The virus is spreading in the US, so it is likely Americans would be barred.
Brazil, Russia and other countries with high infection rates would also be left off a safe list, according to reports from Brussels.
The US may also be a problem diplomatically, as on 14 March President Donald Trump unilaterally closed US borders to countries in the EU’s Schengen border-free zone. The EU condemned the move at the time.
I hear there’s a good venue in Guyana
Question for the math people. What is the likely percentage of people needing to have immunity where we don’t have herd immunity yet, but the spread of a virus is likely to slow simply based on having less potential people to spread to?
So it’s the 21st century version of bugchasing.
Interesting to read these two back-to-back. The COVID study comes with a somewhat shocking blog from the editors:
The relevant Science editors discussed whether it was in the public interest to publish the findings. Like all Science papers, the article received support from members of our Board of Reviewing Editors and experts who provided peer review. Nevertheless, we were concerned that forces that want to downplay the severity of the pandemic as well as the need for social distancing would seize on the results to suggest that the situation was less urgent. We decided that the benefit of providing the model to the scientific community was worthwhile. The effects of many variabilities on infection spread, including age, genetics, and past exposures to other vaccines and viruses, are beginning to emerge for SARS-CoV-2. Together with behavior, these factors will affect the degree to which different populations are susceptible to infection, and understanding population heterogeneity may guide vaccination strategies.
The decision calculus that’s explicitly laid out here is whether or not the benefit “to the scientific community” of having a more accurate model of the disease justifies the detriment of giving more accurate information to the public, which runs the risk of the public taking that information and making choices that don’t conform with Mr. Science’s preferences. The mask fiasco taught no lessons.
The contrast is that the poll actually shows that the public has a pretty good understanding of the facts. Actually, the bias is in the other direction, with the correct answer winning by a 53-point margin when the right answer is “cases are increasing,” but only by 12 points when the right answer is “cases are decreasing.” (Also worth noting the misleading presentation of coloring “cases are mostly the same” as blue rather than gray, which makes it harder to notice the thin margin in states where cases are decreasing.)
Isn’t that the same thing?
? Seems like they made the right call here? The paper got published.
Is it? I thought herd immunity was the point where the virus is very unlikely to spread at all? What I’m asking is at what point does spread start to slow due to the level of immunity.
Got an email this morning telling me I need to attend a community walk with a bunch of local government people and community association people in about 45 minutes. Seems absolutely insane to me, but hopefully I’ll be able to stay away from the huge cluster of people that these things always are.
LOL Florida. 5,511 new cases.
Today will be the day we break 40,000 cases for the first time ever and don’t look back.
Like, I’m happy numbers are way down, but shit man, don’t go eat indoors any time soon. It’s not worth it.
It’d usually be at around half of the herd immunity number according to the usual simple logistic models. Exponential growth early that flattens to linear, then an inflection point half way, to asymptotic flattening at the end, so, 20-ish% of the population, minimum.
They arrived at the right answer via the wrong question. If they were considering suppressing scientific results about a matter of critical public importance because they thought keeping the public in the dark would lead to better policy/personal choices, that’s extremely bad.
Bit of a lower day for Arizona although basically the same as they had last week on Wednesday. Is the situation improving there or just a weird day of data?
Anecdotal from family that live in Phoenix (Facebook) that’s an anti-Trump Republican:
Basically hospitals are full and tests are scarce so a lot of people in Phoenix are being sent away with instructions but without tests since “there isn’t a treatment anyways”
Good-potentially-extremely-good news:
I would welcome input from the real science-talking guys, but this is a study done comparing the immune response between antibody-negative family members of COVID cases vs antibody-negative controls, finding that 6/8 of them had a (not-antibody-mediated) immune response to COVID proteins, indicating (I think) that they were exposed to the virus but didn’t develop antibodies. Not sure what that means about their future susceptibility to infection, but it does suggest that some people have some level of natural resistance to the virus, which could mean that more people have “gotten it” (at least a little) than reported from antibodies.