International COVID-19 Megathread

[palandio]

Heavy critique is mounting at the Ischgl ski resort in Tyrol and the ÖVP-Green government in Tyrol + Governor Platter:

On March 5 (!) already, Icelandic officials declared the Ischgl ski resort a „hotbed“ of infections.

More than 1.000 Scandinavian tourists infected themselves in hotels during vacation there and brought the virus with them into the North.

Ischgl did nothing.

Greed led to ski lifts being open until yesterday (!) afternoon, with huts full of guests sunbathing next to each other or in gondolas or lifts.

Hotels, sunbathing, gondolas and lifts...

More than anything else Ischgl (and some other places like St. Anton and Sölden) is known for being an international winter party destination, the "Alpen-Ballermann" (Alpine spring break) with its "Après-Ski". The local clubs, discotheques and bars are known for overcrowding and massive alcohol consumption. At least one club employee has been tested positive for COVID-19.

Ideal conditions for accelerating an international pandemia.

But the Tyrolean government said that it was "highly unlikely" that a whole group of Icelanders got infected in Ischgl and said that it was more likely that one of them got it somewhere and then transmitted it on the flight...

[palandio]

[...]
not even thinking of a vaccine here
[...]

Actually several firms from the US, China, Germany and maybe other countries are developing vaccines and are close to entering the clinical trial phase (testing the vaccines on humans), but yes, results will probably be there only next year.

[palandio]

Nice chart.

Could also be a ranking of how good a country’s healthcare system is.

https://twitter.com/justinwolfers/status/1241102311071645699

I don't think so. The differing death rates at the moment is something that really stands out. On the one hand, you have the likes of the Nordic countries, the Germanic countries or Switzerland where the death rate is hovering around 1% or below. And on the other, you have (forgetting Italy) the Spain, France, UK, the Netherlands a bit; where it is more lie 3% or higher. I mean for sure, the countries in the first groups are generally richer than the second group, but I don't think "healthcare systems" even comes close to making a difference of a factor of 4-5 in terms of death rates. The French system in particular, has always had a very good reputation. So there is clearly more going on here.

And for case numbers, there are obviously other factors at work. Ticino is part of Lombardy, geographically speaking - and hugely economically dependent on it. So Switzerland was always going to walloped from the moment it became obvious what was going on in Italy.

The low mortality rate in Germany is still a mistery. The factors in play could be:

1. It's possible the local virus outbreak is still in the first stages in Germany, while the outbreak in Italy was detected in an advanced stage. In case that's true, mortality rate is likely to increase in Germany, but it seems unlikely it reaches the Southern European levels

2. The average age of people infected in Germany is lower (46) than in Italy (fairly above 60). Mortality rate increases with age

3. Massive test availability in Germany compared to other countries. More tests imply lower mortality rate

Still, these factors only explain partially the German case

On a side note: Lombardy and Madrid are the richest regions in Italy and Spain, respectively

Your three points are very valid, though. I think that they explain a lot of the huge differences in statistic mortality. Let me add:

ad 1. and 2.: Apart from the cluster around Heinsberg it seems that in many places the first Covid-19 cases were people that came home from skiing holidays. (Or skiing and clubbing holidays.) As we know this is not the typical demographic that would die from Covid-19. It becomes ugly when the virus gets into hospitals and nursing homes. In Bavaria several (nine?) old people in one nursing home have died within a few days. Maybe higher family cohesion in Southern Europe is an accelerating factor, too.

ad 3.: Yes, at least at the beginning of the outbreak Germany could afford to test contact persons even if they showed only mild symptoms or no symptoms. Additionally there might be underreporting of Covid-19 deaths because apparently not every dead person is tested. On the other hand depending on definitions there might be overreporting of Covid-19 deaths in Italy because just that a dead person was infected with Covid-19 does not necessarily mean that this was the cause of death.

4. So far in Germany there seems to have been not much (local) overburdening of the healthcare system (ICU, respiration, testing).

[palandio]

Germany has hit 50,000 cases now. Still remarkable we have just over 300 deaths. Italy is a tragedy beyond any words.

There are rumors in Germany on underestimated covid deaths?

The local transmission in Germany start before that Italy, actually in Italy covid came from German but italian first death is of the 22nd February and the first german is of the 9th March 

Discussions why there are such differences between different countries, of course. It is sometimes assumed that Germany does not test all suspected deaths, but the official claim is that there are no methodological differences between Germany and other countries. By the way, the letality is now rising, which was to be expected because deaths are expected to lag behind diagnoses by several days.

You're writing these things like they were proven facts.

It is true that there was a local outbreak in Germany with the first positive case on 28 January and a total of 15 proven cases in one firm and among the employees' families. The virus had probably been transmitted by an employee from China. It is assumed that this outbreak has been contained, but that obviously cannot be proven.

Genome sequencing showed that the Lodi outbreak was genetically closely related to the German outbreak. Additionally the German firm has an office in Lombardy, but no employees' movement was documented that would allow the virus to be traced back to Germany.

It seems plausible that the virus came to Italy on several ways and that it spread undetected for a while. The first two cases in the German state of Baden-Württemberg had been in Milan before, at a time when the virus was officially still confined to Lodi province.

[palandio]

I found a very interesting website that shows a phylogenetic tree of all Covid-19 samples sequenced so far:

https://nextstrain.org/ncov/2020-03-27

Quite complicated to read, and the geographic assignment often comes with a lack of certainty, but it still can shed some light on many questions like:
- Did Covid-19 arrive in Italy in 2019 already? (No, very unlikely.)
- Did it come from a single source? (No, multiple.)
- Did it come to Italy via the early German outbreak? (No, probably not.)

[palandio]

I found a very interesting website that shows a phylogenetic tree of all Covid-19 samples sequenced so far:

https://nextstrain.org/ncov/2020-03-27

Quite complicated to read, and the geographic assignment often comes with a lack of certainty, but it still can shed some light on many questions like:
- Did Covid-19 arrive in Italy in 2019 already? (No, very unlikely.)
- Did it come from a single source? (No, multiple.)
- Did it come to Italy via the early German outbreak? (No, probably not.)

that website give no info on yours points,
the website show the appear of Codogno cluster from nowhere, show a early cluster in Friuli and i never heard of this

You are right that the info on the website does not prove my second and third point. In fact I took the conclusion from an article on Neue Zürcher Zeitung and after re-evaluating them using the data on the website I am less confident about my statements.

The phylogenetic tree seems more useful to me than the maps. A good idea is to set "Filter by Country" to Italy and Germany. Then you can click on the samples and the clades (branches) they are assigned to. What is shown is that the Italian samples (Italy/CDG1/2020 etc.) are from several branches that all go back to about the time of the early German outbreak. The first German sample (Germany/BavPat1/2020) is closely related to this branching event, but it is not clear if it is really the ancestor. By the way I would not give a lot about the country confidences because they are heavily skewed by the number of samples. No way the virus came from Rejkjavik.

The Friuli sample is only from 01 March, so not that early.

[palandio]

The Friuli sample is only from 01 March, so not that early.

Now i see it from 16th February, just some hours ago from 26th February, at this point i suspect a bug

Actually there seem to be four samples from Friuli, all from 01 March.
Their labels are Italy/FVG-ICGEB_S1/2020, Italy/FVG-ICGEB_S5/2020, Italy/FVG-ICGEB_S8/2020, Italy/FVG-ICGEB_S9/2020.

What is the label of the Friuli sample that you can see? Or is 16th/26th February just the date when the Friuli bubble appears on the map? In that case the date is probably only infered probabilistically from the known data and the map can change dynamically after new samples are added.

I'm sticking with the small bubbles on the phylogenetic trees. This is the safe information. The map on the other hand seems to be built on a lot of assumptions, so I would treat it very cautiously.

[palandio]

[...]
was just the date

now the bubble is show at 19th february

Yes, that it because the map is the result of a statistical algorithm that is calculated from scratch every time a new sample is added. The outcome can change every time.

I keep with the tree and particularly the small bubbles in the tree. This is the reliable data.

[palandio]

For all the SWEDEN APOCALYPSE takes circulating in the world media for the past two weeks, deaths per day has actually fallen sharply from last week:

I remain cautious, but if the trend in Sweden continues it should make a lot of people think.

[palandio]

Hmm ...

A brand-new release by STATISTICS Austria 🇦🇹 today shows that there could be significantly more deaths due to Coronavirus than reported by the government.

http://www.statistik.at/web_en/press/122945.html

Here’s why:

The government (health ministry/interior ministry) track daily deaths of people infected with Coronavirus in hospitals and nursing homes ONLY.

Statistics Austria on the other hand has basically live data on deaths from every Austrian town on a weekly basis - using the central population register.

Weekly deaths showed no statistical anomalies until March 16 (when infections spiked up and the curfew was introduced).

In the 3 weeks after March 16 (to April 5th), weekly deaths in all Austrian towns increased by more than 10% compared with the same weekly average during 2016-2019 !

Between March 16 and April 5th, the government announced around 200 COVID deaths in hospitals and nursing homes, but the data from Statistics Austria had deaths in all of Austria increasing by 580 compared to the same period in 2016-2019 ...

This could mean 2 things:

* an underreporting of COVID deaths happening at home, rather than at the hospital/nursing home

* a statistical anomaly: nobody knows the cause of death of those surplus deaths, so there could simply be more deaths because of other illnesses at home

It could mean a lot of other things as well:
* Because of COVID-19, people with other issues avoid calling the doctor/hospital, or the hospitals don't take them even if it is medically necessary
* Stress, isolation, boredom, etc. resulting in medical problems
* ...

[palandio]

There was a COVID-19 case in France in December after retesting samples.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-france/after-retesting-samples-french-hospital-discovers-covid-19-case-from-december-idUSKBN22G20L

Does this change the source of the Italian case zero?

Most likely not.

There might have been earlier cases in Italy, but genetic analysis suggests that the Italian case zero that led to the massive outbreak particularly in Northern Italy dates from ca. January 18. Interestingly the Chinese employee that led to the early German (likely contained) outbreak came from Shanghai to Munich on January 19 and the respective branch splits with the Italian branch on ca. January 15. (The dates can only be infered up to plus minus some days.)

[palandio]

Interesting. While on a local scale in some Italian and French regions overmortality has been shockingly high, the outbreak was suppressed in an early stage in most parts of these countries. The hardest hit country so far seems to be Belgium, although the UK could soon overtake Belgium.

[palandio]

Meh, Germany's reproduction rate yesterday rose to 1.1. Hopefully this isn't a trend, because it means the numbers start rising again.

Personally I would wait for the next days and see.

1.1 is only an estimate for the real reproduction rate. This estimate is based on daily new infection numbers which for the most recent days are using a now-cast that extrapolates past trends. Additionally a 4-day averaging method is used although reporting oscillates in a 7-day pattern.

That being said it is true that for the past few days the relative decline of new reported cases compared to the week before has become less. (But there is still a decline in new cases!) If this accurately reflects the ground truth, then it would be a sign of the reproduction rate going up.

This might be the effect of certain social inhomogeneities. In most parts of the society the (potential) infection rate has been very low due to social distancing and hence the spread of the virus has been drastically reduced. But in some parts of society it is more difficult to keep down the (potential) infection rate and now the virus is spreading particularly in these places: Elder care facilities and residential camps for foreign meat factory workers. In fact at least three local hotspots are at meat factories where in each case several hundred workers are infected. Regarding the elder care facilities for a long time mass testing was not paid for by the public health insurance and instead only a handful of counties paid for it by themselves. Some days ago that has thankfully changed and now more and more elder care facilities are systematically tested.

Edit: Not only elder care facilities and meat factories, of course. I forgot to add asylum seekers' mass accomodation. It should go without saying that I don't blame elders, asylum seekers and meat factory workers for the conditions they have to live in.

[palandio]

According to the Spanish ministry of health based on a study of 36,000 households with 90,000 persons, the real number of people in Spain that has at some point been infected by Covid-19, is estimated to be ca. 2.3 million, i.e. ca. 5% of the population and ca. ten times the number of positively tested persons.

[palandio]

According to the Spanish ministry of health based on a study of 36,000 households with 90,000 persons, the real number of people in Spain that has at some point been infected by Covid-19, is estimated to be ca. 2.3 million, i.e. ca. 5% of the population and ca. ten times the number of positively tested persons.

This is a prevalence three or four times lower than expected and there is a great difference between regions. While Madrid, the Castillas or Catalonia might have a prevalence around 15%, places like Asturias, Murcia or the Canary Islands (my region) hardly reach 2%. This is bad news if you think about "herd immunity" and reveals a vast majority of the population is vulnerable, which means deescalation is surrounded by many threats. Summer is around the corner and we are anxious to go outside, either to the beach or to have a beer with our friends...

 At least two members of my family (the ones who have been tested so far) were infected sometime and have developed immunity

Obviously the prevalence is stronger among individuals who are more susceptible to infection due to biological reasons and/or a high number of (possibly inevitable) contacts. Hence in the sense of "herd immunity" 15% is clearly better than nothing, because it's not a random 15%, but a 15% that can be expected to be on average more susceptible and more exposed than the remaining 85%.

That being said in most areas not only in Spain the numbers are far lower (<5%), which seems logical because the strategy was that as few as possible would get infected. On the other hand sadly some of the most vulnerable sectors (nursing homes, hospitals) were difficult to protect, so that infection rates there are disproportionately high.

[palandio]

because it's not a random 15%, but a 15% that can be expected to be on average more susceptible and more exposed than the remaining 85%.

I am not sure this is true. The people getting infected can be healthy and are travelling on planes, trains, cars and cruise ships. They could not be more random.

By susceptible I didn't mean not healthy. We don't know yet, but it seems plausible that some individuals are less likely to be infected even when exposed, i.e. children (maybe) or people who have antibodies against other corona viruses (big maybe) or a more flexible immune system (maybe).

Travelling on planes, trains and cruise ships means potential exposure. The more you travel, the more exposed you are. That's not completely random. Of course it is possible to get infected on the train if you take the train only once, but it is more likely to get infected if you take the train every day.

Think about it like this: You have to toss a dice a fixed number of times and if you get at least one six, you have to pay 5$. Of course you can get a six at the first toss and it is possible to get no six in six tosses. But if you had to choose in advance, you would rather toss the dice only one time.

The only predictable part you are referencing are the staff at grocery stores, hospitals etc.

It really depends on the path to infection. If staff are spreading it to people, then you are correct.

I would not even be sure about grocery shop staff because studies suggest that infection risk depends on the virus load and if the contact with an infected person is short then the virus load is usually low.

If surface infection is a major cause, then it does not matter. I suspect, it can spread in indoor environments with the aid of air conditioning.

We just have to wait and see what the research says in 2 years time.

Yes, we don't know yet what exactly are the risk factors for infection. It will be interesting to see the results of research.

[palandio]

[...]

I think I have now heard the phrase "The Virus does not care about national borders" more often than I can remember - it always seemed a little bit disingenuous tbh. Because of course it does - that is how this virus is pretty much exclusively transmitted from one country or region to another - by people travelling. It can't be the only measure, of course, but if you look at how during the first phase of the pandemic many Asian Countries prevented major outbreaks originating from China, when Europe could not, or if you look at the Countries generally that have been held up as better examples of fighting the pandemic: Australia, NZ, Denmark, Israel, Much of Eastern Europe - it tended to be those that, among other things, closed borders and quarantined arrivals fastest.

[...]

To avoid confusion it might be helpful to distinguish between several different effects of travelling on the pandemic. I will speak mostly about the third point:

1. The tracing of infections can become more difficult.

2. Travelling itself is usually tied to social activity and contact and restricting it is also a form of enforcing social distancing.

3. Most importantly, like you said, the transmission of the pandemic into a country. But you rightfully used the term "first phase". It is most important to keep the virus out of the country at a very early stage. Building fences between similarly affected countries at a later stage is much less effective. (Point 1. and 2. still hold, of course.)

[palandio]

[...]

It seems that, unlike in places like China/South Korea/NZ, the Approach is that it is essentially fine to allow the Virus to continue to slowly spread in the population as long as health care capacity is nowhere near threatened, instead of trying to eliminate it. Which is fine and realistic as we are a large central European country with a very resilient heath care system, but it will probably also prevent a complete return to normality until a vaccine is found.

I'm not sure if you can differentiate between the approaches so easily. Or if on the contrary you must differentiate between more approaches.
The approach that you ascribe to China/SK/NZ is essentially complete suppression of the epidemic. (Although I would not be that sure about SK.)
Allowing the virus to slowly spread as long as health care capacity is not threatened would be mitigation. I don't think that this is Germany's strategy.
The idea rather seems to be some kind of almost-suppression: The health authorities try to suppress the epidemic as much as possible by testing, tracing and isolating. Community based restrictions are gradually lifted because of their heavy side effects.

In my opinion permanent complete suppression is a difficult goal for a heavily connected country like Germany. Knowing that there are always undetected cases and that the virus is still spreading in other parts of the world, it might be the best to stop pretending we can get rid of the virus permanently and instead try to introduce as much normality as possible.

[palandio]

Two rather interesting articles on the effects of social distancing and lockdowns:

There is an increasing number of similar articles which try to statistically infer about the effects of measures. While I appreciate their effort in this complicated subject and they often bring up some valid points, none of them has really convinced me.

Particularly the "How many deaths have been avoided?" relies on naive SIR or SEIR models.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2405-7_reference.pdf - on Europe

It speaks for the intellectual honesty of the authors that they make the following disclaimer:

"Our model relies on fixed estimates of some epidemiological parameters such as the infection fatality rate, does not include importation or subnational variation and assumes that changes in the reproduction number are an immediate response to interventions rather than gradual changes in behavior."

Sadly the whole approach would not have worked without the following scientific hack:

"For all countries, interventions are assumed to have the same relative impact on R_t and are informed by mortality data across all countries. The only exception is that we use partial pooling to introduce country-specific effects of the effectiveness of the last intervention in a country, which is usually the lockdown."

The exception being Sweden where the last intervention was "public events banned" and where there was no intervention categorized as "lockdown". (The definition of "lockdown" is of course unclear from the beginning.)

Again it speaks for the intellectual honesty of the authors that they didn't exclude Sweden from their study altogether. But to me it renders moot the whole point of the article.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2404-8_reference.pdf - on a more international scale

Differently from the first article the authors don't even bother with pooling which means that interventions that do have a very significant effect in some countries, don't have an effect in other countries at all, which is accepted without further discussion.

Again the article acknoledges a similar problem like the first article:

"It is also possible that changing public knowledge during the period of our study affects our results. If individuals alter behavior in response to new information unrelated to anti-contagion policies, such as seeking out online resources, this could alter the growth rate of infections and thus affect our estimates. If increasing availability of information reduces infection growth rates, it would cause us to overstate the effectiveness of anti-contagion policies. We note, however, that if public knowledge is increasing in response to policy actions, such as through news reports, then it should be considered a pathway through which policies alter infection growth, not a form of bias. Investigating these potential effects is beyond the scope of this analysis, but it is an important topic for future investigations."

Ok, yes, but wasn't that the whole point? What is explained by "hard" measures and what is by public knowledge or increased awareness?

[palandio]

And there we have the next "mini-spike" in a meat factory in Rheda-Wiedenbrück (county of Gütersloh, Eastern Westfalia):

400 positive tests out of 500, with another 500 still missing.

There are further localised outbreaks in Berlin, Göttingen and other cities, often linked to "extended families" and overcrowded apartments where local authorities have difficulties because not all inhabitants are registered at their respective addresses.

[palandio]

Laschet is now blaming the "Romanians and Bulgarians who brought the Virus with them" for the outbreak and says it has nothing to do with him reopening faster than other states.

What an Idiot. His approval is already sliding badly, and he is showing that his political Instincts are closer to Trump or Boris than Merkel. Her supporters are (by and large) supporting him in the CDU leadership race because of Ideological reasons, but personality wise Söder (and most of the other state premiers) have shown themselves in this Crisis to have much more of her humility and statesmanship that Laschet desperately lacks.

I used to like him, but he has acted like fool in recent weeks. He will never be chancellor if he continues with this kind of stuff. Apparently he never heard of Igschl, from where tourists originally brought in the virus. That's also a factor in the low death rate, since most of these tourists were not much older than late 40s.

Also, if the Romanians and Bulgarians weren't working in meat factories with poor hygiene standards for a few nickels an hour, there might not be another outbreak as reported today (600+ people infected and over 7,000 under mandatory quarantine).

His first sentence about Romanians and Bulgarians bringing the virus with them is of course idiotic.

The rest of his statement seems to be spot on. He is exactly saying that the main problem is the working and living conditions of the workers.

Local outbreaks are occurring everywhere (although at a decreasing rate), even in the Holy Land of Saint Söder. The outbreaks are mostly in environments where a lockdown doesn't make any difference. Söder is for the most part an opportunistic populist who instrumentalizes people's fears and postures as Mr Lockdown despite the Bavarian situation not being better than the rest of Germany. (I know that many people that are now applauding him are not his fans, which makes the whole thing even more regretable.)

[palandio]

A routine COVID-19 test at the Wiesenhof meat factory in Wildeshausen (county of Oldenburg, Lower Saxony) resuted in 23 positives out of 50 tested. Now all 1100 employees will be tested.

[palandio]

Most of the new hotspots all over Western Europe bear a certain resemblance:

In Mondragone (near Naples) a housing complex was put under quarantine after ca. 50 farmhands from Bulgaria had been tested positive. The housing complex is home to Italian squatters and illegal immigrants as well. The farmhands have already turned out to protest and rising tension with their squatter housemates and with the surrounding population has lead to additional police being sent to Mondragone.

The outbreak also sheds light on the "caporalato" version of subcontracting where agents ("caporali") who are responsible for recruiting, housing and transport sell their fellow countrymen as workforce. Well, quite similar to the recruiting model at the Tönnies meat factory in Germany.

[palandio]

Did Sweden get it right?

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-01/coronavirus-update-covid19-australia-european-union-nick-kyrgios/12408186

The video is doom and gloom, but i actually prefer Sweden's response. The main issue they have is that their neighbours chose a different strategy and have now put them in a bubble.

There is a lot to like about their response. It offered a lot of information for researching the virus. They will come out of it sooner. Sweden did not overwhelm their hospitals. They did not disrupt their life as much.

Australia looks better but we have not had it yet, so for that reason i would prefer the Sweden model.

Sweden: 68,451 infections, 5,333 deaths

Denmark: 12,768 infections, 605 deaths

Norway: 8,887 infections, 250 deaths

Finland: 7,214 infections, 328 deaths

But these numbers are missing the point. Yes, it probably was a prudent decision to go for suppression of the virus in the early phase because "Better safe than sorry" and in the meantime we know a lot more about the virus. The question is which one of the following is a sustainable long-term strategy:

1. Develop and distribute one or more vaccines soon
2. Try worldwide suppression of the virus (without vaccines)
3. Keep measures and insecurity in place for an indefinite time, because "If we give up now, the second wave will hit us hard and everything we did so far will have been in vain"
4. Let the virus run through with mitigation
5. Maybe you can come up with other good strategies

I think that the governments of most Western European countries (e.g. Germany) have sufficient information to be optimistic about option 1, because that is the best explanation of their actions.

Option 2 might have been an option in early January. After all SARS1 and MERS were suppressed, too. The difference being of course that COVID-19 is more difficult to detect and is already prevalent all over the globe. Hence this option has become unrealistic for the time being.

Option 3 is quite popular, but the long-term costs (not just economically) would probably exceed any damage that the virus could possibly do.

Which leaves option 4. While I still hope that the virus can be suppressed (possibly with vaccines) soon, we might sooner or later have to accept that most of us will get it. This is an option that is still open and the experiences of other countries will show us what to expect at worst and what to learn for better mitigation.

In my opinion it is inadequate to compare different approaches on COVID-19 just by one number ("number of people killed by COVID-19 until now") when one approach is designed to keep this number down, while the other approach is designed to optimize a wider set of variables. And while it makes sense to compare Sweden to its Scandinavian neighbors, this comparison makes Sweden look particularly bad. Isn't it interesting that with a comparably liberal approach they didn't do worse than the UK, Belgium, Spain, Italy or the Netherlands? How will our numbers look if at some point we have to decide for the Swedish way? What will it cost (not only economically) to avoid the Swedish way permanently?

[palandio]

Those five countries arguably failed to protect their most vulnerable in care homes and hospitals; this resulted in a lot more deaths.

Care homes and hospitals are of course naturally prone to the spread of infectious diseases, both because of the way they function and the vulnerable people in them. COVID-19 pitilessly revealed inadequate protection measures. The question is how difficult the protection is in an environment were the virus is widespread. Is it possible (with enough preparation) to effectively shield care homes and hospitals from a dangerous environment?

However, on the flip side, you can't die twice and with those people already dead or (possibly) immune, they might be less vulnerable to a second wave.

Yes, still a weak consolation. That's not the way you would want to protect yourself from a second wave if you could choose.