COVID-19: Chapter 7 - Brags, Beats, and Variants

cases? consider booked if so (too morbid to bet on deaths)

Can do your 6 to my 1 if daily case record doubles before end June 21? (assumes daily testing rate per capita remains constant)

Is there high level of immunity amongst the YOLO set? I think thatā€™s a valid question. It is NOT herd. Herd implies we can all YOLO and those who have no immunity are protected. If all of those that have been careful started eating in restaurants im certain we would have a surge.

Iā€™m not sure how to explain the drop. There may be some seasonality, remember it didnā€™t really take off last year until nowish and it had no masks or social distancing in January 2020.

The interesting thing is that itā€™s happening most everywhere at the same time.

Several factors.

They havenā€™t yet developed their own and have been waiting in line for Pfizerā€™s.

There have been logistical issues in securing the required refrigeration and vial equipment (different standard here).

They have been more rigorous about testing the vaccine independently before unleashing it on the public and slower and more deliberate in developing home-grown ones.

And because compared with the U.S. and most of the world COVID spread here has, at least until recently, been relatively tame, there was less urgency to rush out a vaccine.

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Thereā€™s lots of possible explanations. Partial herd immunity isnā€™t one of them.

Highest 7dma cases on Worldometers. I have we wont surpass the previous peak in 2021 of 255,260 you have we will. My 500 to your 250. Confirm to book.

Every person removed from the contagion chain - whether through social isolation, n95 mask-wearing, vaccination, or required COVID - reduces the real-world and maximum R0 of disease spread. You can nitpick the term ā€œpartial herd immunityā€ if you want, but exponential growth is hampered by a reduction in the vectors for that growth.

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That isnā€™t a nitpick. Itā€™s a basic core concept. Mitigation measures that are temporary are not ā€˜partial herd immunityā€™.

This is the third time at least Iā€™ve talked about this in this thread.

I really donā€™t want to do this again. But of course it does at some point.

Letā€™s say 30% of the people already had covid, 10% are vaccinated, and 40% are still isolating. Thatā€™s 20% of the population left for the virus to plow through - maybe not enough population density to keep R over 1. That 30% who already had it could be the difference in R over 1 or under 1.

This is just a hypothetical - not saying it matches US #s.

A second spike could still come when people who are isolating get complacent. Or a new variant. Or immunity from the sickness wears off. If none of those things happen it may have a hard time.

By your logic if weā€™re 1% under herd immunity weā€™re still in danger of just as big of a spike as if weā€™re at zero immunity. Obviously thatā€™s not the case. Thereā€™s a point at which the amount of people previously infected matters. Otherwise instead of a smooth top, the case spike would just end and immediately go to zero.

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Herd immunity is a specific term. It means that a high level of community immunity protects those without immunity under normal behavior.

If we just open up tomorrow and YOLO then we get a spike. Guaranteed.

Come up with a new name. Not ā€œpartial herd immunityā€.

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And weā€™ve all established what weā€™re talking about here. Weā€™re just talking about the % of people who have recovered from covid and have immunity. Nothing more. Itā€™s functionally the same as the % of people who have been fully vaccinated - at least until immunity starts to wear off.

Right - if the 40% or w/e who are still isolating YOLO it tomorrow - we absolutely get a spike.

Exponential math works one way. That some point where transmission is meaningfully affected is much higher than what weā€™ve achieved, and itā€™s an extremely small window.

You are simply not correct.

Which is why heā€™s trying to qualify it with ā€œpartial herd immunity.ā€ Theres maybe a better term to use but the core idea makes sense.

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Can we just call it ā€œmore people immune leaves less people to get the ā€˜ronaā€?

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And youā€™re consistently overgeneralizing, which is why you keep getting challenged. Reducing disease vectors via short-term immunity doesnā€™t necessarily reduce the total number of infected in the long-term, but it absolutely and immediately starts to reduce the rate of transmission and subsequently flattens case curves.

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Sure but none of that changes what basic terms in medicine mean. Herd immunity means a specific thing. Partial herd immunity doesnā€™t exist in any meaningful way. Exponential math simply doesnā€™t allow it

Scientists can get pretty prickly over definitions. Given the butchering of the herd immunity concept, Iā€™m on board with tight definitions here.

One concept is independentā€” if enough folks are immune than non immune folks are protected due to lack of spread.

The other is highly dependent on behavior and readily falls apart if the non immune are exposed.

See thatā€™s the whole point, this effect is super small.

Herd immunity = 1-1/R0 has profound implications for this discussion.

The consequences of the math being exponential makes this effect extremely small until it suddenly stops being small. Itā€™s not a linear effect.

What is being talked about here is mostly temporary measures that lower R0. The lowering of the R0 isnā€™t coming from the virus being blocked by running into immune people.

I defer to your expertise here, but to what would you owe the striking decrease in cases if not for the effects of increasing immunity in the population? People making large scale changes in behavior? Some other non-understood factor(s)?

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I canā€™t answer that question yet. Data doesnā€™t exist to answer it. We can guess at a few things, but it isnā€™t herd immunity in any meaningful way unless the R0 is way off from what we thought it isā€¦ and we actually think the baseline R0 is up given the new variants.

Iā€™d say itā€™s a rickety stool of several factors with sub populations of people with risky behavior having enough immunity to limit superspreader events as long as they stay in the risky behavior group for interactions. (Masking, social distancing, less holiday gatherings, possibly weather/seasonality) being other supports for our stool. Any failure of any support and we are on our asses.

Itā€™s not like R has not gone to 0. Itā€™s probably 0.8-0.9 ish. Infection is still sustained at a large number. In herd immunity, infection that does get re-introduced burns out rapidly.

(Butthead to Beavis- he said stool heh-heh-heh)