Breaking the curve (not EQ related)

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by IblisTheMage, Apr 2, 2020.

  1. IblisTheMage Augur


    I do not believe in herd immunity as a strategy in this case. The danish doctors that are proposing it are in disagreement with WHO, and with leading epidemic fighters, and demonstrate lack of understanding of the math behind. They are thinking Flu, and are very bad at taking in learnings from recent epidemic cases like bird and swine flu. Luckily for us our “CDC” are not as conservative as the sweedes, that is a tragedy unfolding before our eyes.

    R0 is too high. With an R0 of 2.6 (in Freedom units, 2,6 in Denmark :) ), you will need an incredibly high immunization percentage. 50% immunization would not be enough, it would (if standing alone) bring R0 down with half, to 1.3, which is still way above 1. 75% is a more likely number. It would cost between 0.75% to 3% of the population. The hospitalization rate seem to be quite high, so if the mortality rate has to be in the low end, in order to not overwhelm the hospitals, the time it would take in a highly speculative “controlled” scenario to get enough infected would be much longer than it will take for the vaccine to arrive.

    It is never going to happen as a strategy. No government of ours will take such a road, and you have to be very detached from the political reality as a doctor to propose herd immunity as an active strategy. It took quite some arguing at home to convince my wife. She is a medical doctor, phd, and she is really good at her job. However, she has not been working with these epidemics beefore, and that is core to the issue.

    Herd immunity might happen by accident, or rather, by catastrophe. Maybe Italy, Spain, UK, and Sweeden will get to Herd immunity. Or maybe they will just loose 10-20% of their elder population, the virus mutates (because so many are infected), or the immunity wears off, and they end up the same place where they started.

    We will get vaccines before herd immunity. We must...

    (The situation in Sweeden is that they have not locked down, and are accellerating into the epidemic, many daily deaths and they now have Covid 19 on a large number of their elder care facilities).
    code-zero likes this.
  2. Nennius Curmudgeon

  3. Nennius Curmudgeon

  4. svann Augur

    NY is also seeing the peak. Last 2 days death count has declined a bit. This would mean we are at the halfway point, or just about.
  5. Jaylnn Gnomish Bog Jogger

    The death numbers are a little misleading for new York though. All home deaths were tested for covid 19 up until a few days ago. They announced they have stopped testing any deaths at home because of lack of resources, so the numbers could be hundreds higher they have admitted.

    The actual quote is

    An estimated additional 180 - 195 deaths per day occurring at home in New York City due to COVID-19 are not being counted in the official figures. "Early on in this crisis we were able to swab people who died at home, and thus got a coronavirus reading. But those days are long gone. We simply don't have the testing capacity for the large numbers dying at home. Now only those few who had a test confirmation *before* dying are marked as victims of coronavirus on their death certificate. This almost certainly means we are undercounting the total number of victims of this pandemic," said Mark Levine, Chair of New York City Council health committee

    Now i do hope that the peak is soon, but we arent quite there yet
  6. Barraind Grumpy Old Bastage

    Currently, every actual situation disagrees with the WHO and leading epidemiologists, to the point where the UK's "leading expert" had to testify in front of parlament that maaaaaaaaaaybe he was only off by a factor of 30, but its not his fault, he just does what the data tells him he should do, and the current US tzar of numptys, after decades of this being his only job, is off somewhere between 10 and 40 times on his FOURTH revised model, which is still the closest theyve managed to get.

    The current modeling isnt even working for the numbers on the day theyre releasing the models. The cumulative daily hospitalization number on their LOWEST predictions are tens of times higher than actual hospitalizations, and their daily rate isnt even in the same plane of existence, let alone the same ballpark. People who analyze research data for a living are going "this makes 0 sense and you're panicking the world in ways you absolutely shouldnt".

    Lets not forget that the current guidelines from the CDC say that if a doctor THINKS you had any signs of respiratory infection, they require 0 testing to list that as your cause of death, and are required to list that as your cause of death regardless of what killed you. The actual numbers are even lower than the numbers we're getting which are significantly lower than the predictions that have gone into the panicked nonsense.
  7. IblisTheMage Augur

    Latest update from Denmark is that daycare, kindergarden, and classes 0-6 will start in school again after easter. (Yes we have a class 0... we even have a 00, which is the last few months of the previous school year... I can’t explain why :) ). So a partial loosening of the lockdown.

    Norway will follow the same model more or less.

    Not a fan, I have 3 kids in that range (and 3 above).

    But we will have to see how it goes... I will likely keep the toddler home. They pick up EVERYTHING at that age...
  8. Nennius Curmudgeon

  9. Graves Elder

    Just as point of fact immunisation does not change R0, as by definition R0 is the reproductive rate in a population where all individuals are susceptible.

    Immunisation decreases R, not R0.
    IblisTheMage likes this.
  10. Herodotus Augur

  11. Nennius Curmudgeon

  12. Nennius Curmudgeon

    Adapting to the crisis.

    [IMG]
  13. Nennius Curmudgeon

  14. Tanols Augur

    Any scientist worth their salt will tell you they just don't have enough data on this virus. It is still unknown for example if having it once makes you immune or whether such immunity stops you from spreading it around. So this sucker could just keep circling the country / globe and returning to visit us again and again.

    2022 is a reasonable estimate of time to gather such data, develop a vaccine, and get majority of people vaccinated.
  15. Nennius Curmudgeon

    Mini necro time.

    [IMG]

    I went for walk today. Two people walked towards me without masks. I almost crossed the street to stay away from them. I adjusted my mask and brazened it out. All seems to be well...for now.

    Reality sucks.

    Now back to grinding a boxed alt to 115. Sweet digital non reality FTW.