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Comment by rb808 | Hacker News Reader

Honestly its scary the talk of another year like this. I have a family and even with them around living all day in my apt is starting to drive me crazy. I'd hate to be living by myself. Its a lot like solitary confinement.

My Brother had the bug, had a mild cough for a few days and lost his taste. I'm very jealous.

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It's funny because I am having the opposite issue... stuck at home with my wife and two young kids, and what I want is MORE alone time. I need daycare!

Try spending 2+ months in an 18m² apartment alone AND under the obligation of following courses and studying for exams. Being a college student in a French elite school sucks.

Is that a CitéU? Or just your avg. attic conversion?

(But yes it sucks)

À la CitéU but down in Saclay.

> Honestly its scary the talk of another year like this.

I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting you will not be able to leave your house for another year. I think everywhere has concrete plans to re-open everything short of mass gatherings pretty soon. That's the cautious countries and the less cautious countries alike.

Yeah I go outside 2-3 times a week already. I just want to visit my parents, sit at a proper desk, and have my children play with some friends.

The open or closed status of everything has little to do with whether or not you should engage in non-essential visits. Policymakers do not schedule the virus.

The 'non-essential' guidance is also being relaxed in all locations I've seen reporting on. Most are encouraging distanced socialising and return to work.

The non-essential guidance has little bearing on whether or not someone should engage in non-essential visits, as policymakers do not schedule the virus.

I don't know what you mean about 'scheduling the virus', sorry. Generally people are probably best off listening to official advice, not making their own assumptions.

> I don’t know what you mean about ‘scheduling the virus’

They’re saying just because non-essential restrictions have been relaxed doesn’t mean you should partake in non-essential activities.

I agree with them, but not everyone will.

The virus alone also doesn’t schedule human behavior. I’m not sure exactly what you are implying.

If that is the case, why were non-essential businesses shut down and shelter in place orders enacted all over the world?

I was simply trying to point out the other side of what I felt was an overly rigid line of thinking from the GP.

The shutdowns were a tactic taken with limited information and imperfect effectiveness. I don’t think it was the wrong thing to do. However, we could have and should have had a more effective, sophisticated, and timely response across the board.

It also seems to have little bearing on how essential an activity is, and it hastens the ongoing consolidation of our economy into a small number of enormous companies.

Personal anecdote: I need a biopsy from a specialist surgeon who does not treat respiratory diseases and does not reside in a hospital.

Sorry. That's non-essential. I haven't been able to get it done, and it's been months. I'm also on COBRA, so...clock's ticking.

But if I want to buy a paperback? Well I can't visit my favorite local bookstore which is usually quite empty (non-essential), but I can go to a packed Walmart or order it off Amazon.

Currently around ~5% of the US has contracted COVID. 60-70% of the population needs to become infected in order to gain herd immunity. Meaning we're about 7% of the way to herd immunity. We still have a long way to go.

I don't think anyone's saying they're aiming at herd immunity any more, are they? The European and North American countries opening up, which is all of them, are just saying they have the situation generally under control enough to relax restrictions.

I mean it will continue to spread until that percent of the of the population is infected. Containment is not possible. So right now it's a balancing act of opening up the economy and preventing an explosive outbreak. The hope is a vaccine will be created soon and a large proportion of the population will gain immunity through a vaccine rather than just naturally contracting the virus.

Yes. Those restrictions were from the time we were thinking the virus is more deadly than this (1-2% IFR).

Now with more publications, data suggests an IFR of 0.1-0.6%. Which is pretty low and does not worth crashing the economy.

This does not mean vulnerable people has to pay the price no. It is trade off. We have to reopen and go back to normal, while helping vulnerable people.

Even some paper suggest far more infections than we thought.

The IFR is proving to be ~1%.

For 0.1-0.6% to be true, 50-100% of NYC would have to have gotten infected with COVID-19...

IFR is not a fixed value and is affected by many things. For example, intial viral load may be higher in NYC than many other places, vitamin D levels, air pollution, etc. There is no single IFR for any disease.

Yes, IFR is not a fixed value. But a range (0.1-0.6%) was provided by the person I was responding to. Even assuming NYC hit the top of the range of IFRs (which seems questionable given that NYC isn't a particularly old city), one would need an infection rate of 50%, which contradicts serology studies that turned out to be half that.

IFR in other locations (e.g. small towns in Europe where blood tests show widespread exposure) has also consistently come in at roughly 1%.

The data you are putting out there is completely wrong.

You can check this subreddit for publications: https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/

All most all the publications from the past 2 months show an IFR if 0.1-0.6 or at most 0.8%.

Searched for IFR estimates there and grabbed a few sample calculations: https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/gw5l4q/serology_fr... https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/g6035k/new_serolog... https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/gnbpkk/antibody_re... https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/gnbpkk/antibody_re...

So, 0.77-1.25% for this range of estimates.

Funny how you cherry picking those.

confirmation bias. Look at the other publications.

To prove that 0.1-0.6% is wrong, one only needs to show a single example that had an IFR > 0.6%. I provided several. You meanwhile have provided none.

And this range of IFR estimates (~0.7-1.1%) is what you tend to see across localities where serological tests result in substantial positive antibody rates. Studies based on low (e.g. <5%) exposure rates aren't that meaningful because false positives can dwarf the true-positives, skewing the results.

> You meanwhile have provided none.

When I say you cherrypick, I am talking about this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/g4tqvk/dutch_antib...

And so, so mare which I don’t have time to find one by one right now. Like the study from Finland, or other places.

I don’t have anything to add to this discussion, since this clearly shows you are incapable of research. One other point is there is non negligible amount of people who does not develop antibodies therefore they are not detected in serological tests. I would expect IFR go down.

(You could have find in other publications too:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v...

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033357v...

The only required skill required is googling and having open mind.)

“ Iceland, (1st May) reports ten deaths in 1798 patients, CFR. 0.56%. If we assumed 1% of the population (364,000) is infected, then the corresponding IFR would be 10/3640 = 0.3%. Iceland’s test and quarantine measures may have shielded the elderly group, and deaths may still go up as they lag infection by about two weeks.

Iceland’s higher rates of testing, the smaller population, and their ability to ascertain all those with Sars-CoV-2 means they can obtain. an accurate estimate of the CFR and the IFR during the pandemic (most countries will only be able to do this after the pandemic).

Current data from Iceland suggests their IFR is somewhere between 0.3% and 0.56%.” -CEBM

P.S. FYI Iceland has done more test than anybody I think (ratiowise).

I have a suggestion for you: READ MORE!

I don't know where you're getting that IFR figure from. Let's take the UK: 7% of the population have had it[1], and about 60,000 people[2] have died (!). That's 1.3%.

[1]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52837593 [2]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52976580q

That's only if infection grants lifetime immunity. Other coronaviruses (like those that cause colds) only grant immunity for 4-12 months. We don't know if this coronavirus is the same, but if it is, we may not be able to achieve that herd immunity without biannual vaccinations.

We have no idea what the required percentage of infection is for herd immunity, given that we don't know what percentage of people are naturally immune or resistant, what percentage of people clear the virus without any antibody response, etc.

There is a decent amount of research beginning to indicate we won't need nearly that level of infection to reach herd immunity. It's not guaranteed but I'd keep an open mind.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.03085 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32209383 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.20081893v...

One of the things that scares me a lot about covid is the risk of losing my sense of smell and/or taste.

So I'm not sure if I would be jealous of your brother.

I mean, sure, I'm also tired of this, but just thinking that I could potentially never smell coffee again, or taste avocado or not being able to notice the scent of my partner, or lot of other things... it's terryfing.

I guess he can eat the same food all the time now then

Texture is (just/almost) as important as taste!

Once you get used to protein shakes, you can stomach almost any texture.

I blend frozen banana, peanut butter, milk, Greek yogurt, and protein powder together and it’s as good as any milkshake (once you get the proportions right). The frozen banana seems to be the key for giving smoothies a creamy texture.

Everyone: if you drink protein powder mixed with water, you are committing a food crime.

Not even close.

The one person I know who had covid said they didn't want to eat anything. It wasn't just that you lose taste/smell, it's that everything tasted/smelled funny.

Is it a permanent loss of taste or do your senses come back after?

For some it's come back. More rarely it stays gone for months. Hard to know about 'permanent' since it's only been 6 months this thing has been around.

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