Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[PhaelixWW]

Relax, no other virus ever before reached the so called herd imunity, not the spanish flu, not measles not even Ebola. Most likely Sars-cov-2 will just disapear within a year or so. untill then, we have to prevent dead people... And somehow go back to economy.

Ugh, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of herd immunity.

Plenty of viruses have reached herd immunity. The Spanish flu achieved herd immunity... twice; both in 1918 and 2009. H1N1, a form of influenza, has an R0 of approximately 1.5, which correlates to a herd immunity threshold of about 33%. Studies indicate that about 1/3 of the world's population was infected with H1N1 back in 1918-1920. And in 2009, the outbreak in the US is estimated at over 60m infected, which was around 20% of the population at the time. But during the latter months, approximately 25% of the US also received an H1N1 vaccine shot, which helped push the US over the herd immunity threshold.

Measles is extremely virulent, and has an R0 of about 15, which correlates to a herd immunity threshold of over 93%. Luckily, measles is very resistant to mutation, so the measles vaccination that is standard for children generally suffices to protect us from measles outbreaks without the need for repeated vaccination shots, as long as we maintain herd immunity levels. That's why anti-vaxxers are fucking with everyone when they refuse to vaccinate their children, and why we've seen some measles outbreaks in recent years.

Because, you see, herd immunity counts everybody who is immune, whether it's from some natural immunity, antibodies through prior exposure, or a vaccine.

SARS-CoV-2 isn't going to just disappear. And unlike the measles, it will probably require occasional booster shots, like the flu, due to decreased antibody effectiveness and/or seasonal mutations. But achieving herd immunity is not only possible, it's almost certain to happen eventually.

Just keep in mind that herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus is extinct. It just means that it shouldn't be able to cause another outbreak until herd immunity wanes due to lost antibodies or a significant mutation.

[stevenho]

We already tried the herd imunity option (Sweden did), it isn't working.
We already tried lockdowns, it does help containning the virus, but it commes with nasty economical side effects.
We already tried just to focus on economy (Belarus), and its not good.

Both Sweden and Belarus are doing just fine though.

[Mayhem]

So currently half of the daily new cases in Europe come from just two countries.

[Tuor]

State of Calamity sounds way worse than Emergency. Wat.

But its a lower state. The current State of Emergency, requires aproval of 3 out of 4 soverenaty organs, the President, the Governement and the Parliament.

The State of Calamity is normally implemented for a municipality or a region, and is implemented by the Goverment. This time the State of Calamity will be implemented to all country.

- - - Updated - - -

Maybe their next step lower is State of Armageddon.

--->Do not click here <-----

[Forogil]

Ugh, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of herd immunity.

Plenty of viruses have reached herd immunity. The Spanish flu achieved herd immunity... twice; both in 1918 and 2009. H1N1, a form of influenza, has an R0 of approximately 1.5, which correlates to a herd immunity threshold of about 33%. Studies indicate that about 1/3 of the world's population was infected with H1N1 back in 1918-1920.

You are mixing two different things:
R0 for Swine flu (which was a H1N1 influenza).
R0 for the Spanish flu (which was a H1N1 influenza).

One might naively assume the R0 are identical, but https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2715422/ indicate that
"The R0 for novel influenza A (H1N1) has recently been estimated to be between 1.4 and 1.6. This value is below values of R0 estimated for the 1918–1919 pandemic strain (mean R0~2: range 1.4 to 2.8) and is comparable to R0 values estimated for seasonal strains of influenza (mean R0 1.3: range 0.9 to 2.1)."

So based on R0 around 2 about half the population would get infected (assuming no similar influenza had circulated before - which is likely, but not entirely clear).

Whether H1N1 is significantly different now, or R0 has changed due to something else is unknown.
(Obviously R0 also vary a bit due to different circumstances, some estimates around 2 are for the US for the 1918 pandemic.)

So, how can anyone claim that about a third of the population got infected around 1918 and R0 is 2, without noticing that the numbers don't add up?
Well, they don't - the full statement is "one third of the world's population (or ≈500 million persons) were infected and had clinically apparent illnesses".

[PhaelixWW]

You are mixing two different things:
R0 for Swine flu (which was a H1N1 influenza).
R0 for the Spanish flu (which was a H1N1 influenza).

Fair point, but it doesn't invalidate the point I was making in that post.

[Cynep]

Thanks for answers everyone, I'll try to defend this one last time.

Of course, being a slave is much worse than self-isolation, but it also means being alive and your masters will feed you out of their pocket (yes I hate myself for typing this, but technically it's true). Still, sitting on your ass watching TV and reading books all day is fine for a while, but not for too long. Many people will get insolvent, a generation of paupers living in a whole world set back in prosperity... compared to slavery is still worse, yes, but the alternative choices also have not very comparable outcomes - warfare with chance of maiming, or capture, torture and death vs. a chance to get sick, with a small chance to get noticeably sick, with even smaller chance to need a hospitalization with then a chance of death or permanent damage? That's not really scary, to put things into perspective, during Donbass war I was a civilian and still twice shells fell within 25-40 meters of me. I had higher chance to die then than now with the disease.

Two interesting points I want to address while I'm still in cruel mode:

Better yet it does not even serve the same purpose, eventually the lockdown will be lifted and your freedom would be returned. Slavery unlike what hollywood would have made you believe was not a chance to die for a better live, you lived the life your master deemed you deserved to serve them and then you died. You have been watching Gladiator one too many times if you believed getting free was an option for many.

No, I mean rebelling is a chance to die for a better life, while accepting slavery is life, poor life but still life. You're right about lockdowns being temporary though, this is the greatest counterpoint to my analogy. All will depend on how long will all this last.

The mortality rate of this disease is also vastly misrepresented, because people believe 1% is low. The 1% what is not low if you start apply it to your own nation population is when you have access to healthcare and this is a repository illness that will quickly swamp your system and bring it to its knees.

This is my main point, and this is where we seem to disagree. No, 99% to survive before adjusting for co-morbidities is high. Sick people will die earlier, yes. Healthy people will recover with more than 99% chance, many will even be asymptomatic. With the opposite choice, you don't feel ill, but you still sit home, doing not much more than a sick person does - 99% chance of actual active life vs 100% chance of doing nothing? This is why people riot against lockdowns, and I can understand them.

[stevenho]

You're spoiling the fear party dude.
/chuckle

[PhaelixWW]

This is my main point, and this is where we seem to disagree. No, 99% to survive before adjusting for co-morbidities is high. Sick people will die earlier, yes. Healthy people will recover with more than 99% chance, many will even be asymptomatic. With the opposite choice, you don't feel ill, but you still sit home, doing not much more than a sick person does - 99% chance of actual active life vs 100% chance of doing nothing? This is why people riot against lockdowns, and I can understand them.

This is a fundamentally selfish viewpoint, though; you don't get to make that choice for the other 1%.

It's the same flawed, amoral thinking that allows people to think that it's okay to rob a bank, because why shouldn't they have a better life? Or, if you want a less exaggerated example, how about the people who demand their money back for bad food, but only after they ate the meal. Or contest a charge on their credit card for a shipment claiming that the package never arrived, even though it did. Or use loopholes in the tax code to save millions that should be paid by pretending to have lost millions instead.

The list goes on and on.

You can understand why a viewpoint is common and still admit that it's wrong.

[stevenho]

Imagine not locking down even though tens of thousands of people in the USA die of flu every year.
How selfish and amoral.

[Acidbaron]

Two interesting points I want to address while I'm still in cruel mode:

No, I mean rebelling is a chance to die for a better life, while accepting slavery is life, poor life but still life. You're right about lockdowns being temporary though, this is the greatest counterpoint to my analogy. All will depend on how long will all this last.


This is my main point, and this is where we seem to disagree. No, 99% to survive before adjusting for co-morbidities is high. Sick people will die earlier, yes. Healthy people will recover with more than 99% chance, many will even be asymptomatic. With the opposite choice, you don't feel ill, but you still sit home, doing not much more than a sick person does - 99% chance of actual active life vs 100% chance of doing nothing? This is why people riot against lockdowns, and I can understand them.

Let's make one thing clear here, what people riot against is quite varied you had fools who barely had any lockdown in effect as in the US who protest because they could not get a haircut.
Being healthy gives you a greater chance of surviving but we have seen cases that your personal health won't save you as your immune system works too well.
Lockdowns don't have to last forever for everyone but we do need them and we do need control and that is what the anti-lockdown crowd is protesting, it is stupid and short-sighted as you don't see those people talk about an exit strategy other than let's open everything back up, so in my opinion you give that crowd far too much credit, i mean you tied them with the anti vaxxer crowd so you can't think too highly of them.


Now as for your point this interview is a good one as it gives a more "middle ground" approach but it still speaks of measures and lockdowns.

[dribbles]

The sheer fucking hypocrisy in this is staggering. You demand evidence for why the excess deaths should be assumed to be due to the global pandemic, yet you're assuming that there's some heart-attack epidemic instead.

Nah, bruv.

If you look at the actual BHF data cited by your source, there are only about 9k heart attack patients per month. That's a tiny fraction of the 2.1 million hospital visits you quoted. Even if every single one of those ~5k non-visits during the last 5 weeks ended up dying of a heart-attack, you'd still come nowhere close to the 15k or so excess death unaccounted for.

And yet, even with a lockdown, the more acute the heart-attack, the more likely the patient would be go to the hospital anyway, which means you can't come close to apportioning all non-visits to deaths. The 50% not going are almost certainly the 50% least likely to die.

On top of that, it's exceedingly likely that many people who might have otherwise come in for a heart-attack treatment might already be dead or admitted to an ICU for COVID-19. That doesn't mean that they're not legitimately COVID-19 patients, though.



Crystal.

You missed out my etc, I didn't list them all too many you see, so away from randomly picked heart attack excess deaths you obviously need another example.

Bob, poor guy, is depressed about the lockdown so jumps off a bridge. When at a later date his corpse tests +ve for Covid-19 what killed him? If you count it as a corona death as our government now are, it clearly wasn't, you are inflating the virus figures to scare the public into staying at home. If you correctly count it as suicide as anyone sensible would, it is an excess death to the norms but with nothing to do with the virus.

One falsely justifies and pushes the government lockdown agenda, one does not. It is clearly misleading that the lockdown team are claiming Bob as a goal for their side when in fact he was playing for the opposition.

We need to move to excess cancer deaths next? Or do they all belong to the Corona team now too? Every different cause of excess death adds up you know, doesn't have to be just a heart attack epidemic, sad that you naively think they should all be classified or suspected as under the C-19 umbrella without anything to back that up.

That's just scaremongering...unless of course you have some evidence you'd like to share? 2nd time I've asked, will it be forthcoming this time?

[Zaktar]

yeah, comparing forced unpaid labor, which often came with cruelty, to being forced to stay home is absolutely ridiculous and a slap in the face to actual current day slaves.

Also, comparing something thats easily spread through the community vs something thats not is silly

It's also quite an original comparison. They must have put a great deal of thought into it.

[Svifnymr]

This is a fundamentally selfish viewpoint, though; you don't get to make that choice for the other 1%.

But that's a false dichotomy. The 1% are more than welcome to lockdown. You cannot hide from the virus, you can only spread out it's infection, which we've done.

It's the same flawed, amoral thinking that allows people to think that it's okay to rob a bank, because why shouldn't they have a better life? Or, if you want a less exaggerated example, how about the people who demand their money back for bad food, but only after they ate the meal. Or contest a charge on their credit card for a shipment claiming that the package never arrived, even though it did. Or use loopholes in the tax code to save millions that should be paid by pretending to have lost millions instead.

Because lying and cheating and stealing is the same thing as "we should reduce restrictions from the current lockdown"?

The list goes on and on.

You can understand why a viewpoint is common and still admit that it's wrong.

But you can also understand that everything in society is a trade off. There is no absolute, there is no guarantee of safety. We can reduce the odds of a bad result to some extent, but that must still be balanced against the needs of society to function. There is no "if it even saves ONE life" crap, that's just silly. Should we flatten the curve? Certainly, but we HAVE done so. In fact, hospitals are so far from overwhelmed that they are sending crew home. They open beaches for restricted hours and select locations, then wonder why those places are more crowded than if they had just opened them for all day with more space?

I saw one local politician suggest we remain locked down until there is a vaccine, but the damage to society for such a thing is asinine. There are plenty of ways to reduce restrictions from a lockdown to masks & distance, but since there is no way to discuss it without being labeled a sociopath, how can a rational discussion weighing the risks be had? Essential workers can be thrown to the wolves of fate, but heaven forbid they get to go to the park after work? People losing businesses they built over generations just get discarded as the next "Learn to Code" wave becomes "then get a job at the grocery store"?

So, if the hospitals are nowhere near in danger of being over run, even in NYC, why must society be closed down and thrown away to sacrifice all that has been built on the altar of "one life saved!!!"?

[Krastyn]

This is a fundamentally selfish viewpoint, though; you don't get to make that choice for the other 1%.

We currently allow it for multitudes of other things in life.

At what % threshold does it suddenly become not-selfish?

[Orange Joe]

Imagine not locking down even though tens of thousands of people in the USA die of flu every year.
How selfish and amoral.

people that die in 12 months of the flu = 60k at worst.
~2 months of covid-19 = 60k+

Can you be any more dishonest?

[stevenho]

people that die in 12 months of the flu = 60k at worst.
~2 months of covid-19 = 60k+

Can you be any more dishonest?

Please put a number on the amount of deaths where it becomes non selfish and moral.
Can't wait.

[Pohut]

Imagine not locking down even though tens of thousands of people in the USA die of flu every year.
How selfish and amoral.

Can you link the actual annual flu death numbers. Actual numbers. Not the extrapolated, guesstimated statistical bullshit that's being rolled over year after year.
Statements like this: "This season CDC estimates that, as of mid-March, between 29,000 and 59,000 have died due to influenza illnesses.", means that nobody knows, nobody is counting, nobody is tracing and they just pull their numbers out of their asses.
It is highly likely that annual flu deaths are magnitudes lower than those "estimates".

[PhaelixWW]

Imagine not locking down even though tens of thousands of people in the USA die of flu every year.
How selfish and amoral.

What a ridiculous notion.

The R0 value of the flu is much, much lower than SARS-CoV-2; we could accomplish protection from the flu even with Sweden-style methods. Especially if people got their flu shot like they should. Unfortunately, many people refuse to get their flu shot or even practice good social distancing during the normal flu season, even though it's the moral thing to do.

Also, this first wave of COVID-19 is going to be much worse than a normal flu season, even with strict lockdowns in place. Were those restrictions not imposed, death levels wouldn't be measured in tens of thousands, they'd be measured in hundreds of thousands.

[jonnysensible]

this might be useful for some of you