At this point our only option is to hope that we get to herd immunity soon through natural infection. I predict we are going to see a lot more deaths but with a vaccine at least a year out and social distancing orders falling apart I don't see any other options.
I hope so but given what we saw with Hydroxychloroquine I'm somewhat skeptical. Fauci said Remdisivir shows promise wasn't there a leak not that long ago that said Remdisivir didn't show much promise? Theraupeutics are treatments but not cures too.
that leak was a partial set of incomplete data but that drug is not even the most promising of many as of today. treatment is not a cure, but could decrease severity, hospital stays, and deaths substantially.
We certainly will be passing the 100,000 death mark in the coming months. I do not know what the future will hold over the next 6 months..... but it does feel like some people are just becoming indifferent to the fact that basically 1,000 people a day are dying from COVID19 in the USA.
Don't bet on it https://www.sciencealert.com/why-herd-immunity-will-not-save-us-from-the-covid-19-pandemic ... Herd immunity is an epidemiological concept that describes the state where a population – usually of people – is sufficiently immune to a disease that the infection will not spread within that group. In other words, enough people can't get the disease – either through vaccination or natural immunity – that the people who are vulnerable are protected. For example, let's think about mumps. Mumps is a very infectious disease that, while relatively benign, is very uncomfortable and sometimes causes nasty life-long complications. It's also vaccine-preventable, with a highly effective vaccine that has made the disease incredibly rare in the modern age. Mumps has a basic reproductive rate (R0) of 10-12, which means that in a population which is entirely susceptible – meaning no one is immune to the virus – every person who is infected will pass the disease on to 10-12 people. This means that without vaccination roughly 95 percent of the population gets infected over time. But even with something that is this infectious, there are still some people – 5 percent of the population – who don't get sick, because once everyone else is immune there's no one to catch the disease from. We can increase that number by vaccinating, because vaccination makes people immune to infection, but it also stops infected people passing on the disease to everyone that they otherwise would. If we can get enough people immune to the disease, then it will stop spreading in the population. And that's herd immunity, in a nutshell. For mumps, you need 92 percent of the population to be immune for the disease to stop spreading entirely. This is what's known as the herd immunity threshold. COVID-19 is, fortunately, much less infectious than mumps, with an estimated R0 of roughly 3. With this number, the proportion of people who need to be infected is lower but still high, sitting at around 70 percent of the entire population. Which brings us to why herd immunity could never be considered a preventative measure. If 70 percent of your population is infected with a disease, it is by definition not prevention. How can it be? Most of the people in your country are sick! And the hopeful nonsense that you can reach that 70 percent by just infecting young people is simply absurd. If only young people are immune, you'd have clusters of older people with no immunity at all, making it incredibly risky for anyone over a certain age to leave their house lest they get infected, forever. It's also worth thinking about the repercussions of this disastrous scenario – the best estimates put COVID-19 infection fatality rate at around 0.5-1 percent. If 70 percent of an entire population gets sick, that means that between 0.35-0.7 percent of everyone in a country could die, which is a catastrophic outcome. With something like 10 percent of all infections needing to be hospitalised, you'd also see an enormous number of people very sick, which has huge implications for the country as well. The sad fact is that herd immunity just isn't a solution to our pandemic woes. Yes, it may eventually happen anyway, but hoping that it will save us all is just not realistic. The time to discuss herd immunity is when we have a vaccine developed, and not one second earlier, because at that point we will be able to really stop the epidemic in its tracks. Until we have a vaccine, anyone talking about herd immunity as a preventative strategy for COVID-19 is simply wrong. Fortunately, there are other ways of preventing infections from spreading, which all boil down to avoiding people who are sick.
Chinese researchers find airborne coronavirus in Wuhan hospitals https://news.google.com/articles/CA...wr9eeCTDYlm4whdicAQ?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
Yeah, OC be like that. https://www.latimes.com/california/...-back-against-newsom-on-plan-to-close-beaches With Gov. Gavin Newsom poised to close beaches in a continuing effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, some Orange County leaders are pushing back. Newsom criticized beachgoers who hit the sand last weekend in Orange County, which has left its shores open while Los Angeles County has kept its beaches off-limits. Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner released a statement saying the idea of closing the beaches was unwise. “Medical professionals tell us the importance of fresh air and sunlight in fighting infectious diseases, including mental health benefits,” he said. “Orange County citizens have been cooperative with California state and county restrictions thus far. I fear that this overreaction from the state will undermine that cooperative attitude and our collective efforts to fight the disease, based on the best available medical information.” Widely circulated photos appeared to show crowded conditions along stretches of sand in Newport and Huntington beaches over the weekend. “We can’t see the images like we saw, particularly on Saturday, in Newport Beach and elsewhere in the state of California,” Newsom said Monday in rebuking beachgoers. Some Orange County officials, though, said such images painted a distorted picture of what conditions were actually like. Huntington Beach Police spokeswoman Angela Bennett said officers did not issue any citations last weekend. Authorities were on the beach patrolling and educating visitors all weekend and found that the majority of people were staying in their own groups, officials said. “The vast majority of people were social distancing at our beaches,” Bennett said. In neighboring Newport Beach, Police Chief Jon Lewis and Fire Chief Jeff Boyles said in a joint statement Thursday that there were some clusters of people who were crowded too closely together but that “it was our personal observation, and that of our officers, that the overwhelming majority of Newport Beach residents and visitors were families or practicing social distancing.” The departments also shared aerial photos captured Saturday afternoon that showed sparse crowds on the city’s sandy stretches. Newport Beach Councilwoman Diane Dixon called the proposed beach closures “a clear abuse” of the governor’s power. She added that the decisions made by cities across Southern California were “prudent, carefully thought out and in the public interest.” In Newport Beach, officials had put in place plans to increase public safety staffing and enforce social distancing and other public health measures in an effort to allow people to enjoy the beach while still stemming the spread of the virus. “The governor reportedly was angered by misleading telephoto pictures in the news, and reacted hastily without consulting local officials on the ground,” Dixon said. “It is painfully clear that the governor is making decisions based on politics and personal pique instead of fact. The state’s role should not be coordinating the process rather than dictating it.” San Clemente Mayor Pro Tem Laura Ferguson reached out to the city manager and city attorney Wednesday night after she heard about Newsom’s proposed order to suggest that they review what legal authority the governor has to close city beaches. “I’m hoping the governor can cite some valid reason under case law to be doing this to cities because, in my opinion, it appears to be government overreach. Local beaches are under the control of the cities, not the state,” she said. After a roughly two-week closure imposed at San Clemente beaches to prevent overcrowding and slow the spread of the coronavirus, the city reopened their sandy stretches last weekend with the caveat that visitors would only be permitted to run, walk, swim, surf or partake in other activities while along the coast. Sunbathing or sitting on the sand was not permitted. However, city leaders were expected to take up reopening the beaches entirely within the next few weeks. In nearby Laguna Beach, officials on Tuesday moved to reopen their coastline for limited hours during weekdays, beginning Monday. Now it appears this will not come to pass, officials say. Laguna Beach Councilman Peter Blake said that while he understands Newsom’s action given the photographs of the crowds descending on other city beaches over the weekend, the move “comes at a point when it seemed like we were on a trajectory to move forward and this now moves us back.” Blake said he was supportive of closing the beaches when COVID-19 was beginning to take hold in California. However, he said the latest effort by the governor appears to be a power move more than a reasonable step toward reopening the state and restarting the economy. “There are people that, rightfully so, feel Newsom has gone beyond the scope of his authority and has taken on power that is not outlined in the constitution,” he said. Laguna Beach Mayor Pro Tem Steve Dicterow was supportive of his city’s decision this week to reopen its beaches for limited hours during weekdays, beginning Monday. However, he noted that crowds like the ones seen in neighboring cities last weekend were exactly what prompted the city to shutter its stretches of sand roughly six weeks ago. “This is not a time for politicizing things. This is not a time for divisiveness,” Dicterow said. “If the governor believes this is the best thing to do for the state of California, then we need to follow that.”
Yep. I read that piece and was debating someone else regarding it. The piece doesn't say that herd immunity is impossible but that a lot of people will get sick and die while we get to it. I agree and I think it's pretty much inevitable now. Social distancing orders are falling apart and we don't have enough tests and ability to do contact trace tracking.
Not picking on you, but when I read your op, I googled what herd immunity actually means. It's one of those things you hear a lot in the news but never have to confirm what it really means (like oil prices...how many gallons in a barrel? Beats me a barrel is a barrel...). What this confirms to me is when people say it, it's like rawdogging without a condom every time you go outside and taking the chance that "following best practices" of pulling out is good enough. No plan B pills, just ugly third trimester sadness if things head south fast. That's more or less what going for herd immunity without vaccinations, testing or isolation mean, except the curve is exponential rather than linear.
At the moment that is pretty much it. Once we get a vaccine we can get herd immunity from vaccination. If some of these new drugs pan out that could alleviate some of the suffering but I think it's pretty clear that this country doesn't have the discipline or stamina to maintain social distance orders. Also we don't have the testing or infrastructure to do contact trace tracking like SK or Taiwan. With many states opening up and relaxing standards herd immunity from natural infection is pretty much our only hope.
Disgraceful. Now he can't look at other people in the eye, and they can't feel his warm loving embrace for their hellbound souls. Maw Maw raised him better than that... Congrats liberal lamestream media! You win this time.
