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Comment by avancemos | Hacker News Reader

From the abstract: "We demonstrate a range of pre-existing memory CD4+ T cells that are cross-reactive with comparable affinity to SARS-CoV-2 and the common cold coronaviruses HCoV-OC43, HCoV-229E, HCoV-NL63, or HCoV-HKU1."

1. Populations may naturally have a head start towards herd immunity from COVID. 2. Sweden could be really close in that regard; their current super low daily mortality and declining cases may point towards herd immunity.

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I wouldn't call it "super low" mortality when the average for the past month since the large drop is still 25x that of Denmark (i.e. nearly our neighbors montly totals per day), when it should be more like 2x based on population sizes (and Denmark being denser populated on top of that).

What are you talking about? Sweden has a much higher death rate when compared to its neighbors.

The interesting observation is the relation between the highest death rate (100/day) and current very low death rate of zero to a couple per day 2. This is without significant change in policy, mask use etc.

It’s hard to measure behavior but nothing suggests people have less contact now than in March (more contact is more likely, but on the other hand it’s now more contact outdoors compared to spring).

Writing from Sweden: people were scared in March, now they're relaxing. We'll see what happens in autumn when everyone is back to work and spends their time indoor

I think big parts of Sweden might be hitting "herd immunity" relative to the measures that are currently in place.

It doesn't mean that they're hitting herd immunity in an "everything back to normal world". But it's still good news

Have they announced anything about when they're planning to ease restrictions?

Yes looks like it at least.

There isn’t much talk about easing but I suspect the visitor restrictions on elderly homes might be lifted as soon as possibly since 6 months without being able to visit is a long time. Also the 50 person event restriction is being reviewed. It’s a bit inconsistent to allow 100 people in a restaurant or bus but not 51 people in Sweden’s largest football stadium that seats 50k...

Spectators for kids sportS outdoors also becomes allowed I hope. Having parents watch a children’s game outdoors, for example.

General easing of the last restrictions would be e.g allowing full stadiums for sports and concerts but that is not going to happen this year. The authorities recommend working from home for the rest of the year so that gives some indication about other restrictions. Travel recommendations are easing now but obviously change quickly.

"current"

they are presently doing about as well as all their immediate neighbors for per-capita deaths: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS...

Never mind COVID-19, that country picker that jankily reorders when you select something has to be eradicated.

OWID's UI/UX is definitely not my favorite (try to highlight a particular country's line in a graph) but their worldwide data quality appears to be the best right now compared to alternatives.

No? Relative to Denmark and Norway, they’re doing as bad as ever? (X4-x8 amount of daily deaths per capita)

Current daily deaths in Sweden are averaging about 4 per day continuing to trend towards 0, vs the 0 or 1 per day in Denmark or Norway. If you're trying to argue that 0.38 per capita vs 0.05 per capita is relevant when the gross numbers are so low I'm not sure what to tell you to convince you otherwise.

Reference: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS... (graph basically looks identical between per capita or raw, pick your poison).

I'm not sure how you make a meaningful statistical difference between them at this point when the numbers are approaching rounding errors.

You look over a longer period of time. Like 25x Denmark for the past month, where that includes a delay of up to 28 days for a death to be reported, and only a few days delay in Denmark.

The usual way to assess herd immunity is by antibody testing

I don't think Sweden got to 10% infection in the pop. at the moment (avg. for Spain is 5% and 15% on the heaviest hit cities)

That was the usual way at least, I doubt that will be seen as the way post Covid. If we learned anything it’s that it doesn’t paint a full picture.

I also doubt Sweden has 10% infection (As measured by serological tests) but most larger cities probably do. Where that puts immunity no one knows. It seems to be enough (for now, with mitigations in place).

The very article contradicts you.

I see, yes, the t-cell assessments are new but while we don't have accurate values for those countries we have to rely on the antibody testing.

(Not to mention this whole t-cell story is being used by negationists and "skeptics" to deny the actual mortality of the virus)

A Swedish study has found that for X people with confirmed infection that have antibodies, another same amount have t-cells and no antibodies.

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