All things CoronaVirus

[old salt]

Went to my Safeway Pharmacy yesterday & got my Super Senior flu shot & final pneumonia & shingles boosters.
To limit my exposure I got them all 3 on the same day, in the same arm. Not smart. I have body aches & a swollen hot spot on my upper arm.
Slowly improving. Live & learn.

[DocBarrister]

yes, i believe there's a very good chance herd immunity is at work in sweden (said probable in may there) and many other places.

What do you base this belief on?

Ignorance.

I don’t know why I keep trying to tutor the guy, but here goes:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/from-our-ex ... conception

wgdsr ... learn, then discuss.

DocBarrister

[jhu72]

Went to my Safeway Pharmacy yesterday & got my Super Senior flu shot & final pneumonia & shingles boosters.
To limit my exposure I got them all 3 on the same day, in the same arm. Not smart. I have body aches & a swollen hot spot on my upper arm.
Slowly improving. Live & learn.

Interesting. I did much the same on Monday afternoon. I had to go into my doctor to have a few stiches removed and they wanted to give me my annual flu shot and a pneumonia booster. Nothing shingles related. They did it in two different arms. The pneumonia shot had no side-effect. The flu shot didn't cause any pain but by about 12 PM I started to get mildly ill with flu symptoms. General ache and bad nasal congestion. When I woke up, the symptoms were mostly gone, by mid morning gone totally.

I can't remember ever having that kind of reaction to a flu shot. The flu shot this year is a little unique according to my wife. It covers 4 strains of flu which is unusual.

[jhu72]

The disgrace that is our nursing home system. An interesting short read that links to a much longer article about the Kirkland Washington nursing home in the early days of the pandemic.

[Cooter]

https://summit.news/2020/08/24/uk-gover ... bal-scale/

The epidemiologist in that article advised the UK government on its response to the novel coronavirus.

You do know that the UK has had one of the most disastrous responses to Covid-19, with a death per capita rate that is among the highest in the world?

Really shouldn’t post such garbage.

DocBarrister

I don't know that it is garbage. It's actually sort of interesting.

Now you post a lot of garbage about how if the democrats were in charge they would have made a big difference.

[a fan]

Went to my Safeway Pharmacy yesterday & got my Super Senior flu shot & final pneumonia & shingles boosters.
To limit my exposure I got them all 3 on the same day, in the same arm. Not smart. I have body aches & a swollen hot spot on my upper arm.
Slowly improving. Live & learn.

Yeah, I hate the soreness from those yearly vaccines. Feels like they pumped warm metal into your arm.

[wgdsr]

yes, i believe there's a very good chance herd immunity is at work in sweden (said probable in may there) and many other places.

What do you base this belief on?

lot of data points. "experts". sweden, diamond princess, nyc, numerous cities and countries, country curves, mobility and mitigation practices over the months of the pandemic. patterns like what we've seen in the u.s. regionally.

there was a gap in there and anything resembling herd most likely revolves on what i saw in early june with vir biotech and then shortly thereafter with studies being published (with increasing frequency) on t cell and/or cross reactive immunity. if that gets confirmed as widespread, globally we may be fortunate for a bit or longer.

my definition of herd for this discussion being highly extinguished in relative terms, not vanquished entirely. don't have any clues how that works to wrap it up entirely with a virus like this.

[wgdsr]

yes, i believe there's a very good chance herd immunity is at work in sweden (said probable in may there) and many other places.

What do you base this belief on?

Ignorance.

I don’t know why I keep trying to tutor the guy, but here goes:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/from-our-ex ... conception

wgdsr ... learn, then discuss.

DocBarrister

an article, not a study or research, that extrapolates and regurgitates some numbers. from april. when we knew so much.

aren't you the guy that said long term immunity ended sars and mers? good stuff, doc.

[jhu72]

Good news. This likely explains a lot of why diabetics are comorbid - increased likelihood of clotting.

[kramerica.inc]

Doc informs us of the “latest” Corona info with some article from April.

Oh the “learned” one! Teach us more!

[wgdsr]

Good news. This likely explains a lot of why diabetics are comorbid - increased likelihood of clotting.

promising. we need some good news. don't see on its face how 25% v 22% is a 50% reduction in death, but the numbers are probably hashed out somewhere else and they're on trials already.

[jhu72]

More good news. Another observation / study that answers the question of why men and women react so differently.

These observations are just that, not yet definitive treatments, but observations that point the way forward.

[Bart]

when it's all analyzed, i do think you'll see timing had played a major role. here in the u.s. our giving the virus enough rope to keep hanging us (and minimizing effectiveness of some efforts like testing, tracing) may turn into a full intermediate term burn that a place like sweden got thru quickly.

I agree with this.

Places that were hit hard early (Italy, Spain, UK, Sweden, NYC, Seattle, SF) got serious about SD and hammered the virus down to a low level and a problem that was of a manage-able size. Different places had different profiles (density, age demographics, etc.) and so would need different and bigger/smaller measures to get the virus pushed down.

Sweden actually had some pretty favorable demographics, which made their early bad results (primarily in senior facilities) quite notable. But once they got past that early screw up, they figured out what to do and did it. I'm skeptical that their current good situation has anything to do with herd immunity (I think it was just sufficient SD as with the other Euro countries), but we'll only know that for sure in retrospect.

Seems like the USA problem is that (since it is a big country) we never did enough to get the virus down everywhere. So we seem to be stuck at roughly 1,000 deaths a day coming from an evolving number of places -- NY and NJ come down, but then are replaced by SoCal, AZ, TX and FL. Then a new bunch of places get hot -- GA, TN, MS. Rinse and repeat.

We are stuck at about 50% of our April peak (for daily deaths). In contrast, all of our first world peers are down 90-95% from their peaks.

as we're all educationally guessing...
sweden if not exhibit a is one of many, imo, that suggest a herd immunity profile being part or a very large part of slowing spread. no way of knowing for sure if it's lasting, and if then a second time around (reinfection) yields better results.. but again guesswork and past science suggests a good chance it will.

and then in the u.s.... as you note, such a large country... unless we were shutting down state borders across the country, to me it was likely other places needed to get hit. not saying it had to be the numbers we're at, don't know that. the optimistic view from there is we may be relatively close to burning through the majority of the country. at least for this round. some were early, some were relatively flat throughout, some low early and then popped... if we can get to 500 deaths per day asap that would be a win. and might be on par-ish with influenza/pneumonia deaths combo.
getting a little ahead myself, from there measures in toto of sd, masks, immunity population might be able to push it down substantially from there.

potential "natural immunity" (past coronaviruses or t-cells) aiding herd immunity that seemed plausible to me on here starting in may/early june, continues to get more play and research backing the possibility now several months later.

europe's 1st world final story may not be written yet. they weren't able to hold several hundred cases without allowing it to bloom many fold from that, but after a bump in their death tolls shortly, my expectation is they are shocked a little into controlling it with both measures and (potentially) some herd immunity helping.

one of sweden's tegnell's main theories was we're all going to end up in the same place. as they are a healthier population, his "same place" should in theory be better than some other places. which may mean the u.s. and some other first worlds have a ways to go. hopefully not too far.

You are assuming Sweden and the USA or any other comp, has the same virus strain circulating the population. I don’t “believe” that to be the case.

Unless the data has changed very recently the virulence of any given strain seems about the same. The data for that is all over the place.

The interesting line from the preprint: " The variant is located at the surface of the S1 subunit, and could possibly affect the attachment of the virion to the cell, even though it does not change the receptor-binding domain itself."

[CU88]

Went to my Safeway Pharmacy yesterday & got my Super Senior flu shot & final pneumonia & shingles boosters.
To limit my exposure I got them all 3 on the same day, in the same arm. Not smart. I have body aches & a swollen hot spot on my upper arm.
Slowly improving. Live & learn.

Good on you. I am a big fan of our local Safeway Pharmacy.

My wife nd I did the two rounds of the shingles vaccine last year. She had no problems with them, but the first round was very noticable in my shoulder.

I need to look for this seasons flu shot.

[Bart]

Here is an interesting read from Slate.com. Author is a virologist at Columbia and she discusses the recent reinfection case in Hong Kong.

https://slate.com/technology/2020/08/co ... study.html

[youthathletics]

Went to my Safeway Pharmacy yesterday & got my Super Senior flu shot & final pneumonia & shingles boosters.
To limit my exposure I got them all 3 on the same day, in the same arm. Not smart. I have body aches & a swollen hot spot on my upper arm.
Slowly improving. Live & learn.

Good on you. I am a big fan of our local Safeway Pharmacy.

My wife nd I did the two rounds of the shingles vaccine last year. She had no problems with them, but the first round was very noticable in my shoulder.

I need to look for this seasons flu shot.

My father was part of the shingles prevention study. I have had it once.....painful as hell.

[CU88]

Went to my Safeway Pharmacy yesterday & got my Super Senior flu shot & final pneumonia & shingles boosters.
To limit my exposure I got them all 3 on the same day, in the same arm. Not smart. I have body aches & a swollen hot spot on my upper arm.
Slowly improving. Live & learn.

Good on you. I am a big fan of our local Safeway Pharmacy.

My wife nd I did the two rounds of the shingles vaccine last year. She had no problems with them, but the first round was very noticable in my shoulder.

I need to look for this seasons flu shot.

My father was part of the shingles prevention study. I have had it once.....painful as hell.

I had a college buddy get it, he was from middle of Maine and never complained about anything; he said it was the worst pain ever.

Many thanks to your father for helping others.

[youthathletics]

Went to my Safeway Pharmacy yesterday & got my Super Senior flu shot & final pneumonia & shingles boosters.
To limit my exposure I got them all 3 on the same day, in the same arm. Not smart. I have body aches & a swollen hot spot on my upper arm.
Slowly improving. Live & learn.

Good on you. I am a big fan of our local Safeway Pharmacy.

My wife nd I did the two rounds of the shingles vaccine last year. She had no problems with them, but the first round was very noticable in my shoulder.

I need to look for this seasons flu shot.

My father was part of the shingles prevention study. I have had it once.....painful as hell.

I had a college buddy get it, he was from middle of Maine and never complained about anything; he said it was the worst pain ever.

Many thanks to your father for helping others.

I would concur...worst pain ever, right up there major dental work.

[MDlaxfan76]

wgdsr, you say that you believe there's herd immunity at work in Sweden...do you have data on community incidence that supports that belief?

Or is it just wishful thinking?

To get to herd immunity, assuming all other factors held constant, shouldn't there be many, many more deaths there? Or are you suggesting that herd immunity develops with far fewer people getting seriously sick somehow? how?

...guy who deer hunts my property was just here getting an updated signature for permits, he has a relative in Sweden who recently was hospitalized, on ventilator, but now home...survived but pretty wrecked at present.

He noted that elementary school kids are in-person now, high school kids entirely online...they're worried about the spread from the elementary school kids, but are taking a chance...fingers crossed.

yes, i believe there's a very good chance herd immunity is at work in sweden (said probable in may there) and many other places.

and yes, that would then have to mean the number of infected/exposed is either much higher than imagined, or that when you throw on social distancing, masks, etc. with some herd the number is then different than people think. or both.

Fair enough, I'd just call that "believe" and "may" to be merely "wishful thinking".
Not impossible, but not probable.

[MDlaxfan76]

https://summit.news/2020/08/24/uk-gover ... bal-scale/

The epidemiologist in that article advised the UK government on its response to the novel coronavirus.

You do know that the UK has had one of the most disastrous responses to Covid-19, with a death per capita rate that is among the highest in the world?

Really shouldn’t post such garbage.

DocBarrister

I don't know that it is garbage. It's actually sort of interesting.

Now you post a lot of garbage about how if the democrats were in charge they would have made a big difference.

"garbage"?
Had a different President, regardless of party, done just the average of other wealthy nations, we'd have lost less than half the lives (so far) and have very few lives being lost per month now...just like the other peer nations.

Aren't we supposed to be "exceptional"?