China Coronavirus

[thewobbler]

This source says 260k people in Sweden have long Covid

Whatever the truth of the numbers, you can't just write it off

https://aktuelltfokus.se/novus-kvarts-miljon-svenskar-langtidssjuka-i-covid-19/

The main reason for why Sweden's policy was wrong was that it was immoral, they sacrificed a lot of lives that could have been saved

Also they didn't protect their economy and are nowhere near herd immunity

Only 90k people have tested positive for Covid in Sweden. To suggest 260k people there have long Covid is ridiculous.

Sweden protected their economy by about twice as much as Spain, France and the UK. Their economy is forecast to shrink by about as half as much as those mentioned. So you're wrong their. In my opinion they are a lot nearer to herd immunity than other countries and will reach it sooner than other nations who continue to drip feed their populations to Covid infection.

Sweden had 10 times the death rate of neighbouring Finland and Finlands economy has stood up just as well as Swedens. You need to compare countries with like for like comparisons.

To be honest, for the foreseeable future we'd be better off comparing very little. It's too early, the outcomes are unclear, the data is untrustworthy and  inconsistent, and let's be honest, comparing the inner workings of two countries before Covid was troublesome enough.

[armaghniac]

In my opinion they are a lot nearer to herd immunity than other countries and will reach it sooner than other nations who continue to drip feed their populations to Covid infection.

I take it that you have read Orlowski, E. J., & Goldsmith, D. J. (2020). Four months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Sweden's prized herd immunity is nowhere in sight. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0141076820945282
or have you conducted your own research?

[trileacman]

In my opinion they are a lot nearer to herd immunity than other countries and will reach it sooner than other nations who continue to drip feed their populations to Covid infection.

I take it that you have read Orlowski, E. J., & Goldsmith, D. J. (2020). Four months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Sweden's prized herd immunity is nowhere in sight. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0141076820945282
or have you conducted your own research?

Just finished it. A balanced piece. Some choice points from it for you.

Despite the above critical remarks, there is neither justification for schadenfreude, nor for Swedes to feel unduly sheepish about their folkvett. Only once we can fully understand both the pandemic and the impact of the measures that were taken – after 1–2 years at least – can we then begin fairly to judge what was done correctly.

So the authors will conclude it's too early to tell that the Swedish principles were wrong or right. This is an article from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine clearly stating that the Swedish approach may be correct (or as equally likely that they are wrong). Don't ever let people tell you that the experts say Sweden's approach has failed.

Table 218–24 shows the data from many of the reported series (some reports being pre-formal publication); it is clear that nowhere is the prevalence of IgG seropositivity high (the maximum being around 20%) or climbing convincingly over time. This is especially clear in Sweden, where the authorities publicly predicted 40% seroconversion in Stockholm by May 2020; the actual IgG seroprevalence was around 15%.

Our uncertainty also extends to whether Ab produced in any clinical COVID-19 setting can confer any clinically-relevant protection against new or recurrent SARS-CoV-2 infections; some answers to this may come from the several ongoing convalescent plasma trials.25 There are certainly going to be more sophisticated tests of innate immunity measuring reactive T-cell populations against viral antigen targets which are more informative and clinically relevant than simple reliance on the generation of IgG and IgM Ab post infection. Nor do we know today whether there will be the development of a safe, reliable, affordable and accessible vaccine in a reasonable timeframe–this was not achieved with Dengue, HIV-AIDS, SARS, MERS or Zika.26

This is the really telling point. The blood-borne degree of immunity is only reaching about 15%. Too low for herd immunity. But the immune system is a vast and complex body system not solely restricted to or directly measurable by circulating levels of immunoglobulins. The author clearly discounts the accuracy of his previous paragraph by opening the following with the remark "Our uncertainty also extends to whether Ab produced in any clinical COVID-19 setting can confer any clinically-relevant protection against new or recurrent SARS-CoV-2 infections".

What he should say, and what I dare say the author is unaware of, is that in terms of respiratory infections, local reactive T-cell immunity is much more important than a blood-borne immunity. Respiratory pathogens are deliberately trapped in the upper respiratory tract by the body and this is the primary site of their replication and quite often their sites of pathology as well. With large infectious doses and an immunologically susceptible host we see the further infection of the lower respiratory tract, the acute kidney injury and thrombic diathesis. The people who progress to this state require ICU hospitalisation and at this point there is a immunoglobulin immune response as the virus spills across the vast pulmonary vasculature.

My point is this. By controlling infectious dose and immunological susceptibility of the host population we can incubate a safe infection in the population and stimulate a local T-cell immunity in the upper respiratory tract.

[sid waddell]

This source says 260k people in Sweden have long Covid

Whatever the truth of the numbers, you can't just write it off

https://aktuelltfokus.se/novus-kvarts-miljon-svenskar-langtidssjuka-i-covid-19/

The main reason for why Sweden's policy was wrong was that it was immoral, they sacrificed a lot of lives that could have been saved

Also they didn't protect their economy and are nowhere near herd immunity

Only 90k people have tested positive for Covid in Sweden. To suggest 260k people there have long Covid is ridiculous.

Sweden protected their economy by about twice as much as Spain, France and the UK. Their economy is forecast to shrink by about as half as much as those mentioned. So you're wrong their. In my opinion they are a lot nearer to herd immunity than other countries and will reach it sooner than other nations who continue to drip feed their populations to Covid infection.

Sweden had 10 times the death rate of neighbouring Finland and Finlands economy has stood up just as well as Swedens. You need to compare countries with like for like comparisons.

Finland's economy fared considerably better than Sweden's

Sweden took an 8.6% GDP hit, Finland just 3.2% though I think that has been adjusted to 4.5% now

As regards long Covid, by its nature it's a nebulous concept with not much more to go on than anecdotal evidence, but as I said you cannot write it off

I don't know about 260k people in Sweden having long Covid, that's likely journalistic hyperbole, but there's enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that it is a real phenomenon, whatever the numbers, and they could well be large numbers

More evidence certainly needs to be gathered on this

90k odd may be the case figure for Sweden, but you can be sure the real infection numbers are considerably higher, possibly several hundred thousand

Sweden has 10.23 million people though so working off the 70% hypothesis for theoretical herd immunity, it's almost impossible to see how they could be anywhere near that 70% which would be 7 million

The thing with herd immunity is that we're working off an assumption that immunity will only last maybe 2-3 years

So what time frame are we supposed to be talking about for achieving theoretical herd immunity? When is it supposed to happen and how?

If theoretical herd immunity is supposed to happen in, for argument's sake, 18 months' time - which would be two years after the beginning of the pandemic - that means a massive spike in the number of infected people between now and then - in Ireland's case it would require an average of several tens of thousands of people to be infected each week

Let's work off a generous assumption that 200k have already been infected - 70% of the population of the saorstát is 3.36 million - knock 200k off that for 3.16million

3.16 million would need to be infected in 18 months

There are 78 weeks in 18 months - and 3.16 million divided by 78 is 39,948

So you would need an average of 40k people infected with Covid each week for the next 78 weeks in order to theoretically achieve herd immunity by the end of March 2022

That seems like a recipe for disaster

If theoretical herd immunity doesn't happen in the next 2 to 3 years, you likely end up being back to square one as people progressively lose their immunity and become susceptible again

Only time will tell with this disease and especially a full winter with it

I think we will know a lot more by April and knowledge will be power

[armaghniac]

So the authors will conclude it's too early to tell that the Swedish principles were wrong or right.

That is fair enough.
The Swedes reckoned that given the capacity of their health service and their way of life that they could introduce limited restrictions and more or less keep these going for a long period, avoiding public confusion and opening and closing things. They have achieved this to a large extent and that is to their credit. In other places, e.g. Italy, things were out of control before the authorities got organised and they had to have a much more extensive lockdown. In Ireland, we doubted the capacity of our health service, as its runs on an knife edge at the best of times.
But in the end of the day, Sweden isn't hugely closer to herd immunity than other places, if one sixth of people have had it or one seventh is not so different, with more cases recently we are likely catching up.
If herd immunity was any use, then you would expect Spain to be closer to it than Sweden.

[RadioGAAGAA]

My point is this. By controlling infectious dose and immunological susceptibility of the host population we can incubate a safe infection in the population and stimulate a local T-cell immunity in the upper respiratory tract.

LOL. Very good.

Any other sentences you want to try to conjugate that mean literally nothing?


Your point is this:
"By giving people various viral loads and by suppressing their immune systems I think that a safe spread of an infectious virus can be controlled and this will result in a virtually untraceable and un-measurable response which will prove my rightness."

[trileacman]

My point is this. By controlling infectious dose and immunological susceptibility of the host population we can incubate a safe infection in the population and stimulate a local T-cell immunity in the upper respiratory tract.

LOL. Very good.

Any other sentences you want to try to conjugate that mean literally nothing?


Your point is this:
"By giving people various viral loads and by suppressing their immune systems I think that a safe spread of an infectious virus can be controlled and this will result in a virtually untraceable and un-measurable response which will prove my rightness."

You clearly don't know what the term immunological susceptibility means. Local T-cell immunity is traceable and measurable by biopsy.

[Rossfan]

For the record 853 cases reported in all of Ireland today (429 here, 424 "up there").
While Ros was low today officially there's talk of cases in Ballagh, Boyle, Monksland, Ros Town and a few more rural locations too.

[armaghniac]

Kerry for the All Ireland
it seems their genes protect them from Covid, Firbolgs probably.
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0928/1168032-kerry-covid-19-infections-blood-type-anthropology/

[trileacman]

The thing with herd immunity is that we're working off an assumption that immunity will only last maybe 2-3 years

I don't know what you're basing that assumption off. Also strictly defining immunity in time is impossible. Immunity wanes it doesn't just stop. But for argument's sake let's say we need get an effective immunity for 6-9 months and a variable level of immunity for 12 months after that. There's very few viruses that will give you a shorter immunity than that especially one that changes as slowly as Covid-19.

There's a number of flaws in your mathematics because you're suggesting a complete cessation of immunity at 2 years and also ignoring Covid's potential for exponential spread.

So in a herd immunity plan we'd be talking about younger and healthy people being infected by Covid and isolating the elderly and those with co-morbidities. About 75% of the Irish population are under 55. So about 3.75 million. Now about 3.6% of under 55 who are infected will require hospitalisation (the math on that is a bit sketchy, it's from this paper https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.23.20076042v1.full.pdf but could do with being updated). Now 17% of hospital admissions need an ICU bed so 17% of 3.6% = 0.6%. So 0.6% of people will need an ICU bed if we only infect under 55s. There's currently 400 odd ICU beds in Ireland. Say we keep 100 for non-covid cases. That leaves 300 ICU beds. Average ICU stay is 7 days. So we can infect 50,000 people weekly with out maxing out ICU capacity if we only infect the under 55s.

There's science and reasoning behind this proposal so it has to be worthy of consideration. Dismissing it out of hand whilst we wait for a vaccine that may never appear to ride over the horizon to literally save the world from Covid isn't sound policy. It's certainly risky and bold but it deserves a strict crunching of the numbers to investigate it's worthiness.

[RadioGAAGAA]

You clearly don't know what the term immunological susceptibility means. Local T-cell immunity is traceable and measurable by biopsy.

Immunological susceptibility doesn't mean what it appears you think it means. The only way you can "control" it by suppressing immune responses.


I see blood tests for T-cells.

[sid waddell]

The thing with herd immunity is that we're working off an assumption that immunity will only last maybe 2-3 years

I don't know what you're basing that assumption off. Also strictly defining immunity in time is impossible. Immunity wanes it doesn't just stop. But for argument's sake let's say we need get an effective immunity for 6-9 months and a variable level of immunity for 12 months after that. There's very few viruses that will give you a shorter immunity than that especially one that changes as slowly as Covid-19.

There's a number of flaws in your mathematics because you're suggesting a complete cessation of immunity at 2 years and also ignoring Covid's potential for exponential spread.

So in a herd immunity plan we'd be talking about younger and healthy people being infected by Covid and isolating the elderly and those with co-morbidities. About 75% of the Irish population are under 55. So about 3.75 million. Now about 3.6% of under 55 who are infected will require hospitalisation (the math on that is a bit sketchy, it's from this paper https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.23.20076042v1.full.pdf but could do with being updated). Now 17% of hospital admissions need an ICU bed so 17% of 3.6% = 0.6%. So 0.6% of people will need an ICU bed if we only infect under 55s. There's currently 400 odd ICU beds in Ireland. Say we keep 100 for non-covid cases. That leaves 300 ICU beds. Average ICU stay is 7 days. So we can infect 50,000 people weekly with out maxing out ICU capacity if we only infect the under 55s.

There's science and reasoning behind this proposal so it has to be worthy of consideration. Dismissing it out of hand whilst we wait for a vaccine that may never appear to ride over the horizon to literally save the world from Covid isn't sound policy. It's certainly risky and bold but it deserves a strict crunching of the numbers to investigate it's worthiness.

I'm basing what I said about immunity off a general picture of what I've read over the last six months, and no, I'm not saying that immunity comes to a sudden stop rather than waning, but if something wears off gradually, it's still gone at the end of it

It won't be only under 55s who get infected, that's ludicrous, it will be all ages because people who care for the old and the vulnerable will get infected and will pass it on, they do not exist in isolation from society - everybody in society is connected to each other and if the virus is as contagious as some people make out, it won't be controlled under such a strategy

Like, I find it difficult to see how somebody can simultaneously hold the view that the virus cannot be effectively suppressed among the population as a whole, but yet think that it can be suppressed in a particular age group - it just doesn't make sense

If you let over 3 million people get the virus in a short period of time, there will be a lot of deaths, much more than we currently have

[RadioGAAGAA]

So we can infect 50,000 people weekly with out maxing out ICU capacity if we only infect the under 55s.

There's science and reasoning behind this proposal so it has to be worthy of consideration.

In reality you can never isolate only the over 55s. Simply not possible never mind feasible.

Dismissing it out of hand whilst we wait for a vaccine that may never appear to ride over the horizon to literally save the world from Covid isn't sound policy. It's certainly risky and bold but it deserves a strict crunching of the numbers to investigate it's worthiness.

There are several candidates that are almost ready. That "may never" is quite weak.

[Jell 0 Biafra]

A good read; well worth your time:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/

[ziggy90]

For the record 853 cases reported in all of Ireland today (429 here, 424 "up there").
While Ros was low today officially there's talk of cases in Ballagh, Boyle, Monksland, Ros Town and a few more rural locations too.

Any around the Loughglynn area?