COVID-19: Chapter 5 - BACK TO SCHOOL

This sounds scary at first blush, but I think it’s more likely to be a selection issue (assuming I understand the point correctly). I suspect that individuals with very mild symptoms/infections are less likely to build up sufficient defenses, and are therefore more likely to get reinfected. So because reinfection hits the group who experienced mild symptoms in the first round, it will mechanically result in their reinfections being more severe.

1 Like

Yeah, that’s why I was still taking comfort in the fact that no one has died from a second infection.

For all we know that first infection made the second infection milder than it would have been if the first infection had not been experienced.

2 Likes

Lol, the dems now have an edge with people over 65 as well for the first time in forever. It’s only the very narrow like 45-65 age range where repubs still have an edge. I guess asking 65+ to die for the Dow is alienating those voters, who knew?

2 Likes

It would b the ultimate irony if Disney is transformed into a Covid ward this year.

1 Like

Over 3 million Americans have tested positive for this. That means some huge multiplier of that have had it and not tested positive. 10 million is probably conservative. When you have 10 million or more people with something like this outliers are going to happen all the time. I wouldn’t start freaking out about this until you see large numbers of people reporting being reinfected or some kind of actual scientific study published in a peer-reviewed paper determining its happening.

6 Likes

Good god, Florida. Truly unbelievable.

Here’s what the governor has to say:

https://www.fox13news.com/news/desantis-says-schools-ready-to-reopen-next-month-florida-education-association-disagrees

1 Like

Yeah it’s still early on. We just don’t know yet.

But instead of being cautious until we know, a bunch of people wanna YOLO, especially if they clear it once they think they are Superman.

1 Like

this gif, now and forever

c541088577ac6b222bf51758a27ac6b8

20 Likes

S.C. Numbers for Sunday 7/12:
1952 new cases (2nd highest on record$
22.3% positive (new record)
10 deaths (Sunday, grain of salt)
1472 hospitalizations (new record high after trending down for a few days, but not a huge leap from previous high)
188 on ventilators (up from 172 yesterday, new published stat)
We had 7000 cases through all of March and April. Had that in the past 3 days.

2 Likes

Is Florida going to report 20k on Tuesday or Wednesday this week?

I’m thinking a big batch of backlog tests was reported.

For the most part people who didn’t know anyone killed in 9/11 didn’t really care that much about the loss of life and people in Nebraska weren’t actually afraid of terrorists from the ME.

Grunching a bit.

That’s probably true (though the powerful symbolism of the twin towers in New York being attacked and collapsing would have incited many (which was OBL’s aim of course)).

Nothing similar exists with covid, the invisible killer that can be dismissed with a wave of the hand until it’s too late.

Of course, we don’t know how many people got it once asymptomatically and then again symptomatically, but that’s key too. We also know there were anecdotal cases like this in other countries. So far, this and the prior antibody serology study showing ~2 months of antibodies point to, perhaps, about 2 months of immunity.

So, for example, people who caught it in late-March in NYC and cleared it in early-mid April would have been immune until early-mid June, and it’s not like there are a ton of cases there. So essentially to find a lot of cases like this you’d need to be in an area that had a lot of cases in March/April AND has a lot now. The timeline would be:

Day 0: Infected
Day 5: Symptoms
Day 7: Test
Day 10: Positive result
Day ~20: Recovered
Day 22: Test
Day 25: Negative result
Day 80: Immunity wears off

From there, even if you caught it on day 81 again, we wouldn’t get the positive result until Day 90. So there’s a minimum 3 month lag. Realistically we need to see 4-5 months to start to get an idea of what sort of a sample size we’re dealing with, so we’re not there yet.

Further, you need people exposed then AND exposed now, so you’re really looking at the sample of frontline and medical workers in most places (because very few places have outbreaks in both timelines). Many of them have good PPE now, which will make it harder to find out.

So those are a lot of ways of saying it’s too soon to know, but if someone put a gun to my head and I had to guess right to survive, right now I think the best guess is that acquired immunity lasts approximately 2-3 months, and is not guaranteed in all patients.

Honestly the biggest thing I’m looking for is severity of cases the second time around. It won’t be 100% consistent but we really want to see decreasing severity that shows that the immune system learns how to fight it and turn it into more of a mild cold, even if we don’t acquire 100% immunity. That means that most people will survive and humanity will probably turn it into the common cold within a decade, although those of us who haven’t had it yet will still be in for a bad case at some point.

On the other hand, if it weakens you each time you get it and thus becomes progressively worse each time, we’re talking about a long-term mass casualty event that lasts decades unless/until we get either effective vaccines or really effective testing and treatment.

The one thing I would say to assuage some fear is that we don’t need long-term acquired immunity to effectively vaccinate. Assuming that the antibodies function on some sort of a half-life, if we lose the effective amount in about 2 months that means that vaccines need to generate twice the amount you get after a bout with COVID-19 to last 4 months, four times as much to last 6 months, etc.

It’s inconvenient in pre-pandemic terms, but getting a vaccine every 4-6 months obviously is not the end of the world given where we’re sitting right now. The question is how high of an antibody count can we safely and effectively generate with vaccines.

Two-month acquired immunity that can be replicated with a vaccine is not the end of the world. Zero acquired immunity is the end of a lot of us.

1 Like

Yeah. The buildings were more important than the people. If covid destroyed the Washington monument last week and the Lincoln Memorial this week people would be motivated. Also, it wasn’t just the towers. It was about keeping foreigners out. Oklahoma City didn’t trigger much fear generally or widespread dedication to eliminating violent domestic groups.

4 Likes

It’s also worth pointing out that in this scenario, chances are we’re all going to learn to self-administer vaccines, which shouldn’t be too big of a deal.

1 Like

There was a woman in California who had it bad enough to be hospitalized in pretty bad shape, then had it a second time and had to be hospitalized again. Not sure which was worse, but either way both were life threatening it seems. There was a question of whether she actually cleared it the first time or not, but I’m pretty sure she had tested negative.

I mean, is there any reason to think we have permanent immunity to this after catching it? Like as far as I know that’s not how any other coronaviruses or rhinoviruses work. Is it? My understanding is that the flu sort of works that way, which is why it always mutates and we have to keep changing vaccines.

But my understanding of all of the common cold viruses was that we get a few months of natural immunity, which mostly limits us to catching a given bug once per cold and flu season unless we’re really unlucky to catch it in like November and again in March.

Random aside, if we find a way to vaccinate against COVID-19 successfully, what is the likelihood that we could also then use that scientific approach to vaccinate against at least some forms of the common cold? That’d at least be a small silver lining to this whole debacle.

“Hey, sorry about that year of your life you’ll never get back, but on the bright side now that we’ve got these fancy new vaccines, the common cold is going to be reduced by like 50% going forward.”

That’d be kind of cool, until COVID-27 or whatever.

It’s a lot more than that when you consider airfare, hotel, rental car, etc.

The people who dismiss covid are likely people who treat 9/11 with out-sized reverence, so my instinct is to shit all over their emotions related to that day as some form of revenge.

Looking forward to triggering the cons with the (true) argument that COVID-19 is worse than 9/11.