Posted on 04/03/2020 5:25:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
What the media and policymakers are not telling us is that the longer we delay the development of herd immunity, the more elderly or high-risk people will become infected and die.
COVID-19 is severe. There is no doubt about that. We are now also learning that it is not a matter of if but when many of us will get coronavirus, whether we develop symptoms or not. Our only hope is to flatten the curve, relieve stress on the medical system, and wait for a vaccine.
So, we isolate ourselves and stay at home. As a result, the economy is being devastated. Many people are out of work and unhappy. We accept these inconveniences to allow the medical system to handle the many people who become infected.
But what if I were to tell you that our current isolation strategies may actually result in more deaths from coronavirus itself? Ill explain.
The only way we are going to beat COVID-19 is by developing something called herd immunity. Herd immunity basically means that once a certain percentage of the population develops immunity to a virus, the rest of the population will also be protected. That percentage varies, but is often around 60-70 percent. This is why we dont need to vaccinate 100 percent of people to eradicate or severely limit the spread of infectious diseases (e.g., polio, smallpox, and measles).
The media and policymakers seem to have accepted that we will depend on herd immunity to defeat COVID-19. If we had a vaccine, everything would be different. But since a vaccine is not available, we must wait for enough people to be exposed and develop immunity.
In the meantime, we are being told to quarantine as much as possible so the medical system can deal with the many people who become infected. Simple, right? Unfortunately, its more complicated than this.
What the media and policymakers are not telling us is that the longer we delay the development of herd immunity, the more elderly or high-risk people will become infected and die, even if we were to maintain the quarantine indefinitely. Why is this the case?
The reason is that only young and healthy people contribute to herd immunity. Elderly and medically ill people generally do not contribute to herd immunity because their immune systems are not strong enough to develop an immune response.
This is not new or breaking science. To illustrate what happens when you don’t have herd immunity, look no further than the outbreaks we’ve had in areas where that immunity has dipped below the necessary levels.
In 2019, there was a massive outbreak of the measles in New York City for that reason. In 2014, a measles outbreak in Disneyland sent the number of cases to a 20-year high. Without herd immunity, where enough people have had the disease to avoid driving major outbreaks, future spikes will likely be much bigger.
Indeed, the Imperial College modeling says as much: Once interventions are relaxed (in the example in Figure 3, from September onwards), infections begin to rise, resulting in a predicted larger peak epidemic later in the year: The more successful a strategy is at temporary suppression, the larger the later epidemic is predicted to be in the absence of vaccination, due to lesser build-up of herd immunity.
Importantly, in this report, the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Teams partial quarantine did not include isolating high-risk individuals or those infected (!) from their households, which would be critical for a partial quarantine to work. In fact, in their models, the elderly and medically ill people had more contact with everyone in their household (i.e., except in their one scenario in which only cases are quarantined, which is not an adequate strategy by itself). This would greatly bias their findings in favor of a full quarantine.
Therefore, if we stop the quarantine for all low-risk people now, herd immunity would develop more quickly. If we also were to keep the elderly and high-risk people isolated from everyone else during this time, including their own family members (i.e., a partial quarantine), we would save countless lives, while also decreasing the stress on the medical system.
This strategy would also limit the stress on the medical system caused by the fear and panic induced by the full quarantine, a variable that has not been considered in most models and to which any physician on the frontlines can attest. And there would be limited impact on the economy.
Furthermore, limiting isolation to only high-risk individuals and cases would be much more practical and likely to work since the more people need to be quarantined, the less effective is the quarantine. It would also still relieve much of the stress on the medical system since most of the severe outcomes occur in the elderly, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
A partial quarantine would still cause some initial stress on the medical system since the overall number of young or healthy individuals who would contract COVID-19 will not change with either a full or partial quarantine. The vast majority of these cases would be mild, however. Therefore, there may still be a slightly higher use of the medical system up front if we move to a partial quarantine as described herein. This could also lead to some deaths.
Herein lies the dilemma, or Sophies choice, of dealing with COVID-19. A full quarantine will result in the deaths of more elderly and medically ill people because more of them will become infected. A partial quarantine would likely result in a greater number of mild infections in young and healthy individuals upfront (but not total).
How many more elderly or medically ill people will die due to a full quarantine? It is hard to say, but a conservative estimate would be 5-10 times the number of young and healthy people who may die from a partial quarantine, based on fatality rates published by the CDC.
Fortunately, I am not responsible for making policy.
The author is an academic physician and researcher at an Ivy League institution in New York City.
LA Times reporter wrote that 93 had died in Equidor. They alleged dying in the streets are unclaimed indigents that no one wants to handle or take care of.
‘But the other half of my medical friends and expert guests say this is an overreaction.’
it certainly is, or, I should say it appears to be; but that’s as moot a point as has ever existed, since the decision to shut it all down has been made, and must be played out to the end to avoid losing face...
High blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease are so commonplace everyone likely knows somebody with at least one of these maladies.They are also the underlying conditions most associated with severe cases of COVID-19
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/03/these-underlying-conditions-make-coronavirus-more-severe-and-they-are-surprisingly-common/
Top underlying health conditions in COVID-19 deaths include diabetes, obesity
As COVID-19 cases continue to rise across Louisiana and deaths jump by record numbers, many deaths are attributed to underlying health conditions.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/top-underlying-health-conditions-in-covid-19-deaths-include-diabetes-obesity/ar-BB11OhMe
Age is not the only risk for severe coronavirus disease
WASHINGTON Older people remain most at risk of dying as the new coronavirus continues its rampage around the globe, but theyre far from the only ones vulnerable. One of many mysteries: Men seem to be faring worse than women. https://www.effinghamdailynews.com/news/age-is-not-the-only-risk-for-severe-coronavirus-disease/article_a95ca128-738f-11ea-b7f1-979100d2700f.html
That's an illogical statement on the face of it.
Not saying its not true, but evidence or reasoning for why the rest of the population will be protected has not been presented (in this sentence or in those which follow in the article--unless I missed it).
He is right, but I’d like to add that social isolation is unnatural. For elderly in hospitals/nursing “homes,” it is worse than death. Many elderly are dying alone, having had only the opportunity tell the staff to convey a message of love to their family. If an elderly person goes to the hospital with this disease, it’s probably all over.
Another dumb@ss opinion.
The science behind this has been discussed by the Flubros- more people need to be exposed to the virus.
In hindsight it would be better to get the virus early when you could get a ventilator at the hospital.
Deaths down nearly 100 yesterday to 900.
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I see 968 at this site: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ .
Which site is 900 from?
Eg: If a disease has an R0 of 2.0 (ie infects 2 people for each person that gets it), but 70% of the population is immune either because of vaccine or already has had the virus and has antibodies, the R0 is then reduced by 70% (2.0 * (1-.7) = 0.6). Since the R0 is then lower than 1, the virus dies off as the replacement rate is below the stock rate. Simple math.
“Bug Chasers” Unite!
He’s correct if nothing changes but that’s not going to happen. First there is a vaccine on the way. Watch the UPMC (University of Pittsburgh) press conference, that was an academic show of “we have it and we know it”. The first human trials will be really soon.
Second the ramp up of production of hydroxychloroquine is just starting. Mylan pharmaceutical (WV) and others should be totally ramped up in a week. I don’t know why but NYers have to go to a hospital to get it. Others should be able to get a script from the family physician.
I don’t believe this economic shutdown will last much longer once effective treament is available to all with the vaccine following. I hope Trump the business man trusts his instincts on this.
Not only is this opinion correct, it also misses discussing the risk that happened in the Spanish flu in that only the most virulent strains survive and the second wave kills far more people than it would have otherwise. This is what happened with the Spanish Flu.
Do you have any links to those videos about Ecuador?
If you make it to a ventilator, odds are you are going to die. The discharge rate if you get on a ventilator is about 85% in the US so far from COVID19. If the 1 year survival rate works for these like it does for other ventilator patience, 92-95% will have died within a year. The key is to not need a ventilator.
It has to do with the chain of transmission. If an infected person spreads the virus to two other people when there is no herd immunity then that rate is lowered as the herd gains immunity. What may have been transmission to two people now becomes transmission to one or less.
Maybe a more mathematically inclined person can explain it better.
No, human trials are not starting soon, JNJ just two days ago said they expected human trials to start in 9 to 12 months and be available in 15 to 18 months. And that’s assuming it works (safely)
This isnt going to go over well with the data worshippers here at Free Republic.
And yet at its heart is data...
Not worth my time to read. The flu-bros are working hard to kill envy.
Not to be unkind, but how many people drop dead in the streets of Ecuador on a normal day?
I have a friend who has done mission work in Mexico and corpses lying in the streets were sort of an every day thing there.
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