Scientific consensus on the Covid-19 pandemic: we need to act now | Hacker News Reader

Scientific consensus on the Covid-19 pandemic: we need to act now

thelancet.com

29 pointsboshomi20 comments

This is a political piece. Science is best when it stays clear. Try to find facts, the let societies figure out how to best respond.

Scientists predict letting COVID run rampant would cause all cause age adjusted deaths to be about 805 per 100,000, slightly under 2005's number of 815. The world is literally safer with COVID running loose than the year 2005.

Jumping from that conclusion to policy conclusions, that is politics.

This piece fails to show any cost benefit analysis which is insane because that should've the entire point of determining steps to take.

Back in February when the first fatality rates were reported, I did a calculation for total worldwide deaths assuming that we'd fail to stop the spread of COVID (like most prior pandemics) and it'd eventually reach herd immunity levels on par with prior uncontrolled pandemics. The number I came up with was ~30 million deaths (1% fatality rate, with 40% of the world infected).

While that sounds like a lot, that's still less than half the number of people who die every year normally (~1%). My reaction to that number was "tragic, but civilization will survive this just fine". Since then things have only improved, at least from a medical perspective.

>(like most prior pandemics) and it'd eventually reach herd immunity levels on par with prior uncontrolled pandemics.

What prior pandemic eventually reached herd immunity?

To my understanding such thing has never happened, the rare ones that did happen were with human intervention.

The 2009 swine flu pandemic is one example.

We didn't actually realize how widely it had spread until later when antigen testing found that 11%-21% of the world population had been infected. Given that precautions weren't being taken to stop the spread of it, that % has to be similar to the real world herd immunity threshold. It's also a % similar to what seasonal flu infects every year, and we don't take any real precautions to stop that from spreading. In the end it turned out that the 2009 swine flu was much less deadly than originally thought, leading to significant controversy in the medical community, with it even being called a fake pandemic: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/01/facing-inquiry-who-s...

Note how the wiki page for the 2009 swine flu pandemic lists multiple uncontrolled pandemics with estimated %'s infected in the double digits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic

Keep in mind that human societies aren't the uniform mixing vat that the theoretical herd immunity equations assume: the exposure graph of society isn't unform at all. So outside special cases with very high degrees of mixing and exposure, it's no surprise that these pandemics lose steam long before the theoretical maximums. Conversely, herd immunity isn't a magic barrier: infections can go beyond herd immunity thresholds in situations where the rate at which infections are happening is high.

But isn't H1N1 still present, even though it's limited to few spot like poultry farms? And it's nowhere near as contagious as this Coronavirus?

>Conversely, herd immunity isn't a magic barrier: infections can go beyond herd immunity thresholds in situations where the rate at which infections are happening is high.

But this is kind of my point, without human intervention the virus is arguably still around even though not in at the pandemic level.

Basically we had "luck" that these virus haven't followed a mutation path that spins them into a pandemic, but they are still around and they infect people. That's why live stock farms are starting to be questioned as a potential factory for pandemics.

> But isn't H1N1 still present, even though it's limited to few spot like poultry farms? And it's nowhere near as contagious as this Coronavirus?

Re-read what I said in my comment: the 2009 H1N1 "Swine flu" pandemic infected an estimated 11-21% of the entire human population. That's what after-the-fact antigen testing found out. The thing is, it turned out to be much less deadly than originally thought. So much so that the WHO was accused of effectively faking a pandemic. This isn't conspiracy theory material either: reputable scientists in the medical community were making these accusations. Leading to, for instance, a EU panel being convened to investigate what went wrong: https://healthcare-in-europe.com/en/news/european-parliament...

Far from being limited to a "few poultry farms" since the first 2009 pandemic, (H1N1)pdm09 continues to circulate, and was even the dominant subtype of influenza in the 2018/2019 flu season in the US: https://f1000research.com/articles/8-141

I would have thought the 1918 flu must have done. Eventually people stopped dying of it, and it's not because there was a vaccine.

Well influenza is still around, H1N1 is still around, and we have vaccinations for it, so I think it never "ended".

Infection with one strain of flu doesn't provide immunity to the other strains of flu, even ones in the same family (different H1N1s, etc). That's why you need a new vaccine every year. That doesn't mean herd immunity wasn't eventually reached for the strain that killed people in 1918. If everyone is either dead or recovered, the virus is simply not going to spread like it did when it was new.

Funny how a presumed engineer lectures scientists about getting political by getting political himself. Aren't you supposed to let societies figure out how to best respond as well? Would you like the authors of this article to do all your code reviews going forward?

Scientist can and should be political, but they shouldn't claim their opinion is a "scientific consensus".

This seems to be a stark counterpoint to the Great Barrington declaration, and pointedly lays out the argument against herd immunity, with a call to sign the John Snow memo. Which only seems prudent since winter is actually coming, and conditions will only become more challenging.

https://www.johnsnowmemo.com

Just to note, they are referring to this John Snow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow, not the George RR Martin character.

If there's anything the past four years have taught me, it's that our political system is in such shambles that if "we" need to "act" to fix anything then it's safe to assume the problem will not be fixed. Suddenly, the origins of techno-utopianism and the general attitude that we need to invent our way out of everything make a lot more sense.

»The evidence is very clear: controlling community spread of COVID-19 is the best way to protect our societies and economies until safe and effective vaccines and therapeutics arrive within the coming months. We cannot afford distractions that undermine an effective response; it is essential that we act urgently based on the evidence.«[1]

[1] from article

Quite an assumption that vaccines and therapeutics will arrive within "the coming months" (weasel words if ever I heard them).

> infection can lead to persisting illness, including in young, previously healthy people (ie, long COVID).

It's hilarious. Even a dozen of scientists didn't manage to actually provide evidence that "long COVID" exists in significant numbers. All they cite is an editorial.[1]

> like other seasonal coronaviruses, SARS-CoV-2 is capable of re-infecting people who have already had the disease, but the frequency of re-infection is unknown.

In other words: It happened a couple of times, but there is no evidence it happens frequently enough to worry about. Millions of people have been infected, of course edge cases occur.

> Such a strategy would not end the COVID-19 pandemic but result in recurrent epidemics

How exactly can we get recurrent epidemics when the pandemic hasn't ended yet?

> It would also place an unacceptable burden [...]

What's acceptable is subjective, there can't be a scientific consensus on it.

> health-care workers, many of whom have died from COVID-19 or experienced trauma as a result of having to practise disaster medicine.

Lockdowns (including those euphemistically called "restrictions") cause trauma too, and they affect much more people. Psychologists are critical of lockdowns and social isolation.[2][3]

> Such an approach also risks further exacerbating the socioeconomic inequities and structural discriminations already laid bare by the pandemic.

The pandemic is at fault? Not the lockdowns? Too bad the authors don't provide any evidence.

> Japan, Vietnam, and New Zealand, to name a few countries, have shown that robust public health responses can control transmission,

The island nation of Japan has defeated Covid. The island nation of New Zealand is even more successful, having defeated Covid twice so far. Vietnam is a single-party state and shouldn't be a role model either.

> the endemic transmission that would be the consequence of waning immunity would present a risk to vulnerable populations for the indefinite future.

Apparently we have no idea when safe and effective vaccines arrive we can use to protect our societies and economies, which supports the authors' arguments.

> The evidence is very clear: controlling community spread of COVID-19 is the best way to protect our societies and economies until safe and effective vaccines and therapeutics arrive within the coming months.

Now we do know when safe and effective vaccines arrive we can use to protect our societies and economies, which also supports the authors' arguments.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02796-2 [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53037702 [3] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/4/14/doctors-note-th...

> The island nation of Japan has defeated Covid.

That's not even true. Japan's case numbers and reported deaths clearly show COVID-19 hasn't gone away, and cases and deaths are rising right now: https://covidly.com/graph?country=Japan&state=#new

Quite likely they're in a steady, slow, march towards herd immunity, just like almost everywhere else.

Hope this is not as ineffectual as the scientific consensus on climate change, or the scientific consensus on the shape of the earth.

Yeah, fuck the economy, who needs food and shelter?

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