Why I believe the US has herd immunity in some states
realscience.community
realscience.community
The author seems to ignore that most people are interacting with far fewer people because they are working from home, kids mostly aren't in school, and our other interactions with people outside our household have been limited and altered to decrease the chances of transmission.
It's nice to think that some people had memory T-cells that could deal with the virus, and it seems some people do, but based on the original R0 numbers, it would be foolish to think that is the case for enough of the population to conclude that we've reached herd immunity.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/comm...
[2] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases-50-states/new-yor...
[1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/uakm0cfgn2hv94r/Nebraska.png?dl=0
You completely failed to take into account people working from home, schools delaying opening and not having been in session since March or April, and all of the other measures that have been put in place to decrease transmission (masks, barriers, decreased social interactions, restaurant closings, other indoor spaces being closed, etc, etc, etc).
Your conclusion is flawed because you left all of these factors out of your analysis.
Source? This is a significant claim. Early June was a low point in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Lots of states were at peak reopening around then, as things seemed to be on the right track.
For example, bars opened in early June in Florida. They closed on June 26th after cases started spiking.
Louisiana was similar. The state started reopening May 15th. Later in June, bars were then closed back down again, and a mask mandate went into effect.
In Arizona, the story is similar, with gyms, bars and movie theaters shutting back down in July after having opened in May.
What sure seems to be the pattern is: things open up, cases rise, things close back down, cases drop. I'm not so sure that your "they aren't being more careful now than they were in early June" statement is accurate, and I think this is causing you to misattribute the cause of the drops in cases.
Miami Dade county enacted a mandatory mask mandate on July 2nd: https://www.miamidade.gov/global/initiatives/coronavirus/eme...
Palm Beach county enacted a mandatory mask mandate on June 25th: https://discover.pbcgov.org/PDF/COVID19/PBC-EO-12.pdf
Hillsborough county enacted a mandatory mask mandate on June 22nd (if I'm reading it right): https://web.archive.org/web/20200706143937/https://www.hills...
Broward county enacted a mandatory mask mandate on July 8th: https://www.broward.org/CoronaVirus/Documents/EmergencyOrder...
Orange county enacted a mandatory mask mandate on June 20th: https://www.orangecountyfl.net/portals/0/library/Emergency-S...
Pinellas county enacted a mandatory mask mandate on June 24th: https://covid19.pinellascounty.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/0...
In just this list, we're up to mask mandates that cover counties that account for 10 million people, 47% of Florida's population, and accounting for the densest population centers. A number of additional counties also enacted mask mandates, but it got a bit tedious listing them all out.
In other words, in the June-July period, mask mandates were enacted for a majority of the population of Florida.
In another comment, I critiqued this piece as being a shallow analysis. Your comment here is an example of that.
In one study showed that mask laws decreased infections by around 2% after 21 days.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/pdf/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.0...
So there's a good chance that masks don't account for the massive decrease in infections you're seeing in Florida.
I think time will tell if you're correct or OP is correct.
If mask laws are lifted, and infection rate still continues to decrease, that means masks are ineffective and OP is correct.
If mask laws are lifted and infection rates increase again that means you are correct as masks did have an effect.
And even if mask laws are lifted and infection rates continue going down, it does not show that masks are ineffective nor that the OP was correct. After a mask mandate, some people will continue wearing masks and social distancing. As with immunity, the efficacy is in the numbers, with a critical mass necessary to protect the "herd".
Saying we've reached herd immunity given behavioral changes is largely meaningless, as most people do not want to continue these behavioral changes indefinitely. One of the biggest changes that you failed to acknowledge is that people are not in contact with nearly as many people in their day to day life as they were before. Working from home, kids not in school, limited social interactions, etc.
It's not herd immunity if a return to previous behaviors negates the immunity.
How long will people continue to flog the 'people are continuing to be responsible' horse?
What will it take to finally accept that there's a physiological immunity taking place giving herd immunity?
My 5th grade teacher wouldn't have accepted that as homework much less should it be a mainstream news article.
You can believe what you want though
That aside.
Your point is basically that people will continue to wear masks and social distance even if laws are lifted.
I think thats wrong as evidenced by packed beaches, college parties, and black lives protests.
People are not going to be responsible, what's stopping most of these people presently is laws...and barely.
The reason the numbers are going to continue to go down is not due to behavior it's due to physiological immunity.
But you set yourself up with an unprovable argument either way with no evidence for your claims other than 'people are responsible'.
When it's abundantly clear that people are not.
This whole article is just a gut check without real evidence.
Disney is open with drastic changes to how they operate: https://www.tampabay.com/life-culture/entertainment/theme-pa...
Beaches are outdoors and while they make look crowded, people often maintain more than 6 feet between each other at the beach anyway.
The numbers are going down in Florida because people finally got a taste of how serious it is and changed their behavior.
The fact that you keep downplaying behavioral changes and completely ignoring other changes like people working from home and schools being out shows you are wedded to your conclusion. Unfortunately, it is fundamentally flawed.
You've made a extraordinary claim, the onus is on you to back it up with extraordinary evidence. A couple graphs of new cases going down and a photo of a boardwalk (where nearly everyone is in a mask) is not sufficient to support your claim.
I've been sick twice during this time. Thought it had to be COVID, but two PCR tests and an antibody test all came back negative. Maybe the tests are flawed, sure, but it's far more likely I just had something else.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/herd-immu...
Which is actually a mischaracterization of what the previous article[1] said:
> Lipsitch predicts that within the coming year, some 40 to 70 percent of people around the world will be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19.
At no point does he mention herd immunity. So, no, he's not saying herd immunity at 40%.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/covid-vac...
Even if it were the case that half the population was naturally immune, we would want to understand why. The leading explanation at the moment is T-cells and previous exposure to other coronaviruses. Problem is, there's a good chance that previous exposures would be less likely in certain populations, like children, which could be especially problematic as we're debating sending kids back to school.
At the very least, we need more data on T-cell prevalence/reactance to SARS-CoV-2 before we can jump to the conclusion that people are already immune.
But right now, it's far more likely that we've seen drops because of the drastic measures that have been taken and the changes in daily behavior across the population.
[1]: https://zoonosen.charite.de/fileadmin/user_upload/microsites... [2]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0962-9
But that's beside the point. The real point about children is that they can spread the virus just as well, even when they don't get sick - especially since it's also really hard for at least smaller children to keep distance or wear masks.
Also, there are some signs that other cornavirus family of viruses(common colds, not covid-19) could trigger a memory with these t cells, this is a possibility why some have extreme cases and others show no signs of sickness[2]. Couple these points with data showing 40% of people who contract the virus are asymptomatic[3] this leads to the idea that alot more people have had the virus than what is reported, which in this case is a good thing as its closer to herd immunity(if all the above is found to be true).
[1] - https://www.businessinsider.com/long-term-coronavirus-immuni...
[2] - https://www.livescience.com/common-cold-coronaviruses-t-cell...
[3] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/08/08/asymptomati...
Coronaviruses are a member of the virus group that give us common cold and one theory is that the common cold has cross reactivity with Covid immunologically.
So there may be a huge population with built in immunity.
Sweden has had tiny amounts of deaths for weeks, New Zealand, I think Italy and some other countries as well.
It's not just the U.S. it's other countries.
Where is that number coming from? If you were talking about United States, you were off by a factor of 10! If you’re talking about the whole world, you’re still off by a factor of two! At least as far as confirmed cases goes.
We can all assume the number of actual cases is greater than the number of confirmed cases. How much greater, it’s really hard to say, especially as testing has ramped up significantly and I even know Americans who are getting multiple tests with quick responses in certain locations. So you can’t just make up a number as a guess and then use it as evidence.
Plus we are finding that traditional herd immunity (aka just let the disease rampage) may come at the cost of heart disease in a majority of cases.
That is not a "huge development". The basic workings of the immune system have been known for decades. I used to think this was common knowledge.
It's good news and nobody talks about it.
If NYC is that high - I missed that - then maybe parts of NYC are actually close to the target.
Even in your first link, the highest percent positive is the Bronx reporting 33%. Not sure where you're getting 51% from, but it very much seems like you're trying to cherry pick data to support your argument.
Oh, I see where the 68% comes from - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/nyregion/nyc-coronavirus-...
That's from one clinic, for people seeking an antibody test.
Anyway, the first link I mention is the broader dataset from all the clinics like this, so it helps smooth out anomalies. But, the big caveat in all of this is that these suffer from selection bias - it's not a randomized sampling of people in each borough. It's still useful data, but it's far from being able to tell one the incidence rate to a reasonable degree of precision. Still, many reasonable inferences one can make.
There’s an idea that is almost as oversimplified, makes a big assumption, and comes up with a much lower percentage: suppose that each person is just as likely to interact with any other given person, but that people come in two types: susceptible and naturally immune. Then the initial R0 in fact represents a more contagious disease than the first model (as the probability of infecting a susceptible contact needs to be higher for a given R0), but the disease stops increasing exponentially at a lower infection rate. In particular, once the entire susceptible population has gotten the disease, it’s over, and that’s less than 100% of people.
Both of these models are hugely oversimplified, and neither one is likely to be fully correct.
Herd immunity means that enough people are immune to drive R₀ below 1, absent other factors. So the number of infections would decrease without social distancing and without mask wearing and so on.
The reason herd immunity gets so much attention is because it is the threshold where things can go back to normal. If you redefine it to include mitigations, then you need another term for when you can reasonably safely cease those mitigations.
(Hopefully we can get herd immunity with a safe vaccine, rather than the majority of the population getting infected)
That’s an important point because the wider scientific and medical communities don’t agree with this analysis at all.
There's nothing you can say to make this person consider your viewpoint.
But like a lot of intelligent ideas now days...if it doesn't fit someone's narrative it's immediately discredited and discarded.
Only the experts who agree with the narrative are to be taken seriously.
It's become a real problem to discredit ideas that disagree with ones narrative even if they're from expert sources.
Younger males in particular are much less likely to seek treatment for a mild infection.
> What do scientists do in the face of uncertainty on the value of global interventions? Usually, they seek an answer with adequately designed and swiftly implemented clinical studies as has been partly achieved with pharmaceuticals. We consider it is unwise to infer causation based on regional geographical observations as several proponents of masks have done. Spikes in cases can easily refute correlations, compliance with masks and other measures is often variable, and confounders cannot be accounted for in such observational research.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-...
All you are effectively saying is that, given the current mitigation measures and given the current level of population immunity, R is less than 1 in these places. But, that's not really a revelation.
What one would expect is likely to be the case is that some areas have had enough exposure that it has a non-zero impact on their current R, as in NY and NJ. This means there may be more buffer to relax mitigation measures without seeing R rise above 1, but it doesn't necessarily mean they are at herd immunity.
Same with the beaches you photo'd.
People in NY/NJ are NOT hanging out together inside. They're not in schools, not in offices, etc.
So YES, they are being more careful.
- Mutation/Infectiousness changes - Behavioral changes - Testing changes (more/less/precision) - Reporting Changes (like changing all reporting from CDC) - Political interference/ Wishful thinking - Non-linearity (the virus has tagged the easier victims and is now moving slower into the more distanced population) - Seasonal patterns - Any combination of the above.
Frankly, its insanity to assume herd immunity at this point in time, especially with uncertainty about length of immune protection from primary and t-cell response.
Its a virus, it writes the rules and we barely have managed to decipher some of them, this article reads like a perverted Mission Accomplished on an aircraft carrier.
[EDIT: For major amends. Mark it so it is clear that you made a change.]
I was only suggesting that you can edit your comments. Instead of posting two comments as replies, like here, you can edit your first comment and add the second part in the same comment.
Just take a random sample of 1K NY residents and test them for antibody/t-cell presence. 1K is plenty to make a statistically significant sample size when you're suggesting the true infection rate is double digits.
Why do we NOT know what the population infection rate is? It seems relatively easy to do.
OK, but wouldn't a random sampling at least provide an answer to what pct of the population was infected at some point? That seems like a great starting point.
My guess is that at the beginning, hospitals were only testing COVID-sick patients, and as time went on testing became more widespread.
I think the flaw in the piece is the author greatly underestimates the impact of the drastic measures we've taken to get those trends down. A lot of people are working from home, kids largely aren't back in school, and many of our other contact points outside of our households have been modified to minimize the risk of transmission. Seeing what happened to Israel when they reopened schools does not bode well for the US. [2]
Edit: NYC had ~20% prevalence in mid-June [3], after they had come back down from their peak. They've had many more cases per capita than anywhere else in the US, but their new cases have been flat since then, meaning prevalence has not increased significantly. Prevalence elsewhere in the US is likely in the 5-10% range.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972...
[2] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ees8MesX0AAbDE2?format=png&name=... https://www.wsj.com/articles/israelis-fear-schools-reopened-...
[3] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/comm...
Regardless, I stand by my original point. I prefer peer-reviewed analysis. The alternative is a free-for-all where junk claims equal weight with legitimate science. Such a system is usually supported by folks whose work can’t make it through the traditional system.
For example:
> Why would Floridas numbers start to decrease if not for herd immunity? We know they aren’t being more careful. Disney land reopened and there is a police sheriff who literally made a rule that police officers and people going into the station were not allowed to wear masks.
As I mentioned in another comment:
> For example, bars opened in early June in Florida. They closed on June 26th after cases started spiking.
To miss a policy change this significant in such a piece is pretty egregious if you are claiming that this is publishable quality.
I'll assume this was a good faith effort, but the piece has many flaws and draws conclusions that aren't well supported.
You can think of all the feedback here as equivalent to the feedback submitters get from their peer reviewers. IIUC, that's the point of the website?
It depends a lot on the area. In math it is common to have a looooooooooooong review time, sometimes years if you are unlucky. In sane areas the time is much shorter and you can start to get impatient after a month without updates.
This is what "peer-reviewed analysis" has given us:
"Why Most Published Research Findings Are False"
by John P. A. Ioannidis
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
Ioannidis' paper was published in 2005, time enough for us to realize the currently "accepted" methodology does not work.
Hnrobert42 says>"The alternative is a free-for-all where junk claims equal weight with legitimate science. Such a system is usually supported by folks whose work can’t make it through the traditional system."<
If Ioannidis is right (and I think he is), science isn't working out very well. We need to find another implementation of "science" that does work - what we have is a massive failure. Not only is it wrong, it is wrong and slow.
[Aside: some of the following is sarcasm]
I'm starting to believe that much of "science" is fraudulent, a massive, circus-like free-for-all for funding that has no justification other than the egos and livelihood of those embedded in it. We need a "Savanarola of Science" to burn some "scientists" at the stake and straighten the path of "science" just as religion was cleansed in Renaissance Florence:
Girolamo Savonarola
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamo_Savonarola
[Aside aside: probably wouldn't solve the problem but likely would do much good by culling out (mostly) from the bottom 50%. Maybe rinse, repeat...]
Not to mention that a lot of harm can be done during the time it takes to figure out the truth.
NY has 1,300 deaths per million, and NJ has 1,800 deaths per million currently. Let's take the average and say that they reached herd immunity with 1,500 deaths per million.
Great.
For the entire US (320 million), that implies 480,000 deaths before reaching herd immunity.
Does 480,000 deaths sound good to anyone?
The current death toll is around 170K, so we are talking a 300k difference.
Deaths associated with loss of work and restricted access to healthcare will certainly exceed that by the time we lift restrictions. So the sooner we get to 480k, the better.
That said, I don't have much confidence in the 480k number.
In the bay area only 3% of deaths are due to covid.
It's a common type of tongue-in-cheek comment, one can find in tons of writings. "Blame X who inspired me to study Y, and led me down this path".
There's no actual blame, it's just praise for his professor (and that's immediately understood as such).
There's nothing "really really strange" about it, and there's no "weird emphasis" (it's a mere passing line in a big post). If anything, your pointing it out is weird.
This is idiotic. Rather than “herd immunity” one could, in fact, be seeing the impact of large numbers of people having been scared straight simply avoiding further contact.
The author’s conjecture could be correct but they offer no proof.
Does Belarus have herd immunity? No lockdown, no social distancing to speak of, basically nobody wears a mask, er, anywhere. I see people in the centre of Minsk having face-to-face conversations all day long. And now there are tens of thousands of people protesting/yelling/hugging each other without masks.
I very much hope the answer is yes and these countries do have something close to herd immunity. But that feels like wishful thinking.
If that works I wonder if such exposure is evenly distributed around the world or if it's clustered in certain populations?
FWIW here in Australia Melbourne has had a fairly significant outbreak but Sydney hasn't, from what I can tell it's basically dumb luck it didn't happen the other way around.
Sweden is a master manipulator with their stats. Look at their daily death graph, which does not in any way resemble the daily infection graph. They seem to have small second wave right now BTW.
They may have herd immunity, and there is nothing embarrassing about this term. What is more interesting though, is how Finland in Norway have actually almost zero deaths these days, yet nowhere near the seroprevalence of Sweden.
Or we are all about to die...?
Often if I was running on the sidewalk and encountered another person they would cross to the other side of the road (or I would).
On my street there were 3-4 parties every week. I work late so loud music didn't effect my sleep much.
Generally I felt like people kept their distance although I think compliance is a big issue with lockdowns everywhere.
Longer explanation here (not mine): http://martinhillortiz.blogspot.com/2020/08/coronavirus-case...
It also suggests that even 10-50M vaccines (in the US) can make an enormous impact and this thing may be over (as a severe widespread issue) in 2020.
I'm excited to see the next 4-6 weeks of data on this.
Sadly US will not be one of those.
It's dangerous to make generalizations like "every $foo that makes it to the front page of HN". Such perceptions are notoriously subject to bias, for example the bias where people are more likely to notice (and put more weight on) posts that they dislike/disagree with than posts they like/agree with. If you think about it, that phenomenon would predict that all sides feel like the site is biased against their perspective, which is exactly what we observe.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...