Neverending Covid-19 Coronavirus

projects.fivethirtyeight.com

Where The Latest COVID-19 Models Think We're Headed — And Why They Disagree

We’re tracking 13 infectious disease models to understand where the coronavirus death toll could be headed in the coming weeks
projects.fivethirtyeight.com projects.fivethirtyeight.com

Good read on all the different models.

One of the things making huge differences in the projections is many models assume state stay at home orders will continue indefinitely. Yet 30 states have no reopened to some capacity.
 
GritNGlitter said:
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Per Wikipedia, herd immunity is a form of protection from infectious disease that occurs when a large percentage of a population becomes immune to an infection, whether through previous infections or by being vaccinated.

Per me, ideally this would occur via vaccination. Certain people with agendas, however, will frame the conversation as vaccines being the only way to achieve herd immunity. These are people who must do so because bullying others is the only way they can convey a message. Intelligent conversation is not in their repetoir.
 
High Rant District said:
Per Wikipedia, herd immunity is a form of protection from infectious disease that occurs when a large percentage of a population becomes immune to an infection, whether through previous infections or by being vaccinated.

Per me, ideally this would occur via vaccination. Certain people with agendas, however, will frame the conversation as vaccines being the only way to achieve herd immunity. These are people who must do so because bullying others is the only way they can convey a message. Intelligent conversation is not in their repetoir.
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Indymisanthrope said:
Right, but the entire concept hinges on the fact that the ones with immunity therefore provide protection to the minority of the population that does not have it, by mitigating transmission. Achieving herd immunity in a human society raises the very question: how do you do so while *effectively* protecting the people who will inevitably end up as part of the percentage of the population who can't afford to acquire immunity through the virus itself? Even if we all agree that more extreme measures, like stay at home orders, are reasonable for retirement communities and nursing homes, how do we account for this:



Tons of vulnerable/at-risk people who can't isolate from non-vulnerable people due to a wide variety of circumstances (cultural, financial, housing density, previously unidentified underlying conditions, etc.) would basically be told to take their lives in their own hands and hope for the best because society will consider them expendable. How do we tell America "many of you will die avoidable deaths" in favor of saving costs? Bullying aside, that is what would happen, is it not?

And that's all *if* immunity to COVID-19 works the way we hope it does.
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I have been going through a ton of tests this year to figure out what's up with me. They think it's an autoimmune disease, but we're still running tests. So what happens when a person, like me, with an autoimmune disorder gets COVID-19? We don't really know. I could be just fine, or I could end up in the hospital with blood clots in my lungs, because I've already got elevated platelet levels. And here's where the whole idea of herd immunity via virus contraction isn't going to work for me and a lot of other people. Because this is such a new virus that has never been in humans before, we cannot just guess who would be asymptomatic. We cannot safely send people out into the world to get infected because we don't know who is at risk. We have some ideas, but we are still trying to tease out the biological mechanisms regarding what this virus does to the human body.

I think the wiki definition specifically states "protection from infectious disease". The idea of letting people go out and contract the virus to see if they have a negative reaction isn't really protecting people. In order to actually create herd immunity, we will likely have to create a vaccine since we have not yet defined what makes asymptomatic people asymptomatic and thus, we cannot effectively define who is "at risk". Until we have this definition, it's extremely irresponsible to create herd immunity via infection.
 
538 has a new podcast dedicated to talking to scientists about Covid-19

it’s called Podcast 19. You know where to find it if your interested.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
www.cnn.com

Frontier Airlines will let you pay to keep the middle seat empty on your flight

The middle seat on a plane is already an undesirable spot. Soon passengers on Frontier Airlines flights will be able to pay extra to keep the middle seat of their row empty.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com
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so they're passing the opportunity to pay for an empty middle seat onto the customer when they should have all middle seats empty by default???

capitalism is out of their goddamn minds, let them fail.

 
Indymisanthrope said:
Hmm...so the trick now will be to book a seat in a row where the middle seat is unavailable, and hope that it means somebody else has already paid for it to be empty?
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Frontier is the worst they would probably charge both parties for that “accommodation”. I am surprised that don’t have Pay toilet yet on Frontier flights.
 
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Speaking of temperature checks,

I was just reading about someone's office that is now requiring everyone entering the building to have a temp check.

This guy left for a bike ride on his lunch break today to exercise. When he came back he registered a slight fever and was refused reentry.

He waited 10 minutes, tried again, and look at that. No fever.
 
High Rant District said:
Per Wikipedia, herd immunity is a form of protection from infectious disease that occurs when a large percentage of a population becomes immune to an infection, whether through previous infections or by being vaccinated.

Per me, ideally this would occur via vaccination. Certain people with agendas, however, will frame the conversation as vaccines being the only way to achieve herd immunity. These are people who must do so because bullying others is the only way they can convey a message. Intelligent conversation is not in their repetoir.
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There is no evidence to suggest that once you've had it you are immune from forever catching it again. Scientists think that you are immune from catching SARS for approximately 1-2 years depending on initial viral load and other factors. If this is similar then without a vaccine we'll be looking to achieve herd immunity every year or so.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Well the good news is that we can put a bunch of people back to work by hiring them to take temperatures and ensure masking at building entry points, and more people as security guards to protect the temperature takers, and more people to take the temperatures of the security guards, and more people to protect the lives of the security guards' temperature takers from the temperature takers' security guards...
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So turtles all the way down?
 
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