Whats the test capacity per day at the moment?
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Questions remain over whether COVID-19 recovery will guarantee immunity: Is reinfection still possible?
This is being widely reposted by sources with a strong interest in, well, a certain specific political outcome.
They claim there’s already herd immunity established so precautions are unnecessary, if not being used for, again, political purposes
The herd immunity claim misses how people come to be tested — usually they feel sick, or have been exposed.
So the 30 to 50 percent percentage claimed by those spreading the story doesn’t apply to the whole population.
Even if the original story is reliable.
In my county of 2 million, just 10.5% of those tested have tested positive.
I assume this is with PCR testing however, which just tests if you have the virus now and not whether you have antibodies from a prior infection.
That said, my understanding is that serum antibody testing has not been widely rolled out yet. Almost nobody has been tested using that method so far…. certainly not enough to conclude that 30-50% of the population has already had it and is immune.
Here’s another debunking worth knowing about:
Whilst the telegraph is usually regarded here in the UK as a factual source, I’m sceptical of some of their online articles. Not much real information there without subscribing, which to me almost puts it in the clickbait category.
With regards to returning to normal, I don’t think anyone in the at risk category will be getting a taste of freedom anytime soon.
Here in the UK it’s estimated that by the time infection rates are at a manageable level, approximately 5 million people will have been infected, which still leaves 60 million + as fuel for the virus. Until testing is ramped up significantly it’s hard to see how anything approaching normal life can resume. A huge number of antibody tests have been rejected by the UK government due to inaccuracy.
My sister is currently unable to continue her work as an occupational therapist, so is now working in an NHS hospital with stroke patients, some of whom have now tested positive for covid19. She was sent home earlier this week with a temperature.
I’m also still working, because as a roadside breakdown technician, I am classed as a key worker. I’ve had a dry cough for over a week now, but it seems to be abating now, so I’ll be surprised if I’ve not had it. Same for my youngest daughter (19).
A vaccine is unlikely within the next year, unless the university of Oxford come good.
Peaked in what? Peak in new daily cases or deaths means the peak of the rate of increase (“acceleration”), not the peak in the number of active cases.
The number of the active cases has to come down, and/or the infected strictly quarantined, before relaxing restriction. Otherwise, those large numbers of infected will spread the virus like crazy, undermining the isolation efforts of these past weeks. Makes sense, right?
Sometimes I wonder if my posts are invisible. I already addressed this and more.
Thanks, good article.
I think they when they said yesterday might be the “peak”, they were referring to new daily cases. The peak simply means that the number of cases that came in that day has plateau’d and is no longer going up exponentially.
They could be wrong however. The models rely on a lot of assumptions that are often incorrect. Also, even if yesterday was the “peak”, that’s likely of just the first wave.
A pandemic like this is likely to have multiple successive waves each with their own exponential growth curve and peak. The 1918 flu had 2 or 3 waves. The initial wave was much less severe than the second wave.
Good graphical representation of confirmed cases and mortality rates by country:
Yes, the new daily cases may have peaked, but that still means the cases are coming in at the fastest rate yet. It’s just that the rate is not also still increasing.
Imagine a car that starts to roll downhill, picking up speed. You’d want to hit the brakes to slow that acceleration, but you wouldn’t release the brakes when you hit the maximum speed, but rather when the the speed is brought under control. And even then, you might still apply some pressure, or go on and off the brakes. That also illustrates how successive waves and the corresponding responses might work.
This is my favorite, most comprehensive and up to date informational guide of what is happening around the world, country by country with diversified stats.
,total cases,deaths per million, cases per million,new deaths, ect. ect.
Interesting… That’s not a typo? The second wave was much worse than the first one?
That is correct. I don’t have a source for you, but I watched a webinar on the 1918 flu last week and the authority on the subject said the first wave was relatively mild compared to the 2nd (fall 1918).
Answering the PM I just got that begins
Ordinarily I eschew carrying arguments from threads over to PMs, figuring the site rules apply regardless.
But to answer that one question:
’oogle the claims made in that phlebotomist’s name and reflect on the type of sites that are echoing it, and the claims about herd immunity they make based on it.
You can look this stuff up.
If you don’t see political spin in the way it’s being propagated, I’ll be surprised.
As to the rest of the PM — sorry, I do not intend to carry this discussion over from the thread.
Air it in public, under the site rules, or back calmly away from the keyboard.
I’m not sure either, any more. But a month ago it’s all I heard on the news. Flatten the curve, flatten the curve, and once it’s flattened we can open everything back up again. Here’s an article from USA Today, March 11. Note this quote: “In flattening the curve, the goal is not so much to reduce the total number of people getting sick but to slow the rate at which they do.” And the reason given was hospital capacity. Here’s NBC News saying, “While the virus can’t be stopped in its tracks, in can be slowed. Stopping it from spreading quickly will help ensure that health care systems can cope with the strain of the outbreak.” People all over the internet took up this idea and used it to hammer on opponents of shutdown, promising that it would be brief. Short duration was the general consensus. If Fauci didn’t say this outright, he at least encouraged the thought.
Well, the curve is flattening and hospital capacity has been and is being enhanced. Therefore we should be able very soon to return to some semblance of normality and business as usual. In a couple of weeks, seniors and those with preexisting conditions could continue to voluntarily self-isolate, while the rest of us return to work.
Problem is, the mantra has changed. Now the MSM has abandoned the position that we’re just “slowing the rate” for the sake of the medical community. Now they push the idea that we’re in lockdown to save mega-numbers of lives by “beating the virus”. People are saying, “We have to wait for a vaccine.” Wait 18 months? I’d say good luck, but luck won’t be nearly enough to save us if we stay like this for 18 months, or a year, or even another 3 months.
The curve that needs flattening is the “Number of Covid-19 patients in a hospital”. That lags about 2-4 weeks behind the initial diagnosis. So breathe deep…