Covid-19 pandemic

[S. aureus]

24th September:

Originally posted by S. aureus View Post
San Mateo County continues with the next step in the dance of death as it's moved up into the "red" tier, "This means restaurants, shopping centers, museums, places of worship, movie theaters and gyms can open indoors with limited capacity".
"Hallelujah, we are out of the purple and into the red," San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa said in a statement. "Now we can eat indoors again, go see a movie and get some exercise at the gym."
So we'll be back in the "purple" (or completely fucked) tier again in a month.
Not coincidentally I got texts yesterday from both my and my kids' dentists reminding me hat we were overdue for our teeth cleanings.
If anyone's interested, we've had 400 new cases in the past week, or 52/100,000 population.

25th October:
Cases here have worryingly started creeping up again over the past 10 days - last week around 250/week, up to 332 in the past 7 days.
It's too soon to say if this is just noise, though given the timing relative to the easing of restrictions I'm concerned.

Today:
Showing that I'm completely out of step with whoever's in charge in San Mateo County, we're relaxing restrictions still further (moving to the "orange" tier), even though case counts are rising and have averaged 5.8/100k/day over the past week.
The table in this article https://padailypost.com/2020/10/27/s...-restrictions/ indicates that this should put us firmly in the red, but as far as I can tell because we've tested a bunch of people (in a kind of anti-Trump philosophy, and including myself) our positive rates are low so we get to open up. I suppose the lesson here is if you test a bunch of people who probably don't have it then you're free to get your nails done no matter how many new actual cases there are, or something. Hopefully this all works out better than I'm expecting.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/ethanjweiss/status/1321286958392451072

[Janik]

Imperial College's research published today really does piss all over the already obviously disastrous idea of herd immunity. Now anyone pushing "herd immunity" is really just pushing "apathy to the death of millions because they want people to go into the office and buy sandwiches at Pret"

Yeh, the writing has been on the wall for infective herd immunity for months now given the rate of antibody decay, (though there's also the T-cell thing, that an OTFer with a scientific/medical background might want to comment on). Obviously the hope now is to achieve it via vaccination, but the early indications are that boosters will be required after an initial jab.

I'm glad to see someone, i.e. NS here, making the distinction that this undermines any idea of herd immunity by infection. Because this is also disastrous news for any vaccination programme, as every vaccination programme is a herd immunity programme* that relies on antibody production. They are one and the same thing.
It is never possible to vaccinate everyone as some people (the immuno-comporomised and so on) will be at risk of serious complications from a vaccine. So you are looking to vaccinate enough to get a high enough percentage of the population immune that infections peter out before a vulnerable person comes into contact with an infectious individual.** If people exposed to the actual virus are seeing antibody production decay away within months, it is hard to imagine that a de-fanged/dead version of the virus will produce resistance that sustains for longer. Instead it's rather likely to be even shorter protection. The idea of a vaccination programme with booster shoots every three months, or maybe every month, is terrifying. It just couldn't be done.

* - remember what was said about the vaccine-skeptics regarding MMR - that they were compromising our herd immunity to measles. And that the measles outbreaks that have happened was because herd immunity had been lost in specific areas with low vaccination rates.
** - worth noting that epidemiologists apparently reject the term herd immunity and prefer herd protection instead. Because unvaccinated individuals absolutely are not made immune in such circumstances; they can still catch and die of the infection. They are protected solely by not coming into contact with the pathogen.

[Janik]

As the evidence grows that vaccination may not be practically possible, I'm wondering what are the other ways out of this. If there are any at all other than living with it...
One train of thought was wondering if we can help evolution along with an engineered version of the virus with higher infectiousness, lower virulence (and high mutation stability!) that will out-compete the deadly strains. I can see some ethical problems with that, though. And some historical lessons that human intervention of this sort in nature can backfire spectacularly (Rabbits in Australia, for example). And if it goes wrong and you end up releasing a pathogen with even higher infectiousness but also high virulence, then we are squarely in 12 Monkeys territory.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Sorry Janik but what do you mean by "As the evidence grows that vaccination may not be possible"?

This is a genuine question but have we heard anything about vaccination not being possible? There are, apparently, lots of vaccines being trialled with some early positive signs. That's according to media reports which are probably simplistic.

I believe that 3 years is the quickest we've ever had a successful vaccine developed, that was for mumps, so thoughts that this will be quicker are probably unrealistic.

[Jimski]

I read an article (I think it was shared on here too) months ago that explained that it was *expected* that antibody levels drop in people after infection. This happens for every sort of infection, and doesn't prevent them having immunity., The important thing is the B (memory) cells that know how to instantly produce more antibodies when required.

So I'm confused by all these articles (some written by experts!?) lamenting this predicted drop in antibodies, and its supposed implications for herd immunity via vaccination.

[Jimski]

Here's a recent article from the New York times anyway...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/h...s-studies.html

[Jimski]

This article is interesting though, the last two paragraphs in particular. It doesn't really explain enough though. There seems to be a conclusion that the antibody fall for Covid is somehow different from that for other infections, that the B cells themselves disappear. Hmm.... I'd like to know more.

https://theconversation.com/declinin...e-worry-143323

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...droidApp_Other

It works for ten languages, including English and Welsh, but not in some common languages if the phone is set to that.

Beyond incompetence.

[Jimski]

Interesting on the results of a survey as to whether people would like a national "circuit-breaker" lockdown. Even Tory voters 56 - 33 in favour, it seems.

https://twitter.com/JoeTwyman/status/1320675395772047361/photo/1

[Fussbudget]

Interesting also that people in the C2DE group support the idea of a circuit breaker more strongly than those in ABC1. Not at all the narrative that the media has been spinning.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Interesting also that people in the C2DE group support the idea of a circuit breaker more strongly than those in ABC1. Not at all the narrative that the media has been spinning.

This.

[Jimski]

I don't think the government has any understanding of pandemics. Here's George Eustice:

"In some ways we’ve always anticipated that there would be a second spike." (err, the second spike is directly related to the government failing to keep the disease under control. So not bloody surprising that you "anticipated" it.)

"We don’t think it’s appropriate to have a national lockdown, because there’s parts of the country, like Cornwall, where the incidence of the disease is actually very low." (errr, see Adam Kucharski above - far better to get R below 1 when cases are lower, rather than waiting for Cornwall too to have loads of cases and deaths before trying to reduce spread.)

[Auntie Beryl]

Former UKIP candidate Eustice hails from Penzance and represents a Cornish constituency, so those are his blinkers. A Leaver who campaigned to cut his county off from subsidy.

[Jimski]

Blimey, hadn't picked up on the fact that he was former UKIP.

[San Bernardhinault]

Sorry Janik but what do you mean by "As the evidence grows that vaccination may not be possible"?

This is a genuine question but have we heard anything about vaccination not being possible? There are, apparently, lots of vaccines being trialled with some early positive signs. That's according to media reports which are probably simplistic.

I believe that 3 years is the quickest we've ever had a successful vaccine developed, that was for mumps, so thoughts that this will be quicker are probably unrealistic.

This comes on from the news yesterday that antibodies (and, from Jimski’s comment, B-Cells) appear to fall or vanish from a large number of peoples’ bodies in just a few months. Given that vaccines work by making the body create those antibodies - that is how we’re protected - it may be that a vaccination only protects for a short period and may only protect imperfectly in that period. We have an annual flu vaccine now that many people take, but if the time period for a Covid vaccine is shorter than that while the disease is more virulent it may be impossible to manufacture and distribute widely enough before the protection wears off.

[Lang Spoon]

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/...t-1026269.html

how the fuck are there so few cases of transmission in Irish schools compared to the UK? I smell bullshit, especially as the fucking HSE still aren't contact tracing past 48 hours, cos of course those silly Japanese are wasting their time working back two weeks to find the source of outbreaks. I believe close contacts of a case who then get tested only happen if you are in 3 consecutive lessons with a case, fucking terrifying nonsense. How many asymptomatic untested kids have infected their households?

This govt is determined to open schools no matter what, and the HSE is craven enough to assist.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/...t-1026269.html

how the fuck are there so few cases of transmission in Irish schools compared to the UK? I smell bullshit, especially as the fucking HSE still aren't contact tracing past 48 hours, cos of course those silly Japanese are wasting their time working back two weeks to find the source of outbreaks. I believe close contacts of a case who then get tested only happen if you are in 3 consecutive lessons with a case, fucking terrifying nonsense. How many asymptomatic untested kids have infected their households?

This govt is determined to open schools no matter what, and the HSE is craven enough to assist.

It might have something to do with ireland having a much lower level of infection than the UK. our rate is only 40% that of the UK. and their testing rate is about 40% of ours, so the gap is likely much much larger. Then factor in that the rate of transmission between kids is apparently much lower, and suddenly it doesn't seem quite so implausible. Something else worth remembering is that if the govt was trying to pull a stunt like this, it would all come out sooner rather than later, and then there would be absolute and utter war. This isn't the UK. There are consequences for this sort of thing.

[Lang Spoon]

Data is very eh mixed on whether kids of high school age spread it any differently to adults. There is also a deep seated desire in much of the public service senior mgmt to cover up first no matter what.

[Lang Spoon]

Also, contact tracing is pretty much broken, lack of skilled resources is prob why we aren't tracing backwards.

[Jimski]

Interesting dashboard for UK Test & Trace:

https://covid.i-sense.org.uk/

[Patrick Thistle]

Interesting on the results of a survey as to whether people would like a national "circuit-breaker" lockdown. Even Tory voters 56 - 33 in favour, it seems.

https://twitter.com/JoeTwyman/status/1320675395772047361/photo/1

Seems like a lot of people want to be more Welsh.

Speaking of which, Welsh Government has put out new definitions of "essential items" and people can ask to buy non-essential items in "exceptional circumstances". Not sure whether it's really any clearer but at least they can say they are responding to the public, which defangs the criticism a bit. Plus when their opponents use the petition committee to get it debated in the Senedd they can say they've already dealt with it.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Also, contact tracing is pretty much broken, lack of skilled resources is prob why we aren't tracing backwards.

This was always going to happen though. If you think about how complex something like this is and the numbers involved, There was always going to be a level of cases where it wasn't going to be able to cope. Contact tracing works best when the level of cases is small, and you can seal off entry. All these things are iterative processes. Countries like South Korea have had a couple of unsuccessful goes at running something like this before getting it right. It would be a bit much to expect us to get it right first time. Sometimes you can get lucky and the first time you try something like this it can work, but more usually it works up to a point and then breaks down. If for instance we can keep this out of the nursing homes this time, after the fiasco the last time, then it will be a huge improvement, and they can then work on test and trace in time for the inevitable next wave.

One thing in our favour though is that we've locked down a lot earlier into the wave than the last time. Christ alone knows what the numbers actually were the first time, but there wasn't any system for testing people the first time around.

[Lang Spoon]

They didnt hire a single extra public health doctor after the first lockdown began. They were cutting tracer numbers in the summer, cos Paul Reid can't see past the next headline and was terrified that McSharry cunt would drag him into the PAC shouting about waste of money. Cos there was no way anyone could have foreseen a second wave, oh no. We wasted six months and we'll doubtless waste the next too.

[jwdd27]

Interesting dashboard for UK Test & Trace:

https://covid.i-sense.org.uk/

Pretty damning figures, it almost seems that it's so ineffective that they might as well not bother. Or that they should divert the funds to local health authorities who have some expertise in public health.