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Covid-19 #17: Covid Is For Ever


Tywin Manderly

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Israel locking down the entire country due to the massive amount of c-19 cases, in the hope of easing the crunch upon medical institutions.  But it will be for only 3 weeks, which doesn't seem enough.  Just like Spain's three months should have been at least another month long.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israel-heads-to-a-second-lockdown-as-coronavirus-cases-soar/2020/09/13/4f473fe6-f5a7-11ea-85f7-5941188a98cd_story.html

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/coronavirus-2651-new-cases-on-saturday-death-toll-1103-642074

 

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As far as I am concerned, any country where the virus has considerably risen again should've done longer lockdown back in May-June. So, Italy probably did it quite OK, NZ as well, but most other Western countries were run by reckless corrupt jerks who've always thought about the economy first, and their very own people last. I'm going to have a blast the next time the fucking scumbags who let thousands or tens of thousands of their very own people die will accuse some 3rd world tinpot dictator of "murdering his own people", like Saddam or Assad, because these hypocritical assholes just did the same, except they didn't send the army.

 

On 9/12/2020 at 6:29 AM, Altherion said:

This is hard to prove given that in many places where the pandemic peaked in early spring, the testing was utterly inadequate. This leaves us with anti-body testing and estimates based on the fatality rate, but both of these are flawed because the immune system has other possible responses and because the fatality rate depends on whether the vulnerable are protected and is also not all that well known.

The poster child for this is New York City (here is a link with the history and the current numbers). The total number of confirmed cases is 237K which, given that the population (after excluding the people who have temporarily left) is around 8 million, is only a measly 3%. However, this is obviously an underestimate because when the number of hospitalizations and deaths was the greatest, the testing was limited to non-existent. The number of deaths is 23,739 which, if you use the IFR of 0.4% translates to 5.9 million cases (or nearly three quarters of the population), but if you go with the higher 1%, it's only 2.4 million (or only 30% of the population).

Let's just say that to assume a 0.4% for fatality rate is quite optimistic in Western societies, with a lot of elder people. Besides, that's just the immediate fatality rate, which doesn't take into account the numerous people with lung fibrosis who will be dead, 2 years from now. Some people might object to taking them into account, but if we exclude people who die a few years later due to their illness, then AIDS doesn't kill much people, considering how long they live before the disease gets them...

NYC is actually the place with the highest % of people with antibodies I've heard about. Even Madrid was way below. And even if antibodies tend to disappear with time, they're usually there for at least 3 months, so studies done back in June are a reasonable reflection of the effect of the 1st wave across Europe and USA. This led me to assume that 1/10 to 1/4 of all cases were actually spotted this spring (depends on the country, countries with lower cases and plenty of testing like Germany are in the 1/4 team, Spain or Italy most probably in the 1/10). If I risk a wild guess, I'd say that most European countries tend to catch 1/2 of all cases nowadays - except probably when it's already out of control like in Spain, and possibly France.

To be blunt, the only thing that might mitigate my strong doubt about any place being close to herd immunity is that covid deaths have been underreported all across the world. Even Belgium with the widest criteria to ascribe deaths to coronarivus, was underrporting them by something like 20% during the spring peak - comparisons to previous mortality charts showed that even there there were thousands of excess deaths that weren't considered covid, but which obviously should've. I'm not sure that's a comforting fact.

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How they are doing education in Maryland with a friend's grandson; the following is a cut and paste of her email, with her permission. If only it was like this everywhere, we'd be good.

I know the cats she refers to. "Blinky" hung out in our yard too, and not knowing she had a name, I named her Cleopatra for those same over eye markings that had C, and C, name her "Blinky."

This friend's writing style is antagonistic to paragraphs. This is how she writes, but it is informative and evocative all the same.

I particularly asked to copy it here, due to her remarks about the rethugs in their town and masks.  They fixed that, just like they fixed the rethugs who wouldn't wear masks to the Farmer's Market.  For my friend and her friends, they work the Dem voter registration table at the market every weekend and their glee at out-registering and out-raising the rethugs is something she reports to me up here regularly.

Quote


It has been a gorgeous September day here, about 79 with no humidity,.......a gift! Last night it was cool and a "Two Cat Night"....also glad for gift from my sister of a pretty long sleeved white nightgown to feel special in Smile Today, early morning walk by the river, greeting neighbors and then lovely lunch with Kristin and Elvis at Bridges restaurant at the Narrows in Grasonville. Shrimp and Grits and Key Lime Cheesecake on the deck under a lime green umbrella....with waves sparkling in the sun. Elvis is very anxious about being around "others", people not of our "pod", but he managed a careful recital about his school and what they're doing ....plus a few french fries!...before requesting to go back to the car and his IPad Smile All good.....we got to have substantive adult chat! Summit School is fortunate to have exterior doors to each classroom, so each masked pod of kids goes in their door and that's where they "connect", meet for outdoor activity and exit with their group to "their" field....Ultimate Frisbee is the game of the year! Each pod has 3 classroom areas and they rotate amongst them during the day, but always with their bunch. They don't see or interact with other classes, although they have different teachers. There are giant bottles of sanitizer everywhere and everyone wears masks at all times. They have virtual classes on Wednesdays for half day as driving back from DC or Baltimore to fetch a kid and then try to deal was a mad stretch for some parents. This seems to be working very well so far as Summit was far ahead in using electronics already and the kids are all "pros", but get lots of support. (Elvis had his mom video him doing a Zoom tutorial for Grandma! )
Here in C-- Special Ed kids are in schools, but all others are virtual, at least for a couple of months when they hope to begin bringing high school kids back in person on a limited basis. Younger kids are all virtual. The county bought every child a Chrome Notebook and, due to our spotty connectivity, they have fitted out 3 buses to roll as Mobile Hotspots. And now there is a major fundraiser going on to fund "Pod Techies" who will go to various underserved areas and work with kids whose parents aren't computer savvy, etc. And FOL gave $5K to Imagination Reading Program so that Rosie Ramsey Granillo, the director, could get all 400 (Yes! There are 400 kids under the age of 5 in K-- County!) on the program receiving an age appropriate book a month for a year. The food/feeding programs keep rolling along too, for kids and seniors.....................Meanwhile houses around here are selling within days of coming on the market as "Getting back to the Land" becomes a thing.  This is very nice for my friends who are selling up and going to live closer to grown kids and great for our tax base too. The marina, which is gorgeous, got a grant to pay off the final construction loans and has been full up all summer.....slips for locals all full and a waiting list, transients abounding, thrilled with bathrooms, showers, safe docks, pump out stations, rental bikes and a revamped restaurant. Farmers Market will be in full swing till December....now all spaced out and in the streets.....the 200 and 300 blocks. We have, unaccountably, 2 new art galleries, a second high end wine/cheese place and a tapas place on Cannon Street run by two Ecuadorean guys who've started a vineyard out on Langford Road....only in C--! We have rolling planters which the DCA moves about to block off streets in front of restaurants on Saturday evenings for outdoor dining.....and The Cat Colloquium (look up the site)/Stams's is open for streetside business with ice cream, grilled cheese, hot dogs, milkshakes....and watching of Posey, George, Elliot, Nelly Belle, Max and the rest of the furballs who lead an enchanted life upstairs, but have their own private stair down to the front window.
The corn is beginning to really dry and soon the combines will be going full tilt. Along the streets, the remaining sycamores are shedding bark and dropping leaves with their distinctive spicy smell and my gardens are just past peak, blooming away, but straggling ........I have hummingbirds and hundreds of bees and dragon flies and Praying Mantises, but few butterflies??????? Sadly, Elm, planted in 1912, is dying and slated for removal infall......still struggling to put leaves out, but too much dangerous dead wood..........sigh...........however, I have 4 strong youngsters growing and will find homes for them in a couple of years. The ones I've placed, including Adam's, are all about 20-30 ft. and growing strongly!
Everyone wears masks here....even the Republicans who got tossed from market for not wearing same (and being obnoxious!) It makes me so sad to hear of the arrogant young parading about.......I sadly expect that recurring waves of virus is our future....have seen pictures of hundreds in Florida State stadium, etc. just crazy. At least the major drug companies seem to be hanging together on agreement not to rush vaccine out until well-tested..........of course not all of that is benevolent as Trump folk haven't yet managed to get legislation passed absolving companies from fault if things go awry!
Here, in our deep blue dot of a town, people are throwing money at us Saturday Dems, grabbing signs and buttons and "locally-made" masks....last Saturday we took in $684 in 3 hours......people are fired up. The trumpistas are around, but there are fewer signs than usual and they seem somewhat subdued.....for the nonce anyway. The League of Women Voters, celebrating the 100th anniversary of women voting have a fabulous exhibit up in the windows of the Bordley Center and are registering people to vote down there every Saturday...and the K--, Q-- A--'s Indivisible group is set to launch a major post card writing campaign next week.......................
One more piece of news...yesterday, Lucky Laroux, the Outback Cat and Block Captain, brother of Cleopatra/Blinky met me when I came back from market, had breakfast, saw me off from the front stoop and, in the next 3 hours, died.............he was 14 and never missed a day on his beat. I am sore of heart, but grateful he wasn't hit or ravaged by illness or gone away to die..........brushed his beautiful fur, curled him in his coufee, wrapped him well and buried him by the front step...tomorrow I will plant a Caryopteris over him, much loved critter. Blinky still lives her life over in "paradise", C's walled garden........................
Be well my dear friend....avoid arrogant 25 year olds!! Eat well and stay safe! Love,

 

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4 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

To be blunt, the only thing that might mitigate my strong doubt about any place being close to herd immunity is that covid deaths have been underreported all across the world. Even Belgium with the widest criteria to ascribe deaths to coronarivus, was underrporting them by something like 20% during the spring peak - comparisons to previous mortality charts showed that even there there were thousands of excess deaths that weren't considered covid, but which obviously should've. I'm not sure that's a comforting fact.

Without herd immunity (or some limited version thereof), how do you explain the New York City numbers between the beginning of July and today? In that time, the city reopened to a considerable extent, but the number of cases has stayed flat at a very low rate or even decreased a bit. We know that reopening in other places has caused fairly dramatic increases in the number of cases so what is different about NYC? The main differences are the density (which would make reopening worse, not better) and the intensity of the outbreak in early spring.

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8 hours ago, Zorral said:

Israel locking down the entire country due to the massive amount of c-19 cases, in the hope of easing the crunch upon medical institutions.  But it will be for only 3 weeks, which doesn't seem enough.  Just like Spain's three months should have been at least another month long.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israel-heads-to-a-second-lockdown-as-coronavirus-cases-soar/2020/09/13/4f473fe6-f5a7-11ea-85f7-5941188a98cd_story.html

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/coronavirus-2651-new-cases-on-saturday-death-toll-1103-642074

 

It's at least 3 week, it might (and probably will) be longer

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4 hours ago, Altherion said:

Without herd immunity (or some limited version thereof), how do you explain the New York City numbers between the beginning of July and today? In that time, the city reopened to a considerable extent, but the number of cases has stayed flat at a very low rate or even decreased a bit. We know that reopening in other places has caused fairly dramatic increases in the number of cases so what is different about NYC? The main differences are the density (which would make reopening worse, not better) and the intensity of the outbreak in early spring.

Vector immunity is how apparently is called, i.e. those who are prone to transmit the disease become immune first to it, limiting further spread of the disease. We'll see if that is what is actually happening.

The main problem with the calculation of herd immunity threshold is the classical level (1 - 1/R0) assumes homogeneous mixing of the population, which doesn't happen in real life. It might be that some communities require a far smaller fraction and some others a larger one.  Even R0 changes depending on behaviour and precautionary measures.

The other issue here is the CFR of this disease is highly age stratified, which put policy makers in an moral dilemma, specially in developing countries where the effects of quarantine and lockdowns can be devastating. For example, in Bangladesh  more people might die of famine than from COVID-19, if strong measures are put in place.

The Nature take on the situation.  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00451-5

 

 

 

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14 hours ago, Altherion said:

Without herd immunity (or some limited version thereof), how do you explain the New York City numbers between the beginning of July and today? In that time, the city reopened to a considerable extent, but the number of cases has stayed flat at a very low rate or even decreased a bit. We know that reopening in other places has caused fairly dramatic increases in the number of cases so what is different about NYC? The main differences are the density (which would make reopening worse, not better) and the intensity of the outbreak in early spring.

That's just totally wrong. Italy, where only the North and Rome were actually hit, has very low and flat numbers, Spain who got hit even harder, specially Madrid, are hit just as hard now. Israel wasn't hit as hard, but has a bigger peak right now. Some places learned their lesson, due to heavy losses; others didn't (or to be more charitable to the locals, some leaders learned their lesson, others didn't).

So no, there is no herd immunity so far. And I wouldn't count on reaching it before we get vaccine or effective drugs / treatment.

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I was watching the business news this morning and the CEO of Gilead, the makers of Remdesivir was being interviewed for reasons unrelated to Covid-19. (The company is trying to become a cancer powerhouse and just bought another drug company for an outrageous 108% over Friday’s closing price on the stock market.)

Anyway, the CEO said they are working on new forms of Remdesivir: the first is in the form of an intravenous drip that could be used outside of hospitals in places like old age homes, which will be available soon, and the second is as a nasal spray, which will take a little longer to bring to market. They also discussed the fact that yet another anti-inflammatory (can’t remember the name) has been found to be a helpful treatment in conjunction with their drug.

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Also a big worry for parts of the northern hemisphere is that it's heading towards winter. You really want to get covid under control before you get there. Less sunlight, colder temperatures with increased normal flu all add up to potentially making it a lot more deadly. Going into winter was the biggest reason I was happy with the full lockdown here in NZ. 

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1 hour ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Meanwhile the counterpart of European and Asian idiots are here in the USA, a group of Italian guys in that all too common safety flouting age group, gathering right at my building's door and smoking -- without masks, of course.  Entire family of Japanese tourists are coming in and out of the apartment building next store, staying in another idiot's Airbb. The boys are skateboarding up and down our sidewalks without paying any attention.

This virus is never going away, anywhere, ultimately because the idiots are everywhere and nobody stops them.

Except, maybe in Java.  Those refusing to wear masks are punished with a quite large fine and performing community service, which service is currently digging graves because nobody can keep up.

 

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14 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

Vector immunity is how apparently is called, i.e. those who are prone to transmit the disease become immune first to it, limiting further spread of the disease. We'll see if that is what is actually happening.

If I had to bet on any one cause, it's probably that. However, it does mean that as schools reopen, there ought to be a spike in cases.

3 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

That's just totally wrong. Italy, where only the North and Rome were actually hit, has very low and flat numbers, Spain who got hit even harder, specially Madrid, are hit just as hard now. Israel wasn't hit as hard, but has a bigger peak right now. Some places learned their lesson, due to heavy losses; others didn't (or to be more charitable to the locals, some leaders learned their lesson, others didn't).

So no, there is no herd immunity so far. And I wouldn't count on reaching it before we get vaccine or effective drugs / treatment.

What is totally wrong? I didn't make a statement, I just asked a question: why is the number of cases in NYC low and flat from July to the middle of September despite the place mostly reopening? Or are you disputing the measured values of cases in NYC?

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2 hours ago, Makk said:

Also a big worry for parts of the northern hemisphere is that it's heading towards winter. You really want to get covid under control before you get there. Less sunlight, colder temperatures with increased normal flu all add up to potentially making it a lot more deadly. Going into winter was the biggest reason I was happy with the full lockdown here in NZ. 

By the end of the year, it'll be blatantly obvious to anyone who hasn't been paying attention that most of Western leaders are just corrupt sociopaths. We know there are plenty of them in the world, but we've been told we were so good and so much better, and our democracy worked so well, that most people actually bought into that propagandist bogus - at least until now.

 

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

This virus is never going away, anywhere, ultimately because the idiots are everywhere and nobody stops them.

Except, maybe in Java.  Those refusing to wear masks are punished with a quite large fine and performing community service, which service is currently digging graves because nobody can keep up.

 

At some point, the sane and sensible part of society will have to take over, and fight for its survival. Our governments won't help us, heck, they basically left us to die. We'll have to replace them and police the society on our own, since they can't be arsed to do it. And considering how lethal and obnoxious the jerks are during this pandemic, this might mean stop playing nice with them.

 

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

What is totally wrong? I didn't make a statement, I just asked a question: why is the number of cases in NYC low and flat from July to the middle of September despite the place mostly reopening? Or are you disputing the measured values of cases in NYC?

What's clearly wrong is that there are parts of the world with herd immunity. When places which suffered just as bad have such different situations right now, it's quite clear it's not immunity which explains the difference, and therefore there's no immunity yet - otherwise Madrid would have ridiculously low cases.

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3 hours ago, Altherion said:

If I had to bet on any one cause, it's probably that. However, it does mean that as schools reopen, there ought to be a spike in cases.

What is totally wrong? I didn't make a statement, I just asked a question: why is the number of cases in NYC low and flat from July to the middle of September despite the place mostly reopening? Or are you disputing the measured values of cases in NYC?

Altherion -- NYC was anything but reopened in that time you put out there.  Anything BUT. Gyms not open. No movie theaters, nothing like that.  To enter a place you have to wear  a mask, despite the idiots screaming about it.  It is being inside with other people, or in dense contact even outside with other people -- but you don't want to believe it for some reason.

Last week the colleges and universities opened, and already detected cases and infections are rising.  150 student already in a quarantine dorm right where I live. The moment indoor dining opens again on the 30th -- watch out, here we go.  You keep lying about what NY did and does.  You don't live here.  You haven't a clue.  You don't even read what the situation has been.

Museums opened by reserve ahead of time -- only this last weekend.  But ,movie theaters are not.

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10 hours ago, Altherion said:

If I had to bet on any one cause, it's probably that. However, it does mean that as schools reopen, there ought to be a spike in cases.

Only if schools are really the place for superspreading events, which is not necessarily the case.

There was a story around about massive testing at some big Swedish university where several thousands of students were examined and only a handful tested positive. Maybe @Ran has more information.

On the other hand, SARS-CoV-2 is running amok through American Colleges and Universities. 

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I personally think that countries which more or less practice social distancing outside of familiy/friend groups by default like Sweden are not that useful for predicting how things will go in other places. Isreal had hundreds of cases in school incredible fast after opening schools for example.

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2 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

 

There was a story around about massive testing at some big Swedish university where several thousands of students were examined and only a handful tested positive. Maybe @Ran has more information.

Yes, Umeå University has the goal of testing 20,000 students and staff. The first batch of 8,000 had just 2 positives.

But as Luz says, Sweden is different in some ways. We don't have frats and sororities, there's none of that "Greek life" thing going on. This doesn't mean students don't party and drink, of course they do, but I'd say that there's a lot less mingling with the broader student body and definitely a lot less living together in close quarters.

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