COVID-19 Megathread 5: The Trumps catch COVID-19

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

If we're going to head for herd immunity anyway (or close to it), I am truly starting to think a strategy of "intentionally infect all the young and healthy people" would have been what was best for two reasons.  First (and most importantly), we would be choosing who gets it.  Based on the CDC's estimate of a 0.26% fatality rate and assuming 50% as the herd immunity threshold, a non-targeted herd immunity strategy would result in about 430K deaths.  However, their estimate is a 0.025% fatality rate in those under 50.  Hitting herd immunity with engineering the infections to be in the young would have only resulted in about 41K deaths.  Now, it probably would have been a little more because we wouldn't have been perfect in stopping older individuals from getting sick.

The second reason is that we could have gotten this whole crisis over with in a matter of a few weeks to maybe a month.  Things truly would have likely been 100% normal by Easter Sunday if we had gone down that path.

This is more or less what I’ve been saying for at least two months.
 
I don’t think we should be infecting anyone without their consent.  But we should be providing immunity certificates to those who have recovered, and offering an option for young and healthy people to get a certificate through a low-dose, medically-monitored, quarantined, deliberate infection.  And we should only be fully “opening up” the country for those who already have immunity certificates until we have reached herd immunity levels.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

If we're going to head for herd immunity anyway (or close to it), I am truly starting to think a strategy of "intentionally infect all the young and healthy people" would have been what was best for two reasons.  First (and most importantly), we would be choosing who gets it.  Based on the CDC's estimate of a 0.26% fatality rate and assuming 50% as the herd immunity threshold, a non-targeted herd immunity strategy would result in about 430K deaths.  However, their estimate is a 0.025% fatality rate in those under 50.  Hitting herd immunity with engineering the infections to be in the young would have only resulted in about 41K deaths.  Now, it probably would have been a little more because we wouldn't have been perfect in stopping older individuals from getting sick.

The second reason is that we could have gotten this whole crisis over with in a matter of a few weeks to maybe a month.  Things truly would have likely been 100% normal by Easter Sunday if we had gone down that path.

This is more or less what I’ve been saying for at least two months.
 
I don’t think we should be infecting anyone without their consent.  But we should be providing immunity certificates to those who have recovered, and offering an option for young and healthy people to get a certificate through a low-dose, medically-monitored, quarantined, deliberate infection.  And we should only be fully “opening up” the country for those who already have immunity certificates until we have reached herd immunity levels.

I have thought the same thing. However, the critical assumption there is that immunity is long-lasting, which may well be the case, but is not actually known. A recent study of people in Wuhan found that antibodies may not appear to be long-lasting. Antibodies are not exactly the same thing as immunity, but the degree of immunity over time remains unknown and given that patients no longer have antibodies, one wonders also even if they retain some immunity, how strong/reliable is that and exactly for how long?

If it turns out that immunity only lasts for, say half a year and decreases in strength over time, then deliberate mass infection (or any sort of herd immunity strategy more broadly) would turn out to be a very bad idea.

You May Have Antibodies After Coronavirus Infection. But Not for Long.

It’s a question that has haunted scientists since the pandemic began: Does everyone infected with the virus produce antibodies — and if so, how long do they last?

Not very long, suggests a new study published Thursday in Nature Medicine. Antibodies — protective proteins made in response to an infection — may last only two to three months, especially in people who never showed symptoms while they were infected.

The conclusion does not necessarily mean that these people can be infected a second time, several experts cautioned. Even low levels of powerful neutralizing antibodies may still be protective, as are the immune system’s T cells and B cells.

But the results offer a strong note of caution against the idea of “immunity certificates” for people who have recovered from the illness, the authors suggested.

Antibodies to other coronaviruses, including those that cause SARS and MERS, are thought to last about a year. Scientists had hoped that antibodies to the new virus might last at least as long.

Several studies have now shown that most people who are visibly ill with Covid-19 develop antibodies to the virus, although it has been unclear how long those antibodies last. The new study is the first to characterize the immune response in asymptomatic people.

...

The conclusion does not necessarily mean that these people can be infected a second time, several experts cautioned. Even low levels of powerful neutralizing antibodies may still be protective, as are the immune system’s T cells and B cells.

But the results offer a strong note of caution against the idea of “immunity certificates” for people who have recovered from the illness, the authors suggested.

[Brittain33]

Control and management over deliberate infection is an illusion. We don’t know how immunity works, we don’t know the long term effects of the illness, and we don’t know who will die or have lifelong scarring from being sick other than that mortality increases with age. We have to let go of the idea there’s a correct path to herd immunity that we can reason our way to. We just don’t have enough information or experience.

[Gass3268]

If we're going to head for herd immunity anyway (or close to it), I am truly starting to think a strategy of "intentionally infect all the young and healthy people" would have been what was best for two reasons.  First (and most importantly), we would be choosing who gets it.  Based on the CDC's estimate of a 0.26% fatality rate and assuming 50% as the herd immunity threshold, a non-targeted herd immunity strategy would result in about 430K deaths.  However, their estimate is a 0.025% fatality rate in those under 50.  Hitting herd immunity with engineering the infections to be in the young would have only resulted in about 41K deaths.  Now, it probably would have been a little more because we wouldn't have been perfect in stopping older individuals from getting sick.

The second reason is that we could have gotten this whole crisis over with in a matter of a few weeks to maybe a month.  Things truly would have likely been 100% normal by Easter Sunday if we had gone down that path.

This is wishcasting.

[GP270watch]

If we're going to head for herd immunity anyway (or close to it), I am truly starting to think a strategy of "intentionally infect all the young and healthy people" would have been what was best for two reasons.  First (and most importantly), we would be choosing who gets it.  Based on the CDC's estimate of a 0.26% fatality rate and assuming 50% as the herd immunity threshold, a non-targeted herd immunity strategy would result in about 430K deaths.  However, their estimate is a 0.025% fatality rate in those under 50.  Hitting herd immunity with engineering the infections to be in the young would have only resulted in about 41K deaths.  Now, it probably would have been a little more because we wouldn't have been perfect in stopping older individuals from getting sick.

The second reason is that we could have gotten this whole crisis over with in a matter of a few weeks to maybe a month.  Things truly would have likely been 100% normal by Easter Sunday if we had gone down that path.

This is wishcasting.

 The irony too given the screen name of this user deciding what adults live and die for the benefit of society.

 Here is an example of a healthy women in her 20s who got Covid-19 and "recovered" and the massive damage that happened to her lungs. She ended up needing a double lung transplant.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/health/coronavirus-lung-transplant.html

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

America is great at handling stuff like this, albeit only in movies.

Unfortunately, Trump resembles President Whitmore from Independence Day less than he resembles President Camacho from Idiocracy.

More like the President from Canadian Bacon.

[It’s so Joever]

If we're going to head for herd immunity anyway (or close to it), I am truly starting to think a strategy of "intentionally infect all the young and healthy people" would have been what was best for two reasons.  First (and most importantly), we would be choosing who gets it.  Based on the CDC's estimate of a 0.26% fatality rate and assuming 50% as the herd immunity threshold, a non-targeted herd immunity strategy would result in about 430K deaths.  However, their estimate is a 0.025% fatality rate in those under 50.  Hitting herd immunity with engineering the infections to be in the young would have only resulted in about 41K deaths.  Now, it probably would have been a little more because we wouldn't have been perfect in stopping older individuals from getting sick.

The second reason is that we could have gotten this whole crisis over with in a matter of a few weeks to maybe a month.  Things truly would have likely been 100% normal by Easter Sunday if we had gone down that path.

Half of this is blatant disinformation, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

But seriously, since Covid is so tame, please deliberately go out and get infected, and once you experience symptoms, lock yourself at home and don’t ever think of going to a hospital, no matter how sick you get. (remember it’s just like the flu!)
Honestly go out, get sick, and just don’t ever go to a hospital so you don’t waste resources.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1273980074056978439

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

So far today Arizona, Florida, and Nevada have all reported new record numbers. Other states have reported higher #s so far than yesterday also (but a few have also reported lower ones). Overall if the #s reported so far today are fairly representative, I think we will probably bust out and exceed 30k cases again already today. If these case #s keep going up on this trend, eventually the deaths are also going to catch up and start going up as well, even given that a higher proportion of cases are from young people and better semi-effective treatments like convalescent plasma and remdesivir are being used more.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

If we're going to head for herd immunity anyway (or close to it), I am truly starting to think a strategy of "intentionally infect all the young and healthy people" would have been what was best for two reasons.  First (and most importantly), we would be choosing who gets it.  Based on the CDC's estimate of a 0.26% fatality rate and assuming 50% as the herd immunity threshold, a non-targeted herd immunity strategy would result in about 430K deaths.  However, their estimate is a 0.025% fatality rate in those under 50.  Hitting herd immunity with engineering the infections to be in the young would have only resulted in about 41K deaths.  Now, it probably would have been a little more because we wouldn't have been perfect in stopping older individuals from getting sick.

The second reason is that we could have gotten this whole crisis over with in a matter of a few weeks to maybe a month.  Things truly would have likely been 100% normal by Easter Sunday if we had gone down that path.

Half of this is blatant disinformation, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

But seriously, since Covid is so tame, please deliberately go out and get infected, and once you experience symptoms, lock yourself at home and don’t ever think of going to a hospital, no matter how sick you get. (remember it’s just like the flu!)
Honestly go out, get sick, and just don’t ever go to a hospital so you don’t waste resources.

There is no doubt that not getting infected with covid is safer for all individuals than getting infected with covid. 

However, at an aggregate level, we don’t have much choice.  60-70% of the population is going to get infected eventually.  The only choice is who is in that 60-70% and who is in the 30-40% who avoids it.  And it is much safer for that 60-70% to be composed of young and healthy people who have excellent medical care than for it to be composed of an essentially random sample of individuals, many of whom are extremely vulnerable, and most of whom will never know exaclty when they became infected.

[Omega21]

How Putin feels about his Corona response after taking a look at the US

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

eventually the deaths are also going to catch up and start going up as well

Maybe if people keep repeating this mantra enough times without evidence it will turn out to be true.

Cases in California have been steadily increasing almost every week since the middle of March.  But deaths peaked on April 23, and it is now almost two months later.  How much of a lag do you actually expect?

[Beet]

It doesn’t seem like many people are harshly criticizing California’s response.  And despite locking down very early, they are following the same path as Texas and Florida.

This just seems to me like more evidence that lockdowns alone are not very effective unless they are also bolstered by partial herd immunity.  The reason that places like Italy and Spain and New York were effective last month (and it seems like the UK has been effective a month later) is that they didn’t lock down until a significant portion of their population had already been infected.  But of course, this also resulted in horrible death tolls in all these places.  

So you could definitely make an argument that California locked down too early.  Ultimately, it was impossible for them to stop the spread of cases before enough people had been infected that they had an immunity buffer.  But at least now we have much better testing and treatment that we can identify and treat cases where there is a new surge, resulting in a lot less death than we saw in Spain or NYC.

Except New York and Italy only have 5%-15% infected, and you need much higher than that (70%) for herd immunity. There is no meaningful benefit below the threshold. Besides, other states like Ohio that locked down very early are seeing low cases. California is an exception to the general trend that the numbers tend to be worse in states that locked down late and opened early, and good in states with very strict rules.

I’m not talking about strict herd immunity.  But it is absolutely not true that “there is no meaningful benefit below the threshold”.  If you institute a lockdown that reduced R to 1.1 when a very small percentage of the population has been infected, the virus will continue to grow.  But use the same measures when 15% of the population is immune, and the R will be .93, and the virus will slowly die out.   That’s why the same measures that lead to the decline of the virus in NY might lead to its continued growth in CA.

But the problem is that 15% of the population being immune implies that you already have the large number of deaths required to get there. So in the end, the result is the same either way.

Now I don't necessarily disagree that a very early universal lockdown is overkill. Contact tracing, selective isolation, or more localized lockdowns, may have been a better alternative, provided the testing capacity and other intelligence is there to implement that.

But again, California isn't the only state that did this. Most states across the north did the same thing, and saw success. There is something else uniquely bad about California that is not related to the strictness of their measures that is causing their current surge.

[Beet]

Also, what New York (among other places) shows is that 60%-70% don't have to be infected. The virus can be contained, at minuscule levels, until a vaccine or treatment is available.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

eventually the deaths are also going to catch up and start going up as well

Maybe if people keep repeating this mantra enough times without evidence it will turn out to be true.

Cases in California have been steadily increasing almost every week since the middle of March.  But deaths peaked on April 23, and it is now almost two months later.  How much of a lag do you actually expect?

It is a mathematical fact that if cases keep increasing without limit, then unless the death rate falls to 0 (i.e. with a vaccine or completely effective treatment), eventually the raw number of deaths will rise.

This is simply non-debatable math. If you disagree with that, it is not that your opinion is wrong, it is that you are innumerate.

At the hypothetical extreme, what would you say would happen to deaths if cases rose to an infinite number per day? What if they rose to 1 million per day? 100,000 per day? At a certain point, deaths will rise. You can debate what the threshold is at which they will start rising, and how long the time lag is, but you cannot debate that at some threshold and at some time lag deaths will rise if the # of cases per day continues to rise indefinitely.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Also, what New York (among other places) shows is that 60%-70% don't have to be infected. The virus can be contained, at minuscule levels, until a vaccine or treatment is available.

This is a good point, and one that I have never really diagreed with. 

California (and to a slightly lesser extent Florida and Texas) almost certainly radically reduced their death toll by locking down before they saw a surge, and waiting until testing and treatment were more widely available before the inevtiable surge occurred.  This is why we see deaths still declining as we open up more and more, and why we should also be much less concerned with rising case numbers than we might have been two months ago.

[It’s so Joever]

I thought it was pretty well known that California’s newer Covid cases skew much younger than earlier. That’s why the death rates are dropping. A lot of States are going through that. More testing is a part of it, but it’s the younger people who are now going back out (because they are selfish cowards) who are getting infected.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Either state governments are getting more blatant about hiding deaths or new infections are concentrated among much lower-risk populations than they were in March.

Why are you a Republican now?!

Because Phil Scott isn't bad and Democrats, especially those under 40, have stopped pretending to care about what I value most. I intend to address the change in greater detail at some point. Lockdown resentment was my catalyst.

I would remain an independent in any other state, most likely, and I will of course be voting for Joe Biden in November, but it is a sincere reflection of my politics. It should also encourage much more nastiness toward me on here, which is something that I welcome as I gradually encourage myself to go offline and stop following politics.

Any non-Phil Scott Republicans you intend to vote for though?

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Also, what New York (among other places) shows is that 60%-70% don't have to be infected. The virus can be contained, at minuscule levels, until a vaccine or treatment is available.

We don’t actually know that.  At this point, it’s probably a question of whether a vaccine is available before a second wave comes.  But at least we do have treatments now!

[GeorgiaModerate]

Also, what New York (among other places) shows is that 60%-70% don't have to be infected. The virus can be contained, at minuscule levels, until a vaccine or treatment is available.

We don’t actually know that.  At this point, it’s probably a question of whether a vaccine is available before a second wave comes.  But at least we do have treatments now!

Second wave?  We're still in the first wave.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Yay, let the infections spread.


https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1274056758319874052?cxt=HHwWiIC89eL3r...

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Also, what New York (among other places) shows is that 60%-70% don't have to be infected. The virus can be contained, at minuscule levels, until a vaccine or treatment is available.

We don’t actually know that.  At this point, it’s probably a question of whether a vaccine is available before a second wave comes.  But at least we do have treatments now!

Second wave?  We're still in the first wave.

I do think it’s reasonable to say that the “first wave” is essentially over in New York.

[Dr. Arch]

Also, what New York (among other places) shows is that 60%-70% don't have to be infected. The virus can be contained, at minuscule levels, until a vaccine or treatment is available.

We don’t actually know that.  At this point, it’s probably a question of whether a vaccine is available before a second wave comes.  But at least we do have treatments now!

Second wave?  We're still in the first wave.

I do think it’s reasonable to say that the “first wave” is essentially over in New York.

In New York, sure, but look at what the abrupt re-openings have done to FL, TX, etc.

[Donald Trump’s Toupée]

I don’t see what the concern is. We know it’s not nearly as fatal as we once believed. And as far as fatality goes overall, most survive, and just like with any illness some of course will die.

You can’t save everyone.

And you can’t put the entire nation in economic jeopardy in order to save a few centennials. I don’t care if it sounds crass, it’s a cost-benefit analysis that must be done.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Also, what New York (among other places) shows is that 60%-70% don't have to be infected. The virus can be contained, at minuscule levels, until a vaccine or treatment is available.

We don’t actually know that.  At this point, it’s probably a question of whether a vaccine is available before a second wave comes.  But at least we do have treatments now!

Second wave?  We're still in the first wave.

I do think it’s reasonable to say that the “first wave” is essentially over in New York.

In New York, sure, but look at what the abrupt re-openings have done to FL, TX, etc.

The discussion you are quoting was specifically about NY.