Mormad said:
I have concerns that herd immunity is the answer with this or any virus.
For the same reasons, I have concerns about the efficacy of the current vaccines going to trial.
Both are dependent upon producing antibodies against the spike protein, a protein that will likely morph. We may produce antibodies, but we have no clue how long they'll last nor how much immunity they actually confer.
There are reasons we are still riding the plateaued wave of 25k cases a day and Europe has seen their wave decline. We can't get off the first wave to even start to discuss the possibility of a second wave.
But those places that killed the most are done with the first wave. The plateau is coming from places that locked down before things got completely out of control but after the virus had already penetrated the community. It is exactly what 'flattening the curve' looks like. Ignore the healthcare capacity, since we didn't reach it. But at some point those who didn't control the virus (NY, NJ, MA, western Europe) have a curve that passes those that did. While those that were actually successful in preventing spiking continue to deal with it. That was kind of the point, wasn't it?
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If Sweden doesn't have some level of herd immunity (I hate to use that term because it is become tainted and no one has a clue what it means for COVID-19) what is the current force acting downwards on their virus?
Sweden Mobility DataSweden has had the same 'success' in reducing the virus that all the other hardest hit places did. And while their mobility increases their deaths and new ICU cases decrease. That is the complete opposite behavior you would expect from the virus. Why?
Not saying they made all the correct choices, but they give us something to compare against for data purposes from an immunity standpoint. We know how bad it was in Sweden and it was about as bad as the worst hit Western European countries who actually did lock down (again too late to matter).
Could we be doing a much better job with controlling virus spread, sure. We should continue to take appropriate actions to limit the spread, test like crazy, try and identify, and isolate cases.
We know based on Sweden, UK, Spain, Italy, NY, MA, NJ or any of these hard hit areas that the detectable '%' of AB required for a downward pressure is much lower than what would be expected to achieve herd immunity. So something else is going on in conjunction with detectable IgG antibodies.
I don't know enough to know what that is. But I know we have a control country and we have yet to see a rebound in somewhere that was hard hit.
Again, not saying the virus isn't present, and we shouldn't do due diligence to prevent the spread. Even in places that have been hit hard.
If we actually captured the true number of cases in the NE US at the peak it would be mindblowingly high but testing capacity was awful then. What we are seeing is exactly what we expected to see all along with flattening the curve, we peak lower and later than those that did nothing (or in my contention put in procedures way too late to have any actual effect on their peak).
We were too late for this just to 'go away'. So keep taking precautions and try and catch as many cases as you can to isolate.