Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[Mnementh]

numberwang said:

SvennoJ said:

Where do you get the idea of herd immunity? Less deaths doesn't mean herd immunity at all.

What happened is that those more at risk and the elderly are actually taken precautions, basically have been hiding for the past 5 months like us. The average age of infected people has dropped dramatically while treatment has also gotten better. Less people with severe symptoms and better options for those that need help. Mobility trends are still far below normal, many people are working from home or lost their job. Masks are helping and more frequently used. However Covid-19 is on the rise again in Europe and keeps popping back up everywhere else as well. Even Italy is increasing again, no herd immunity.

The only reason we're not at millions of deaths is because of actions taken. People are not as stupid as their governments and those at risk do look out for themselves. Deaths are still on the rise world wide, over 40K last week, 752K total as of yesterday, still a 2.4% CFR. Europe's CFR is 1.7% atm.

I can't address all of the speculations but time will tell anyway. Covid as a lethal disease is not on the rise in Italy. There might be some rare lethal cases left for people who kept hiding in a vacuum container but no second wave or anything. CFR numbers are biased bc we are only looking at those few who had no immunity beforehand and they were indeed at a higher risk of dying but that is not representative of the overall population.

There were multiple studies showing that >50% of the uninfected population have existing T-cells against Covid-19, probably a cross-immunity from common corona viruses. You don't need 100% coverage for herd immunity so existing immunity and some degree of exposure will stop the spread of the virus.

Importantly, we detected SARS-CoV-2-reactive CD4+T cells in 40%–60% of unexposed individuals, suggesting cross-reactive T cell recognition between circulating ‘‘common cold’’ coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2.

https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30610-3.pdf?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867420306103%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

 

Deaths are usually lagging behind infections, as people die only after weeks on the ICU. Infections are *slightly* rising since two weeks, so the death rate will not increase for another two weeks or so.