Or...we can cinch up the old nutsack, wear a mask, wash your hands, and get back to work.
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I need the math on that...
If we assume the high end numbers of asymtomatic untested people that have had Covid at 10x the positives, that's ~43 million people.
If we assume the lowest end of people needed for Herd Immunity of 40%.
There are ~330 million people in the US.
We need ~132 million infected.
That's 3x the number of people infected now.....
That's 3 million new cases a day....
And those are the best case numbers....
If it's 2x infected per positive cases and 80% for Herd Immunity, we'd need 30 times the number infected right now....
Cinch up the rucksack, put one foot in front of the other and drive on.
At this point, such an approach may be our only realistic option. Like they say, it?s too late to close the gate because the dogs already out of the pen.
Actually, the economy is getting wrecked. Recent data is indicating the recovery is stalling, and I imagine the Fed will say as much tomorrow. And if the Fed is admitting it, that mean's it's even worse. Hopefully with the recent downturn in Covid infections in the hot zone states, the recovery can pick back up, but until people start flying and traveling again, it's going to be a long tough slog. And we still haven't seen the worst from the banks and commercial real estate fallout.
This guy says maybe at 20%
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.the...rticle/614035/
Anyone thinking herd immunity is a possibility in the near future is simply wrong. Herd immunity is being used as an excuse for our inability to handle this shit.
I meant MS alone, but the same can apply to America.
The cdc last week said best estimate of actual case count is somewhere between 6 and 24 times the confirmed test count. But I'm fine with going with the x10 factor. MS is at 56k, x10 puts that at 560k.
The below article cites studies that saw herd immunity for covid setting in at 20%. That is the case in places like NY and NJ that reached 20%. Florida's daily case count has been falling since July 17, and it just yesterday got to 20% using the x10 factor. I suspect its case average will keep falling. Alabama 7 day case count has been falling for 11 days and it is approaching 20% in the next few weeks.
Even at 25%, or 750k, we should be there in less than a month using the x10 factor (meaning 75k confirmed cases). We'll see.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/614035/
Interesting read. Thanks for the link.
But my takeaway is that nobody knows and that the popular notion of "natural herd immunity" seems to be missing the mark. A couple of the people quoted in that article who give numeric "herd immunity" estimates are mathematicians. One of those mathematicians (who studies chaos theory in Scotland) thinks it could be as low as 20%, but even then she admits that her calculations seem optimistic. Another mathematician, this time from Stockholm, thinks 20% is unlikely but that ~40% could be possible. The article next says that an epidemiologist at Harvard says that he thinks the range is anywhere from 20% to 60%, but that the lower end of that is more unlikely than the higher end. And finally, the article quotes a couple of other people -- biologists who study epidemiology and infectious disease modelling -- who cast doubt on the current lip service being played to "natural herd immunity" in popular discourse:
Quote:
What's important to [one scientist], rather, is that people are not misled by the idea of herd immunity. In the context of vaccination, herd-immunity thresholds are relatively fixed and predictable. In the context of an ongoing pandemic, thinking of this threshold as some static concept can be dangerously misleading.
"During the last few months, we've started talking about 'natural herd immunity' and what would be used to block future waves," says Shweta Bansal, an associate professor [of biology] at Georgetown University who studies how social interactions influence infectious diseases. She worries that many people conflate academic projections about reaching herd immunity with a "let it run wild" fatalism. "My view is that trying to take that route would lead to mass death and devastation," she says.
Indeed, letting a new, rapidly spreading virus run unchecked in a population with zero immunity could mean that nearly everyone in a given location gets infected. With vaccination, the herd-immunity threshold is vital to guiding policy and medical practice: If about 90 percent of people are vaccinated against measles, for example, then, accounting for waning antibodies and variable immune responses, it's safe to assume that 60 or 70 percent are protected and the population isn't at risk of an outbreak. But that concept doesn't clearly apply when a highly contagious virus hits a population with zero immunity. Left totally unchecked, Bansal says, the percentage of infected people could go even higher than 70 percent.
By definition, dynamic systems don't deal in static numbers. Any such herd-immunity threshold is context-dependent and constantly shifting. It will change over time and space. It varies depending on the basic reproduction number -- the average number of new infections caused by an infected individual. During the early stage of an outbreak of a new virus (to which no one has immunity), that number will be higher. The number is skewed by super-spreading events, such as when one person in a choir infects 50 others. And the number in a dense city such as New York should be expected to be higher than that in rural Alaska. "Within certain populations that lack heterogeneity, like within a nursing home or school, you may even see the herd-immunity threshold be above 70 percent," Bansal says. If a population average led people in those settings to get complacent, there could be needless death.
I hope she's right, too. Her calculations are the most optimistic ones among those that they interviewed in the article, though. The other mathematician and the epidemiologist thought otherwise. And I'd be interested to know her take on the two other scientists who cast doubt upon the concept of conflating vaccine-based herd immunity theory with projections during a pandemic where most people don't start out as immune.
But again, yeah, I'm all for kicking this crap sooner than later.
Random aside since the optimistic lady was Scottish: It was National Scotch Day on Monday. I celebrated with some Compass Box. Solid holiday.
And this is the person being platformed by POTUS and his minions, and defended here. Tarantino couldn't write a script this good. It's like we're literally living in Idiocracy.
https://i.ibb.co/GCBgFM3/si-1.png
https://i.ibb.co/QHZWrPX/si-2.png
I guess if we quit testing it will just disappear, like magic?
Locally (Madison County, Alabama) has seen a sharp, 65% or so, decrease in Covid cases after three weeks of mandatory masking. Masks work.
Ohio has just banned use of hydroxychloroquine for corona.