Covid-19 #16: Not Waving, Loop-de-Looping

[rotting sea cow]

19 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Yeah, I'm sorry I haven't linked the last few articles I've read. I read them on my phone's news feed and then a few hours later when I try to find the article again to link it on here I can't track it down. I did another search just now and here's the specific article I was reading, but there are several articles from various newspapers saying similar things, though perhaps not the 90% thing.

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/ideasroom/herd-immunity-a-misunderstanding

 

Thanks! It seems to me the model is simplistic but overall I agree, even the lowest possible number via infections will still lead to an unacceptable large number of deaths. For example, this more complex model claims that you'd need about 43% of infected to achieve herd immunity. These would still lead to over 250 thousands deaths in UK unless social disruptions are kept for a long time to protect the vulnerable population.  There were some news articles (from biased outlets) claiming that it could be reached with ~20% of infected but I was unable to find the original source.

 

[The Anti-Targ]

20 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

Thanks! It seems to me the model is simplistic but overall I agree, even the lowest possible number via infections will still lead to an unacceptable large number of deaths. For example, this more complex model claims that you'd need about 43% of infected to achieve herd immunity. These would still lead to over 250 thousands deaths in UK unless social disruptions are kept for a long time to protect the vulnerable population.  There were some news articles (from biased outlets) claiming that it could be reached with ~20% of infected but I was unable to find the original source.

 

You can possible reach some kind of minimisation with lower than 60% if you also employ other measures to reduce transmission. But a do nothing approach with 20% seems unlikely to have a substantial herd immunity effect. If you are in a crowded space and within 2 metres of you there are easily >10 people then if one person is infected and two or three are immune it still means there are 7+ people susceptible to infection. It's very likely that within a not to long period of time one or more of those 7+ will get infected. If there's masks or a less dense crowd then likelihood of infection goes down, but it needs those additional measures not just the 20%. 43% is better but still, withing a crowded space infection is likely to spread. It's really only when most people within spitting distance of an infected person are immune that herd immunity is going to be substantial.

[The Grey Wolf]

Does anyone know if the feds reimburse you for Covid testing? I don't have insurance.

[Filippa Eilhart]

@The Anti-Targ most of the articles I saw concerned the situation in Europe which is obviously extremely different from countries such as NZ or Australia, which you can just close off to any international traffic. Or even USA vs Canada where the situation is vastly different.

You just cannot close off a European country from other European countries, even in the deepest lockdown we still had cargo traffic on a daily basis, cross-border workers, even seasonal workers being transported by chartered flights, not to mention repatriation of citizens. 

That’s is why I find it ridiculous that some countries are shutting borders to other EU countries. If you think you’re surrounded by countries where cases are rising but somehow your country is being spared, you’re fooling yourself. Your country is just not testing enough, or not testing the right people.

[Fragile Bird]

Trust me, Canada isn't going to open the border with the US any time soon.

When the pandemic started, we had 1 M travellers return, a third from the US, a third from Europe, and the rest from dozens of other countries. There's no doubt those returning travellers spread the virus. However, that closed border is still open to essential services, like commercial traffic, and to returning Canadians, but also to thousands of Canadians and Americans who cross the border every day to work in the other country. And, believe it or not, the closed border is closed only to vehicular traffic and ferries, you can fly into Canada from the US. Of course, most provinces have a 14 day quarantine if you do that, but I don't think many US locations require Canadians to quarantine. However, Canadians returning fro the US have brought back the virus with them, sadly.

[Filippa Eilhart]

yes, I doubt anyone is opening doors to the US any time soon. 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, The Grey Wolf said:

Does anyone know if the feds reimburse you for Covid testing? I don't have insurance.

The feds do not.  Perhaps some locales in your state will.  It's a total mess due to the deathcultchief's cult refusing to apply an iota of national coherent and productive planning or leadership in order to repress / reduce the voters, i.e. people of color to this most important upcoming election for reasons. So all decisions about testing, tracking, tracing, treating, masking, distancing, opening are left to localities, except of course when it interferes with their desires, as in Georgia, where the bend over (not the same as bend the knee) governor is suing Atlanta's mayor personally for mandating masks and closing bars.

 

[The Grey Wolf]

@Zorral

Thanks.

[RhaenysBee]

3 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

Austria already forbids travel to a large number of eastern european and balkan countries, except for specific cases.

I tend to doubt that.  This virus was spread through air travel and most of the countries which have succeeded in containing it were those which closed early. I saw the same article some days ago and they point to the closure of schools as being effective, but some recent research points towards the opposite direction.

Beside the article I posted before comparing Sweden and Finland, I've seen these

No evidence of secondary transmission of COVID-19 from children attending school in Ireland, 2020

Novel Coronavirus 2019 Transmission Risk in Educational Settings

COVID-19 Transmission and Children: The Child Is Not to Blame

Plus news articles from Austria and Germany

It is roughly the same here although the most common summer travel destinations are open, even with a growing number of cases there. 

And I tend to think that research can unfortunately prove one thing along with the exact opposite of that same thing too . Especially so early into a present phenomenon. 

20 minutes ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

@The Anti-Targ most of the articles I saw concerned the situation in Europe which is obviously extremely different from countries such as NZ or Australia, which you can just close off to any international traffic. Or even USA vs Canada where the situation is vastly different.

You just cannot close off a European country from other European countries, even in the deepest lockdown we still had cargo traffic on a daily basis, cross-border workers, even seasonal workers being transported by chartered flights, not to mention repatriation of citizens. 

That’s is why I find it ridiculous that some countries are shutting borders to other EU countries. If you think you’re surrounded by countries where cases are rising but somehow your country is being spared, you’re fooling yourself. Your country is just not testing enough, or not testing the right people.

In a globalized world I’m not sure it’s possible to entirely close off any country.

As for Europe, I’ve never seen an article about lorry drivers spreading the virus. To me it seems they would have little contact with others on their route and they travel alone in their vehicles. Cross country workers are an issue in terms of public transportation, but they at least commute between their own house and place of employment, rather than all over a city, as any person within their own country would, who cannot work from home or stay out of work for the time of restrictions. 
Whereas contact tracing proves that early European cases were no others than cross country travelers (be that business men going through crowded conference rooms and busy airports or tourists visiting the hot spots of cities or ski destination, using public transportation and staying in crowded hotels, or foreign students returning from their slightly more infected home countries for semester start through busy airports and again using public transportation). We are all quite aware that if neighboring countries see cases soar, so will we within days, max weeks dependent on incubation period.

This is why everybody (who believes in the virus at all or is concerned about it) is anticipating the closing of borders, which would - though obviously not entirely - reduce cross country movement, at the very least the unnecessary portion of it. (I do believe that going on International holidays is an entirely unnecessary source of risk, which should be restricted - this is an opinion anybody can agree or disagree with, but it is how I see it personally).

Europe is not the USA. We aren’t (yet) as closely intertwined and linked with our neighbors, which has its own disadvantages (who can say that one strict, cohesive and unified response imposed all across the EU wouldn’t work better than all member states doing what they see best based on their own stats? It might work better, we will never know), but the one advantage is that we have (I think) full control over how we handle a state of emergency or when we pronounce it. And it’s also important that note that several European countries closed the first phase of the coronavirus outbreak with a very low infection rate. Slovenia, a direct neighbor of the Northern Italian hotspot was able to control their outbreak, Slovakia, Croatia, Montenegro and some northern nations were all able to keep their infected count at a couple thousand with a reasonable testing rate. (Not going to mention us here because we did keep confirmed cases low, however we are in the top ten worst tests/1 mill population rate in Europe). 
Again, this is my own logic based on what little news coverage I have consumed over the past half year and it may or may not be proved right or wrong by scientific research.  

[Filippa Eilhart]

We’re probably only be able to see what definitely works and what doesn’t when it’s all over. And obviously at first all cases were imported, but it’s different now for all of Europe. 

 

But I also wonder about the research regarding schools. Are those researchers claiming schools pose no risk happy to recommend full opening of schools in Florida? Or are schools not a risk only because lockdowns otherwise worked?

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

It's worked extremely well here. And to a slightly lesser extent in Australia, though they let it leak out of quarantine hotels and it's been bubbling away within Australia the whole time as well. Maybe less effective when there is already active community spread in the destination country. Theoretically if you allow people in from countries that have a similar or lower case/million then you are not changing the overall risk profile for current residents becausw the proportion of incoming people with infection will be about the same. If you allow people in from countries with significantly higher case/million then you are slightly increasing the risk profile. But by how much? Not much considering you are only letting in hundreds of people at a time only some of whom will have the infection, whereas active cases in most countries is in the 10s of thousands.

The greatest risk is for those who are not infected traveling on the same plane/train/bus/ship as the people who are infected if there is any laxity in distancing, hygiene and mask wearing.

Back to Australia, I would say it is very wise of QLD, WA, Tas, NT and SA to shut borders to NSW and Vic. The former states have near eliminated the virus whereas the latter are experiencing a resurgence. Just one infected person crossing the border substantially raises the risk profile for the destination state.

Yes indeed! Closing the borders has worked very well in every place it was rigorously instituted -- Thailand and Cuba, among others.  Right now, though we supposedly have imposed travel restrictions for all those coming to NY, who are supposed to quarantine for 14 days,  which are not tracked or policed or enforced with any actual, you know protocol - system in place for doing so -- even now we see the new outbreaks are occurring where, for one instance three people came in from Georgia.

There's a reason Canada and Mexico have closed their borders to the US -- as has most of the EU and other big tourism destinations.

As for the schools, already very wealthy and very well off family pods are hiring teachers to be governesses and tutors for this coming school year.  Companies have sprung up to facilitate this.  Thus the inequalities in education, just as in the systems for housing, food, employment, justice, medical care are now also glaringly exposed.  The rich kids will continue to be educated.  The others will fall behind.  Increasingly behind.  Shades of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.   The new Jane Eyre cannot be far behind!

@Gray Wolf  Here we can now get free covid-19 tests at a variety of places around the city and state  Not a federal program, but a mandated by the state and city.  However it took months to get this up and running, particularly without any assistance from the national 'government'.

[DireWolfSpirit]

If you were considering drinking your hand sanitizer, you should probably investigate how that's been working out for others before you commit to following through on it.......just saying.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-health/2020/07/17/people-dead-hospitalized-drinking-hand-sanitizer-methanol-arizona/5448890002/

Darwin Award material here?

[HoodedCrow]

Ha. Well I’m not drinking hand sanitizer or bleach:)

Just responding to Ormond. Shorter people live longer. I am too handicapped to cut and paste using a tablet. So I have the links, but this is how it goes. People get more jobs and mates if they are taller. If you control for socioeconomic status, so that most people have adequate nutrition, shorter people live longer. There is a reason why there are little old ladies. Being male doesn’t help, though the gap is closing. The article talks about how a gene for longevity is linked is linked to height.

The country with the greatest longevity is...Japan. I went to Tokyo, and I am shorter and I felt like a giant. Yes, their diet is generally good, too, but still.

There are regions of longevity in France and Italy. There are some really fun, serious articles on Acciaroli. They have some sort of record for centenarians . There was an article in The NY Times. If I were a student, I would do anything to go there and “ study” longevity. They have a Mediterranean diet, which includes simple crops that they grow themselves, chicken, rosemary was thought to be an important ingredient, fish, wine and good lifestyle. They swim in the ocean., and navigate switchbacks daily. They are relaxed about sex. It would be useful to go to see how they are faring with covid. Americans will be allowed to go eventually. Start now! I can’t think of anything that would be better than that! Checking would require a very simple search, and very good for Americans to pay attention. Find out if they have height issues. My impression is that non Germanic Italians are shorter, overall.

Full disclosure, it’s really hard for me to make sense one key stroke at a time, but I can no longer type with QWERTY. My app keeps spellchecking me into mistakes, not that I wouldn’t anyway, but it’s a war.

[Zorral]

"‘Superspreading’ events, triggered by people who may not even know they are infected, propel coronavirus pandemic
Most spread the virus to only a few people — or none at all. But studies show a small percentage transmit it with alarming efficiency."

How it works -- we all should read this long piece, probably.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/07/18/coronavirus-superspreading-events-drive-pandemic/

Quote

 

[....]
“It is becoming clear that the pandemic is driven by superspreading events, and that the best explanation for many of those events is aerosol transmission.” Jimenez said.
[....]
Stanford researcher Morgan Kain, who focuses on mathematical modeling of disease transmission, said his analysis shows that regions that have not been greatly affected by the pandemic are most vulnerable because almost everyone would theoretically be susceptible to infection and a single unlucky confluence of an infectious person in the right environment could very quickly set off a chain reaction of transmissions. Kain and others argue that out-of-the-box ideas are needed to combat such spread.

“That’s why it’s particularly dangerous in the United States that places that don’t have cases are opening up, going back to indoor restaurants, bars, gyms where infected people move about,” he said.
[....]

 

 

 

[HoodedCrow]

I just read a good quote reported from a conservative nurse. “ Wearing a mask is an I. Q. test.”

[Zorral]

The path of the DCC's failed state leadership-failure to deal at all with the the pandemic within its own nation, except with more failure

Dr. Brix has a whole lot to answer for, she and her hit-and/or-miss modeling dependence instead of actual data and sucking up to Kushner et al. But never as much as her boss and his henchies, all whom need to take a ride on the tumbril to the final destination.

Quote

 

[....]

The New York region appeared well on its way to driving new infections down to levels it could handle — it was the one area of the country that did resemble the Italian model. But the models and analysis embraced by the West Wing failed to account for the weakening adherence to the lockdowns across the country that began even before Mr. Trump started urging governors to “liberate” their residents from the methodical guidelines his own government had established.

Later, it was clear that states that rushed to reopen before meeting the criteria in the guidelines — like Arizona, Texas and Alabama — would have among the worst surges in new cases.

Dr. Birx’s belief that the United States would mirror Italy turned out to be disastrously wrong. The Italians had been almost entirely compliant with stay-at-home orders and social distancing, squelching new infections to negligible levels before the country slowly reopened. Americans, by contrast, began backing away by late April from what social distancing efforts they had been making, egged on by Mr. Trump.

The difference was critical. As communities across the United States raced to reopen, the daily number of daily cases barely dropped below 20,000 in early May. The virus was still circulating across the country.

Italy’s recovery curve, it turned out, looked nothing like the American one.

The Consequences
[....]

 

Well, as for consequences, the nation is burning up with the consequences of political Brix (Fauci describes her a political animals, a different species from himself) and her boss.  No end in sight.  None.  The economy, art, education, live music, cozy socializing and dinner parties,  women and minorities getting ahead -- all gone. 

Guess They won. Guess the rest of us are losers after all.

 

 

 

[Clueless Northman]

21 hours ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

@The Anti-Targ most of the articles I saw concerned the situation in Europe which is obviously extremely different from countries such as NZ or Australia, which you can just close off to any international traffic. Or even USA vs Canada where the situation is vastly different.

You just cannot close off a European country from other European countries, even in the deepest lockdown we still had cargo traffic on a daily basis, cross-border workers, even seasonal workers being transported by chartered flights, not to mention repatriation of citizens. 

That’s is why I find it ridiculous that some countries are shutting borders to other EU countries. If you think you’re surrounded by countries where cases are rising but somehow your country is being spared, you’re fooling yourself. Your country is just not testing enough, or not testing the right people.

Oh it's not that quarantines (as in "border-closing") don't work. It's just that European governments don't WANT to do quarantines, or their are too incompetent to do it the right way. But that's still a realistic solution to reduce the spread of infection - it's not a good solution for the economy though, obviously. If I see a country that claims border-closing don't work, I can tell it's a country that just doesn't know how to effectively seal a border; it's worked for decades across half of Europe, you know, so they should be able to do it.

But it's quite clear that if China had been fully cut off back in mid-January, this shit wouldn't have happened. Odds are that Europe cordoning off Italy in late February would've worked as well. As long as the other countries are also looking for inner infection cases that would already be present on their ground and would closely monitor all suspicous cases, instead of thinking "We've done it, we're safe, everyone's party nowü" - which is actually what Italy did back in February, having - rightfully - closed borders to China in late January and assuming there were no virus on Italian ground.

 

As for schools, NYT just reported on a massive S. Korean study: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/health/coronavirus-children-schools.html

Turns out, teens spread infections just as much as adults.

[Zorral]

"Older Children Spread the Coronavirus Just as Much as Adults, Large Study Finds
The study of nearly 65,000 people in South Korea suggests that school reopenings will trigger more outbreaks."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/health/coronavirus-children-schools.html

[....]The new study “is very carefully done, it’s systematic and looks at a very large population,” Dr. Jha said. “It’s one of the best studies we’ve had to date on this issue.”

Other experts also praised the scale and rigor of the analysis. South Korean researchers identified 5,706 people who were the first to report Covid-19 symptoms in their households between Jan. 20 and March 27, when schools were closed, and then traced the 59,073 contacts of these “index cases.” They tested all of the household contacts of each patient, regardless of symptoms, but only tested symptomatic contacts outside the household.

[....]

The study is more worrisome for children in middle and high school. This group was even more likely to infect others than adults were, the study found. But some experts said that finding may be a fluke or may stem from the children’s behaviors.

These older children are frequently as big as adults, and yet may have some of the same unhygienic habits as young children do. They may also have been more likely than the younger children to socialize with their peers within the high-rise complexes in South Korea.

“We can speculate all day about this, but we just don’t know,” Dr. Osterholm said. “The bottom line message is: There’s going to be transmission.[....]

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Preemie births way down, globally:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/health/coronavirus-premature-birth.html

[rotting sea cow]

32 minutes ago, Zorral said:

"Older Children Spread the Coronavirus Just as Much as Adults, Large Study Finds
The study of nearly 65,000 people in South Korea suggests that school reopenings will trigger more outbreaks."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/health/coronavirus-children-schools.html

[....]The new study “is very carefully done, it’s systematic and looks at a very large population,” Dr. Jha said. “It’s one of the best studies we’ve had to date on this issue.”

Other experts also praised the scale and rigor of the analysis. South Korean researchers identified 5,706 people who were the first to report Covid-19 symptoms in their households between Jan. 20 and March 27, when schools were closed, and then traced the 59,073 contacts of these “index cases.” They tested all of the household contacts of each patient, regardless of symptoms, but only tested symptomatic contacts outside the household.

[....]

The study is more worrisome for children in middle and high school. This group was even more likely to infect others than adults were, the study found. But some experts said that finding may be a fluke or may stem from the children’s behaviors.

These older children are frequently as big as adults, and yet may have some of the same unhygienic habits as young children do. They may also have been more likely than the younger children to socialize with their peers within the high-rise complexes in South Korea.

“We can speculate all day about this, but we just don’t know,” Dr. Osterholm said. “The bottom line message is: There’s going to be transmission.[....]

 

I saw earlier today and ... this is bad. It's probably larger and better than the european studies I posted before. Of course, there might be things that are very Korean-specific (like school size, class size, etc) but still...

Nevertheless, I still think that the best effort should be made to provide children with functioning schools.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, rotting sea cow said:

I saw earlier today and ... this is bad. It's probably larger and better than the european studies I posted before. Of course, there might be things that are very Korean-specific (like school size, class size, etc) but still...

Nevertheless, I still think that the best effort should be made to provide children with functioning schools.

I do as well, but unfortunately I think in order to do that, we may have to shut everything else down, at least here.