(no subject)

[timelets]

Well, it looks like the Swedish experiment in COVID-19 herd immunity didn't work out. Most likely, the virus is not subject to short-term natural herd immunity, i.e. it's closer to seasonal flu than, let's say, pox.

Comments

[dmm]

True. No herd immunity anywhere, even at the hardest hit places.

***

Fatality rate seems to be much lower now than from the initial wave.

It does seem to be mutating to less dangerous strains...

[timelets]

From what I've heard from people who must know, the data on the relationship between new strains and reduced mortality is iffy. Much more likely, it's the good old learning-by-doing by the medical profession. Also, the general public is doing enough to reduce viral loads, e.g. masks, social distancing, avoiding 3C, etc.

[dmm]

I heard that too...

But I don't believe them; it's all of those factors, I am sure, but the mutations are supposed to push towards the direction of being more contagious and less severe (not mutating fast enough to invalidate immunity is one thing, and even that is a bit uncertain, but here much less of mutation is needed).

***

Of course, in part it is because I don't see people whom I would completely trust to be neutral and objective. Everyone seems to have an agenda of some sort, especially the need to align with a particular group of other experts...

[dmm]

(What I do see however is that it's not due to better testing; in Massachusetts the same levels of detected cases corresponds to the same level of virus detected in sewage - we have a project measuring that.

So I conclude from that that we do not detect a larger fraction of cases than before (I am not sure why).)

[dmm]

Oops, they've just revised the sewage level data, changed the methodology and recomputed everything:

http://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm

The November peak was as high as Spring peak on this graph before they did that.

***

So, if one believes this new curve, and not the old curve, then: the test coverage has improved, so there is less actual Covid cases now compared to Spring (at least, in Massachusetts, where the peaks of confirmed cases are equal now and back then), but its lethality is (therefore) not dropping as fast as I thought...

Boy, do I hate that one can't trust the data out there...

[timelets]

The death rate among human hosts is not high enough to force less severe mutations, especially, when the key vector seems to be superspreaders.

[dmm]

It's not about death, it's about illness being light enough that the carrier does not take precautions not to spread it further (of course, if the illness is severe, even the mobility is limited, so even less spread). This selects those mutations which make the illness milder among all mutations which are going on all the time, so milder varieties gradually saturate (assuming cross-immunity).

(Note that the actual number of cases is probably about 7 times larger than what is recorded, at least in states like MA, if we assume that the Spring observations are still valid; so 6 out of 7 infected people are not tested/diagnosed).

[timelets]

... gradually ... (assuming cross-immunity).

This winter season will show how the virus behaves through one yearly cycle. Before that, it would be premature to make epidemiological decisions based on assumptions about frequency and impact of mutations.

[dmm]

True...

***

I think we should take it as seriously as before for the time being.

Even if the Spring death rate of about 1% of "actual infections" (all infections, not just the recorded ones), dropped to what seemed to be about 0.3% in the Summer and to seemingly about 0.1% now, it's still way too much to just "let this thing be" (especially given long-term complications).

[timelets]

I'm even more concerned with hospitalizations because they are much more frequent and costly than deaths. BTW, one "learning-by-doing" difference in treatment between last spring and now is a dramatic reduction in in-hospital virus transmissions. Both medical staff and [non-COVID] patients learned how to wear PPE, masks, etc. Although it's not rocket science, it's very effective against the virus, especially in close quarters.

[norian]

это не был эксперимент по иммунитету вообще

это единственная страна, где здоровых людей не стали сажать под домашний арест и одевать им наморднеги просто потому что там более нормальное общество, не состоящее из трусливых идиотов до степени насыщения ими всех структур управления

дома престарелых, впрочем, они так же профакапили как и все

да, когда в июне в кацапстане сняли все ограничения и тут же случаи ковидла резко уменьшились, стало понятно что сезонное и обратно пропорционально нагнетанию стресса