It was a part of the plan for the demic. "Flatten the curve" is like trying to "catch the wind" with your hands, it was never going to happen. They had a bigger plan. Now the team with the plan is stuck and will look like complete fools and lairs and Karma will get them. Karma is real Hound.
Bad News Thread
- Thread starter kickingandscreaming
- Start date
Desert Hound
DA
That is exactly the point. They cannot find good evidence that stay at home orders made a difference.
Kind of like masks...there is little actual evidence to show they make any difference at all.
Absence of evidence is different from evidence of absence.
Oh I'm not saying mass outbreaks in the schools. That's not what appears to be happening in Italy. I've looked around trying to find seroprevalence levels in Lombardy even in the Italian press but they don't seem to have them. Have they stopped doing antibody studies? But in any case, like the measles outbreak in Disneyland, I foresee periodic outbreaks in schools from time to time of fast moving variants which will cause the talking and egg heads which have panicked before to panic again in the fall. It only takes a handful to create a problem and risks of disruption. In your math I think you are also assuming prior infection and/or vaccination confer full immunity, no? I don't think it works that way particularly given the limited efficiency of some vaccines. How much less I don't really know.
As to if you are worried of vaccine resistance, I'd be more worried if the rest of the world had it's s together. But between 2023-2024 is a long time for the rest of the world to allow variants and Joe Biden has so far shown zero inclination to control the southern border.
I look at seasonality like restrictions, both may influence the timing and size of peaks but at the end of the day don't do jack crap to determine the overall results. Due to the virulence and nature of this virus it is like water, it will always find the path of least resistance. Using another water analogy, restrictions and seasonality may temporarily kink the hose but the water is still building up and will be released. I just believe that the virus (not accounting for vaccinations) is going to infect so many people before it dies out. I guess that's a pseudo herd-immunity theory, although I don't believe the number it needs to infect before it effectively controlled is known.
IMO our initial goal to not overwhelm the hospitals was a correct approach, as opposed to following a tier system based on unreasonably low # of infections. The goal to not overwhelm hospitals had widespread buy-in, but unfortunately our health policy was then hijacked by politicians and special interests.
Bruddah IZ
DA
That's a pretty dramatic prediction. So the current vaccines were rendered useless even before the first poke??? Speaking of dramatic. I wanted to see the new death reports laid right on top of your initial chart. That way we can see some real drama.
"Using another water analogy, restrictions and seasonality may temporarily kink the hose but the water is still building up and will be released.
Nonsense.
I agree. At the end of the day in Europe it's increasingly looking like it will all end in the same place with some minor exceptions like Portugal and Ireland, and some places like the Czech Republic and Spain which might come out a little worse overall. I think it's more correct to say things like seasonality affect the timing of the waves...that's true of lockdowns and mobility as well because it's impossible to stay locked down for a year+. Again, it's ludicrous for the health officials to assume that healthy unmarried 20 year olds won't hook up for over a year if they aren't married or in the same households.
Bruddah IZ
DA
Not that COVID-19 mortality is driving the hysteria and thus the tyrannical policies.
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
Yes, I thought it was rather dramatic myself. That's why I wanted to follow it. His other quotes included the following. This was 5 weeks ago.
"I mean, imagine where we're at, Chuck, right now. You and I are sitting on this beach where it's 70 degrees, perfectly blue skies, gentle breeze. But I see that hurricane five, category five or higher, 450 miles offshore, ... That hurricane is coming" Osterholm said.
Bruddah IZ
DA
Deaths from weather are even lower than alleged COVID-19 deaths. I mean who knew COVID-19 could cure Cancer and heart disease.
Walking through the math on partial immunity doesn’t change it much.
You can break the population into groups to get an estimate of average immunity. K percent are under 12, L percent have both vaccine and natural immunity from a previous infection, M percent have Moderna, N percent have J&J, P percent have pfizer, Q are uninfected anti-vax, R are anti-vax but previously infected, and so on.
Three of those groups are in the 95% immunity range. (pfizer, moderna, and J&J+natural) Two are 70-90% (J&J only, and natural only) And only two are below 70%. ( under 12, and anti-vax but never infected)
Add them all up, and you’re still well over the 67% herd immunity threshold for R=3.
Of course, if you have something like Eeek that changes the spike protein, your effective immunity of all kinds drops. You end up well under the herd immunity threshold, and you are back to needing NPI of some kind. Nor can you let it bloom and trust in a lower ifr. The lower ifr is based on vaccinating the elderly. To the extent a new strain ignores the vaccine, it also ignores the lower ifr.
Agree on all except the last sentence. We don't really know that. Part of the thing with this virus is not just the virus itself but also the immune response it creates in our bodies from never having seen the thing before. That's why the theory is that Asia might have done better in numbers based on cross t-cell immunity from other coronaviruses. It's possible that the vaccines help against serious illness/death from new variants, but is only partially effective against new cases. We don't really know. If not, given that the world won't be vaccinated until 2023-2024, and given that leaves plenty of room for variants to develop, we are looking at a doomsday scenario where we are going to have to repeat this several times for years to come until vaccine adjustments finally catch up (worldwide including the deserts of Pakistan and the jungles of the Amazon) to variants. If that's the case we are all f'ed anyway so why worry about it. And if you really believe that's a possible scenario, you should be screaming at the D's to not only shutter hard the southern border, but to put fortress America restrictions in place on all air travel in and out of the United States now.
wrt vaccine resistant covid and ifr: you’re right that I was assuming that vaccine resistance would roughly track with resistance to natural immunity, and that ifr would follow both. This is true for some mechanisms but not others.
wrt border closures: Why would I worry about Mexico when we have millions of people right here who refuse to take even basic precautions?
If you want to pick an R/D wedge issue, pick something other than covid. I usually lean R, but the Rs on this issue are still behaving like spoiled 3 year olds. I see no reason for a grown man in a high density office building to refuse to wear a mask, even if it is just out of courtesy. (More than a few R congressmen and state reps fit that description.)
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
This COVID portion of the NYTimes is free. Lots of informaton there. Below is the link to "The OC"
Orange County, California Covid Case and Risk Tracker
See the latest charts and maps of coronavirus cases, deaths and hospitalizations in Orange County, California
www.nytimes.com
OC Cases (14-day average at 241 - hard to tell from the graph)
OC Deaths (also 14-day average)
Simple, because even if you are right about the high vaccination rates being enough to near eliminate it here in the United States, there is plenty of reserve outside the United States for new outbreaks to occur. And if people are flying to Disneyland and Hawaii, or taking cruises to the Carb or Med, or crossing over the southern border (whether citizens, migrants, or illegals) there's plenty of room for the new variants to come in and no amount of masking is going to prevent that.
p.s. it's not a even necessarily a wedge issue. It would require a harder shut than evenTrump put in place.
International travel, even with a catch and release policy for ICE, is not a significant factor for overall case numbers in the US. It really just provides seeds.
It would become a significant factor in some fantasyland where the bars are all closed, everyone takes the vaccine, people only gather outside, and we all mask up.
Last I checked, I don't live in such a place. I'll worry about Mexico the day after CPAC kicks out people for failing to wear their N95s properly.
It is a fantasyland because people are not going to live like that in perpetuity, particularly once the IFR is on the floor. What's worse you don't want to burn whatever little credibility is left on lockdowns and continue to have people grow even more exhausted of them in the event a variant emerges and you need to take those steps again in the future. Your argument was we need to be careful about creating new variants here given how close we'll get to herd immunity....there's plenty of room however overseas to create new variants and you admitted the foreign aspect might provide seeds here. And if the seeds get here that are really resistant to the vaccine, well then bar closures, outdoor gatherings and masks won't help control the thing either.
CDC released new guidance for vaccinated people today. Interestingly, they still maintain the vaccinated must maintain physical distancing around the "unvaccinated from multiple households" and masks. That would include children, since they can't be vaccinated and are multiple in schools. Given this, there's not let up for the 6 foot rule or masking requirements in schools this fall. Unless there is a substantial change in the guidance over the next couple months, some major school districts will still be hybrid only. That's going to run into some real problems once the parents are fully vaccinated and returning to offices/jobs.
Bruddah IZ
DA
I don't think we are doomed. As a species we would have been wiped out a long time ago. Isn't our DNA about 10,000 years old? That's a lot of coding at the disposal of our innate and adaptive immune system. I like our chances.