to the back of the queue, storing up thousands/millions of un-necessary deaths because treatment was witheld.

In the UK our main news channel, the BBC, feature unending stories of "cases" increasing (they would, if you test more people) but fail to mention the 99.8% of the population who either don't have the virus or have survived it. Meanwhile the economy which pays for all the treatment is going to collapse because of "lockdowns" (or whatever they are called) and mental health issues are rocketing.

rant over for now.

Respectfully I disagree somewhat. There is definitely some over-reacting happening on some accounts, but in general I wouldn't call it mass-hysteria. While many people dying from the virus had other health problems, there is definitely no reason to say they are "those who would have died anyway in a year or so". I know at least 2 cases of people a bit under 70 years old that both had minor health problems. A flu would not have killed them. COVID-19 left one in a care home with significant health problems, no longer able to live self-sufficiently, and the other is dead. More and more information is coming available about the long term health effects on even healthy people, and it's not exactly a pretty picture. How permanent some of the organ, lung and cardiovascular damage is remains to be seen, but it's all not exactly something I'd want to risk. I have 2 co-workers that tested positive, both in their late 20s, both previously perfectly healthy, both have a rather tough time of it, neither particularly keen to say it's nothing special.

Cases are increasing far faster than the rate of testing is increasing, and the proportion of the total amount of tests taken that comes back positive has been climbing again over the past few weeks in almost all Western European countries. There is a real rise in cases, it's NOT down to just doing more tests. 99.8% doesn't have the virus, because of the lockdowns, 99.8% has survived the virus because hospitals didn't get overloaded. The time the first lockdown has given us has also allowed better treatment plans to be developed so that a new wave is now slightly less likely to overwhelm the health care systems, but it's still a risky proposition. There's a balancing act to be made, but certainly in the Netherlands we would have been much better off if people had stuck to distancing measures, holiday travel had been much more limited and people hadn't just started "well fuck it, I'm done with it" after the first (somewhat) lockdown was eased.

[Shannon SteelSlave]

holiday travel had been much more limited and people hadn't just started "well fuck it, I'm done with it" after the first (somewhat) lockdown was eased.

As a natural home body, even I am beginning to suffer quarantine fatigue. I have not seen my parents since Holiday 2019. They lost their healthy pet that used to live with all of us. (Not to Corona) I have as much as told my Moms that it is beginning to look like there will be no meeting these Holidaze. I can only imagine how the extroverted population thinks of being alone this Holiday. I think a second wave is inevitable.

[ruru67]

As a natural home body, even I am beginning to suffer quarantine fatigue. I have not seen my parents since Holiday 2019. They lost their healthy pet that used to live with all of us. (Not to Corona) I have as much as told my Moms that it is beginning to look like there will be no meeting these Holidaze. I can only imagine how the extroverted population thinks of being alone this Holiday. I think a second wave is inevitable.

It's already happening - infections are spiking in both Europe and the US.

My partner has kids in Canada. She normally sees them twice a year. Here in NZ we've had it under control since June. (There was an outbreak a couple of months ago, but that's been knocked it on the head.) But since most of the rest of the world is still a plague-ridden hellscape, that comes with the cost of enforcing the border (NZ has a very wide moat) with strict quarantine - which means a "quick" overseas trip is difficult to arrange and requires two weeks in pris... - uh, an isolation facility - on the way back in. Which you have to pay for. So that's causing some stress around here.

She also has a shop, and international supply lines are completely fucked by the lack of air cargo space due to the vastly reduced passenger numbers and flights. Stuff that would take a week or two to get here by normal air parcel service is now taking over a month, or you have to stick it on DHL or Fedex at extortionate prices.

[OrgasmAlley]

A quick look at general COVID data in the US shows both testing and cases increasing at similar rates, while deaths continue decreasing: https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/u ... ey-metrics

There are two logical conclusions from this, in addition to the obvious situation of picking up more light cases due to more testing... we've got better treatment strategies, and it's a healthier and younger population largely being infected. It's also possible that this slowly mutating disease has become less lethal, could even have become more infectious. The places in the US with high case increases are the sparse states in the Midwest, where they largely avoided the initial surge in the virus. This seems to be a global phenomenon.

It is certainly true that the COVID largely kills the elderly and health-compromised, but I don't know of any way to know who would have otherwise died within a year. In the US, the official count has half of COVID deaths being among those over 75 years, and 90% with 1 or more (mostly more, with an average of just under 3) comorbibities. If we were limited to deaths in which COVID _played a medically significant role_, we'd be looking at a higher number by both metrics (and likely fewer than half the deaths).

Sweden does not evidence much of a surge, and it's notable that a number of other European countries are currently outpacing their growth in cases and deaths. Which is why it's be premature this whole time to claim their approach was worse.

[lj]

There will always be deaths across the full age range, from whatever cause.

Unfortunately I can't find the graph from a well-researched scientific paper I read a while ago, but it was a plot of "normal" deaths from all causes, per year, from birth to 100.

The curve was a version of the "bathtub" curve relating electronic equipment failures over time - very high at each extreme, dropping very rapidly after the first year of life and rising equally rapidly approaching 100 but pretty flat in the middle (looking like a cross-section of a bath tub!)

Overlaying deaths during the pandemic showed an almost identical curve, but with the older rise starting about 1 year earlier.

Statistics are being presented in a biased way - for example we have, in my part of the UK, had headlines "Covid deaths double in a week" but that was from 4 cases to 8 ( then 5 the next week but that doesn't get a mention)

The problem with lockdown is that it is a one-off non-scientific experiment that cannot be proved one way or the other. It reminds me of a joke -it's an old one - two people sitting in a railway carriage, every few minutes one of them screws up a piece of paper and throws it out of the window (you can tell it's an old joke, windows don't open on trains anymore) This goes on for an hour or so, until the other man asks why the other is throwing out the bits of paper. "it's to keep the elephants away" "But there are no elephants" "see, it works"

Lockdown is a valid strategy to give a pause to get the health services etc up and running. It delays death but does nothing to reduce the risk of death in the future, whilst guaranteeing people will die from other illnesses, mental as well as physical.

[Kinbaku]

Today I paid a friend who owns a cafe/restaurant in Belgium his holiday pay by giving more money for food and drink, because from tomorrow all cafes and restaurants will close for a month.
And to prevent people from meeting each other at home, a curfew has also been set from 0:00 to 5:00 that you are not allowed to go outside unless exceptional circumstances (compulsory work, nursing staff, ...).
Outside your family maximum 1 person for close contact and meeting with maximum 4 other persons per week with whom you keep a distance of 1.5 m (5 ft) are allowed.
Prohibition to sell alcoholic drinks after 10 pm.
Telework as much as possible and if this is impossible work under the safest possible conditions.
Measures concerning sports and cultural activities will follow later.
This is to prevent contacts, because the figures in Belgium are currently rising faster than the previous wave of covid-19.
Because since September 1 it is mainly the young people (10-30 years) and to a slightly lesser extent the working population (30-70 years) and better knowledge of the necessary medicines and treatments, fortunately, fewer deaths are currently reported than in the first wave, although these are also increasing.

[Shannon SteelSlave]

Total Cases 40,932,220 , Global Deaths 1,126,789
Is anyone finding it difficult to get routine medical care and check ups due to the fear of being exposed to potential carriers?

[OrgasmAlley]

Apparently quite a few people are having trouble getting both routine and non-routine medical care, as that figures heavily in the increasingly prevailing opinion that lockdowns do not have benefit commensurate with the costs thereof.

[ruru67]

Apparently quite a few people are having trouble getting both routine and non-routine medical care, as that figures heavily in the increasingly prevailing opinion that lockdowns do not have benefit commensurate with the costs thereof.

There's a reason that places that have tried for "herd immunity" have backed off that idea - pretty much any analysis predicts health services getting overwhelmed very quickly. Everywhere is doing social distancing of some sort, whether it's lockdown or other forms of restrictions.

The trouble is that the infection is serious in enough cases that getting herd immunity in any reasonable amount of time also kills too many people and renders health services basically inoperative (unless your health services' response is, "go away and die at home").

So no, walking away from lockdowns and restrictions is not a solution.

[OrgasmAlley]

So no, walking away from lockdowns and restrictions is not a solution.

While I certainly identified lockdowns, I don't know where I said "and restrictions"... or anything about herd immunity, for that matter. I didn't, actually. The "don't lock down" concept is not synonymous with "do nothing"... which isn't any country's strategy. There is in fact increasing scientific consensus that lockdown as a strategy has costs higher than benefits. See the WHO, the Barrington Declaration, and any number of publications on the topic.

Obviously we are seeking herd immunity. We hope to develop an effective vaccine to get there.

It's also quite important to acknowledge that the rate of death --especially in some places, but overall -- has declined very substantially... and our _understanding_ thereof through improved data has also increased. Some of that is improved treatment, some due to a different population being infected, some because certain populations in some places have been so devastated. Some due to increase population immunity? When around 30% of people in New York City have been infected, absolutely. If an infected person would otherwise pass the disease to 3 people but now 1 in 3 people they see carry immunity, how could that NOT have an effect? Note that those numbers are huge overstatement of R0, and the actual impact would be much, much higher than the 30% because most of the people an infected person will contact AND most of the people with immunity are among a subpopualtion that interacts more frequently with each other.

Despite all of those cases in NYC back when, which made it one of the hardest-hit places in the world (in no small part due to policies that forced COVID-positive patients into nursing homes populated by the absolute most vulnerable), no medical system was overwhelmed. No one needing a bed or ventilator went without one, and there was temporary overflow capacity implemented there that went virtually unused.

The result we see is like NYC (https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page). There's a small bump in cases -- small despite extremely high testing rates, including of those without symptoms -- and no noticeable impact on deaths (Daily Counts chart). As to "kills too many people", across the US to-date, COVID kills at about 1/5th the rate of the seasonal flu for those under 19... so, for example, closing schools because thousands of children will die (a leftist position here in the states) is false. The age-related impact in NYC is readily visible in the last chart, set to death rates by age. 1 person under 45 has died in NYC for every 78 people aged 75 and over. Comorbidities also have an insanely high correlation with COVID deaths. Locking down everyone without regard to these characteristics of the disease is both unnecessarily broad and unnecessarily costly.... in life, freedom, and treasure.

We clearly see that most countries that performed a heavy-handed style lockdown initially experience a very strong "second wave" -- actually their first wave -- as they attempt to regain a bit of freedom. While it's certainly a better time, given the advanced understanding of the COVID, they've paid a mighty cost for that. Locking down on a country-wide basis again is an expensive gamble.