I would feel a little better if anyone acknowledged the actual point that I and the Atlantic article are trying to make. Traditional herd immunity is an immutable property that assumes everyone is just going about their business. Well clearly that’s not happening. A ton of people are working from home full time and being very careful right now.
All ever I said that started all this - is that if a big chunk of people are still isolating and working from home (and their kids don’t get forced back to school) - it may stand to reason that the virus could have a tougher time plowing into that protected area. Therefore it might not be “sky’s the limit” for a 3rd wave.
“COVID-19 is the first disease in modern times where the whole world has changed their behavior and disease spread has been reduced,” Britton noted. That made old models and numbers obsolete. Social distancing and other reactive measures changed the R0 value, and they will continue to do so. The virus has certain immutable properties, but there is nothing immutable about how many infections it causes in the real world.
What we seem to need is a better understanding of herd immunity in this novel context. The threshold can change based on how a virus spreads. The spread keeps on changing based on how we react to it at every stage, and the effects compound. Small preventive measures have big downstream effects. In other words, the herd in question determines its immunity. There is no mystery in how to drop the R0 to below 1 and reach an effective herd immunity: masks, social distancing, hand-washing, and everything everyone is tired of hearing about. It is already being done.
Maybe herd immunity is the wrong term here and that keeps throwing people off. Something like “current behavior-modified spread factor”.
Maybe the magic number where the virus has a tougher time blowing up isn’t 20%, maybe it’s 40%. Or maybe we’re nowhere near 20% in most places. Or maybe people get complacent in just the right amount to keep it burning. Or maybe schools. Or maybe people start catching it again.
What I’m not saying is we magically hit herd immunity tomorrow. I’m just saying maybe blowups get harder after a certain point. So if you’re just going to reply “herd immunity isn’t happening” again, then don’t bother.
The problem with that suzzer is that people won’t lock themselves up indefinitely. Once the people who are isolating come out, then your ‘herd immunity’ is immediately gone. That’s why it’s not herd immunity.
Chiefsplanet has decided that hydroxychloroquinine really is the wonder drug to defeat this fake China Virus hoax but the CDC is suppressing the science because reasons.
HCQ is so annoying it’s unbelievable. It was given to everyone who could tolerate it. Lots of beautiful RCT showed it didn’t work. Of course now these people are saying that you need to use it earlier (almost never how medical interventions work, usually the less sick are far less likely to benefit) and with magical vitamins!
It’s been 2 months since hospitals in nyc were finally decompressed. Herd immunity like you’re describing requires permanent changes from huge parts of society. That’s not reasonable to expect at all.
But I think that we’ve seen behavior is very dynamic: people adjust behavior based on actual outcomes. Your 20% shadow herd immunity will quite possibly mean that less social distancing, mask wearing, etc will be needed to slow the spread–I agree this could be a significant beneficial factor. But if cases start declining meaningfully, then I think it’s likely people simply resume dangerous activities, as they’ve shown an inclination to do thus far. Whether we’ve learned our lesson and won’t fall off the wagon remains to be seen. (Narrator: …)
Especially adding in fatigue, weather, economy, and the fact that cases are far more geographically distributed than they were in the First Part, and I think there’s a lot of reason to remain concerned.
Yeah I can see all that happening. Especially with schools.
I do think there could be some potential firebreak in places where a ton of people like me are working from home indefinitely and will take this thing seriously until it’s gone.
Mostly I’m just throwing out ideas like I always do. But throw out an idea that leads to a potentially positive outcome around here - and you better be prepared to go to battle and not get annoyed by dismissive assertions that you’re wrong.
I went back to ask the people who posted the press conference yesterday what their thought were on demon sex and alien lizard DNA. Both posts are gone so it looks like Facebook actually removed them. That’s great, but I wish they would leave the post up and just blur out the video and make it unwatchable. These idiots deserve to have it on their page to show how dumb they are. Now they’ll just act like they never posted it and go on being 100% uncritical of whatever the next insane thing they share says.
