Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

That's fair. My point with that statement the price we'll have to pay if our solution is to let herd immunity take over is too high. I'd rather pay the economic price of slowing things down so we can keep on top of the infections than pay the human price to keep the economy going.

And I think I said this a few months ago, I'll take the hit to my ego and eat my crow if I'm wrong than be proven right. I really wish we are closer to herd immunity and who knows, maybe we are in a true 10s of millions of cases as BTE wants to be true so he can be right. But if we're wrong, who are we going to ask to die in the meantime?

 

OK, I think we're coming to an understanding here. I still think there's more to the story than herd immunity is explaining the numbers in New York. There's a couple of ways to see the numbers, including lag time between infection and symptoms and symptoms to seeing a doctor. In a dense area like New York, that was going to take a little bit to contain the inferno. But, you're right, that there was a good stretch there when things still raged despite some measures being taken. March 17 New York (state) saw 1,000 new cases. By April 14, the new cases peaked at more than 11,000. And April 24 saw the last spike above 10,000 new cases.

 

Remember --- and I can't stress it enough --- in New York who knows how many were REALLY infected but were never tested because they showed no symptoms. "Case" number comparisons between March and April and July are just useless as far as I'm concerned. They do more harm than good because they give a false picture of everything.

 

From the end of March until the end of May, the number of tests administered daily in New York more than doubled.

 

Agreed that the literature on this appears to be all over the map. The level of agreement on herd immunity is nowhere near the agreement on the necessity of mask-wearing. You know, that practice that the guvnuh of Georgia and the guvnuh of Florida and the attorney general of Kentucky, among others, refuse to acknowledge as enough of a necessity to compel the same policies that apply to wearing seat belts.

 

Sadly, total positives are all we have to go on but it's an indicator of where we really were. Can't make comparisons across the board (but I think in New York's case, we can because as tests have increased, total positives have decreased). Problem is, we don't know how far we're off. I can't say the numbers are 100 percent accurate and you can't say they represent just 1 percent of total infections. I can point to hospital capacity and known deaths as an indicator of things being worse than they were before and it's why I'm skeptical about declaring let's let herd immunity take over. But, I'll concede we might be closer to the herd immunity than the numbers indicate.

It will be interesting when we're not playing triage any more to get a comprehensive study done to see what the true numbers might be and just how far off our reporting stats were.

 

I went to watch more videos by the Laguna Beach dudes doing a bit in Huntington Beach.

I grew up a few miles away in Long Beach and they basically captured the essence of SoCal.

The responses they get is straight out of Sacha Baron Cohen and explains why we are where we are.

 

New York's numbers may also have improved because they got hammered so hard early that people there started to take it seriously, so they got religion about social distancing, washing their hands and wearing masks.

 

People are so stupid that it amazes me.

I have a friend who is self quarantining because she was visiting someone who was potentially exposed. Her friend, call her Ann, works with Barbara. Barbara was exposed and has taken a test, but her results are not back yet. She does not have active symptoms. Barbara's employer is requiring her to come on into work unless her test comes back positive. I see this as idiocy and a legitimate risk of infecting everyone she works with.

Barbara works for an eye surgeon.

 

Even if you lose your antibodies for COVID after a few months, your T-cells should have memory of it and be able to easily ramp up after a second infection. Time will tell, of course. But if you survived the first onset already, the second onset should be a lot less serious.

 

Sounds like a magnificent way to get sued. The suit will get tossed because it's impossible to prove the person from whom the plaintiff got the disease, but simply getting sued might be a problem for the good doctor.

 

Dr. Gregory A. Poland, an expert on vaccines and a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and Gypsyamber D’Souza, PhD, a professor of epidemiology and international health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland, disagree on both your points. First, many antibody studies done to try to gauge what percentage of the population has actually been infected come back far below herd immunity territory. Second, they still think needed percentage of the population infected for herd immunity is 60-70 (and that's not getting into reports of COVID-19 specific potential problems, like antibodies disappearing after a few months and people being infected for a second time after they've recovered from first infection and tested negative.)

But maybe they're wrong. Yeah, herd immunity's right around the corner, and I'm sure that study in Cell and Nature has uncovered what previous decades' worth of study didn't.

Shame on me for "wanting things to go badly."

We're Nowhere Near Herd Immunity with COVID-19, Experts Say