Science mag #1 ranked brain scientist covid model

[steelepulse]

 

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/computer-program-just-ranked-most-influential-brain-scientists-modern-era

 

Professor Karl Friston's models imply that up to 80% of the UK population is not even susceptible to Covid-19.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/07/immunological-dark-matter-does-it-exist-coronavirus-population-immunity

 

I would link to the actual interviews and articles, but the whole thread will get flagged due to this being from an "unacceptable source" even though the guardian covers this.

 

Anyway, if the highly incorrect Ferguson model was used to promote fear, it would be good to have the #1 ranked brain scientist in the world presents his model to offer a different view of the seriously wrong model Ferguson used that predicted catastrophe.

 

 

 

[steelepulse]

So if the highest regarded neuroscientist model is to be believed, 80% of people can't be susceptible to covid 19.  With the majority of people not experiencing any symptoms or mild symptoms, I'm not quite sure why the fear over something that has an ifr of .26%

 

Makes sense to go out and live your lives and try to boost your immune system to stay healthy.

[Maestro]

18 hours ago, steelepulse said:

...I would link to the actual interviews and articles, but the whole thread will get flagged due to this being from an "unacceptable source" even though the guardian covers this...

 

Do not link to videos of interviews, but by all means give the link to Professor Friston's article published in a renowned scientific journal. You mentioned "Science mag" in the topic title. Is this a reference to the Science Magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is it in this journal where Friston's article has been published?

[Puccini]

1 hour ago, steelepulse said:

I'm not quite sure why the fear over something that has an ifr of .26%

IFR can mean a lot of different things. What do you mean with it in your post?

 

IFR: http://www.acronymfinder.com/IFR.html

[yuyiinthesky]

18 hours ago, steelepulse said:

Professor Karl Friston's models imply that up to 80% of the UK population is not even susceptible to Covid-19.

We have seen in the antibody studies from Stanford and Professor Streeck, and also in Sweden, that values of 20% showing antibodies are rarely exceeded. May be Professor Karl Friston‘s 80% are the reason?

[yuyiinthesky]

13 minutes ago, Puccini said:

IFR can mean a lot of different things. What do you mean with it in your post?

 

IFR: http://www.acronymfinder.com/IFR.html

Infection Fatality Ratio

[partington]

As far as I can see this is an unevidenced assertion by someone way outside his area of expertise.

[Puccini]

28 minutes ago, yuyiinthesky said:

Infection Fatality Ratio

Thank you.

[torturedsole]

19 hours ago, steelepulse said:

Professor Karl Friston's models imply that up to 80% of the UK population is not even susceptible to Covid-19.

I'm in the 20% to have contracted C19 back in February then.  I wasn't tested, but I know.

 

Not sure what can be done now as far too late to be talking models as the damage has been done by lockdown.

 

If we cast our minds back a few months there were dire UK predictions and then up popped the 9k bed Nightingale Hospital.  Seriously.   

 

 

[geriatrickid]

6 hours ago, partington said:

As far as I can see this is an unevidenced assertion by someone way outside his area of expertise.

Correct. It was only a suggestion.

 

8 hours ago, steelepulse said:

So if the highest regarded neuroscientist model is to be believed, 80% of people can't be susceptible to covid 19.  With the majority of people not experiencing any symptoms or mild symptoms, I'm not quite sure why the fear over something that has an ifr of .26%

Makes sense to go out and live your lives and try to boost your immune system to stay healthy.

People like you read something and do not put the information in context. I get it,  you are overwhelmed, and need to understand, but you have to understand that the data pool grows with time and that the strategy derived using data from 4 months ago is subject to ongoing review and will be adjusted  to reflect upon new data that supports a modification. It does not mean the original strategy was  "wrong".  

 

You have made the assumption that the early models were too negative. They were  predicting CFRs of anywhere from 0.1% to 1.1% .  well, the data in some countries is much, worse than this and if anything the early models can be criticized for not taking into account the lack of compliance. 

 

Yes,  the  case fatality  rate of  the infection varies by country. As per the data review  released June 22 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal;

 RESULTS: Using data for confirmed cases in Canada, we estimated the crude CFR to be 4.9% on Apr. 22, 2020, and the adjusted CFR to be 5.5% (credible interval [CrI] 4.9%–6.4%). After we accounted for various reporting rates less than 50%, the adjusted CFR was estimated at 1.6% (CrI 0.7%–3.1%). The US crude CFR was estimated to be 5.4% on Apr. 20, 2020, with an adjusted CFR of 6.1% (CrI 5.4%–6.9%). With reporting rates of less than 50%, the adjusted CFR for the US was 1.78 (CrI 0.8%–3.6%)

 

Those values were adjusted to reflect under reporting and other factors. The 1.78% for the USA is before the massive 20 state outbreak underway and there is strong likelihood that we will see the adjusted US CFR exceed 2%. That's not good.

[robblok]

6 hours ago, partington said:

As far as I can see this is an unevidenced assertion by someone way outside his area of expertise.

Its really scary to see how many corvid deniers and anti vaccination people there are. A lot of them on this forum too. They all just want everything to open up so they can play around and are looking for any fringe evidence that is around to justify their claims. 

 

Really scary indeed, i like that there is debate and so on but these guys are doing everyone a disservice. 

 

In an other topic we had a guy claiming that Bill Gates his vaccine killed / crippled 400.000+ kids in India and he used this to be against a corvid vaccin. But when you fact check the vaccine never killed these kids it was just an US anti vac crazy that stirred up fake news.

 

I love the internet but there is so much fake news out there and stupid people lap it up.

[steelepulse]

The guardian goes into quite some detail and links to studies from CELL and others.  Amazing how many people aren't giving themselves the facts, or they simply fall into the category that can have severe consequences if they do get covid.  For the rest of us, it's time to move on and live our lives.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/07/immunological-dark-matter-does-it-exist-coronavirus-population-immunity.  

 

 

[yuyiinthesky]

3 hours ago, geriatrickid said:

Those values were adjusted to reflect under reporting and other factors. The 1.78% for the USA is before the massive 20 state outbreak underway and there is strong likelihood that we will see the adjusted US CFR exceed 2%. That's not good.

Why do you keep rambling about the CFR?
With your superior education you know very well that it depends on the amount of known positive cases, which have much more to do with the amount of testing than with the real amount of infections.

[yuyiinthesky]

3 hours ago, robblok said:

Its really scary to see how many corvid deniers and anti vaccination people there are. A lot of them on this forum too. They all just want everything to open up so they can play around and are looking for any fringe evidence that is around to justify their claims. 

 

Really scary indeed, i like that there is debate and so on but these guys are doing everyone a disservice. 

 

In an other topic we had a guy claiming that Bill Gates his vaccine killed / crippled 400.000+ kids in India and he used this to be against a corvid vaccin. But when you fact check the vaccine never killed these kids it was just an US anti vac crazy that stirred up fake news.

 

I love the internet but there is so much fake news out there and stupid people lap it up.

You are not very well informed, or you believe in flawed fact checks. There were indeed about 490000 polio cases in India caused by the polio vaccinations there. As this here is about Covid-19, I will not start posting details, but if you‘re really interested, there is a good analysis by James Corbett at his Corbett report.

 

An Indian study with details: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6121585/pdf/ijerph-15-01755.pdf

And the Corbett Report containing (among other fact checks) the fact check about this Polio vaccination issue in India: https://www.corbettreport.com/fact-check-polio-vaccines-tetanus-vaccines-and-the-gates-foundation/

[steelepulse]

Some interesting info from CELL and Medrxiv in the guardian article which covers a lot of ground for the fearful people which backs up what my original OP was about, that is, it seems quite a large number of the population is not susceptible, or will have very minor symptoms if any at all.

 

"In a paper published in Cell on 14 May, researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California reported that T cells in blood drawn from people between 2015 and 2018 recognised and reacted to fragments of the Sars-CoV-2 virus. “These people could not have possibly seen Sars-CoV-2,” says one of the paper’s senior authors, Alessandro Sette. “The most reasonable hypothesis is that this reactivity is really cross-reactivity with the cousins of Sars-CoV-2 – the common cold coronaviruses which circulate very broadly and generally give rather mild disease.”

The finding supported an earlier one from a group at the Charité hospital in Berlin, detecting T cell reactivity to proteins in the Sars-CoV-2 virus in 83% of Covid-19 patients but also in 34% of healthy volunteers who had tested negative for the virus itself."

[partington]

6 hours ago, steelepulse said:

Some interesting info from CELL and Medrxiv in the guardian article which covers a lot of ground for the fearful people which backs up what my original OP was about, that is, it seems quite a large number of the population is not susceptible, or will have very minor symptoms if any at all.

 

"In a paper published in Cell on 14 May, researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California reported that T cells in blood drawn from people between 2015 and 2018 recognised and reacted to fragments of the Sars-CoV-2 virus. “These people could not have possibly seen Sars-CoV-2,” says one of the paper’s senior authors, Alessandro Sette. “The most reasonable hypothesis is that this reactivity is really cross-reactivity with the cousins of Sars-CoV-2 – the common cold coronaviruses which circulate very broadly and generally give rather mild disease.”

The finding supported an earlier one from a group at the Charité hospital in Berlin, detecting T cell reactivity to proteins in the Sars-CoV-2 virus in 83% of Covid-19 patients but also in 34% of healthy volunteers who had tested negative for the virus itself."

This observation does not tell you anything about the effectiveness of this cross-reactivity on the clinical outcome of exposure to the COVID-19 virus.

 

It absolutely and definitively does not prove a "lack of susceptibility" to Covid-19 would occur in these people, in the sense that they would not catch the disease. By analogy to similar observations made in other diseases like H1N1 flu it might make their symptoms less severe, but it also might not. It is speculation, because there is simply not enough information to tell.

 

 This is what the Cell paper authors themselves say:

 

Whether this immunity is relevant in influencing clinical outcomes is unknown—and cannot be known without T cell measurements before and after SARS-CoV-2 infection of individuals—but it is tempting to speculate that the cross-reactive CD4+ T cells may be of value in protective immunity, based on SARS mouse models.

source: Targets of T Cell Responses to SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus in Humans with COVID-19 Disease and Unexposed Individuals

Alba Grifoni, et al.  Cell (2020) 181, 1-13

 

Consider this: researchers trying to develop vaccines against the COVID-19 virus itself continually warn that you can't guarantee the vaccine will work even if it causes antibodies to the virus to be made. How much less certain is it then that antibodies to a different virus, even if they cross react with the COVID-19 virus, will be effective?

 

All of these are indeed possibilities, but they are not in any way proven. Therefore acting as if they are already confirmed is foolhardy, and stretching limited knowledge further than is justifiable.

 

 

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by partington

[ballpoint]

6 hours ago, yuyiinthesky said:

You are not very well informed, or you believe in flawed fact checks. There were indeed about 490000 polio cases in India caused by the polio vaccinations there. As this here is about Covid-19, I will not start posting details, but if you‘re really interested, there is a good analysis by James Corbett at his Corbett report.

 

An Indian study with details: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6121585/pdf/ijerph-15-01755.pdf

And the Corbett Report containing (among other fact checks) the fact check about this Polio vaccination issue in India: https://www.corbettreport.com/fact-check-polio-vaccines-tetanus-vaccines-and-the-gates-foundation/

Interestingly, the Corbett report you link to contains this fact checking link:

https://thelogicalindian.com/amp/fact-check/bill-gates-polio-vaccine-covid-19-gates-foundation-21270

 

The fact check gives the source of the claim as 

"According to a report by PolitiFact, the claim can be traced back to an Instagram post by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of former US president John F. Kennedy and a leader of the World Mercury Project on April 7. World Mercury Project, a group headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a California-based organization has been vocal against vaccines. Further, they are one of the biggest sources of anti-vaccine advertisements on Facebook"

 

The conclusion?

 

 

[Bkk Brian]

13 hours ago, robblok said:

Its really scary to see how many corvid deniers and anti vaccination people there are. A lot of them on this forum too. They all just want everything to open up so they can play around and are looking for any fringe evidence that is around to justify their claims. 

 

Really scary indeed, i like that there is debate and so on but these guys are doing everyone a disservice. 

 

In an other topic we had a guy claiming that Bill Gates his vaccine killed / crippled 400.000+ kids in India and he used this to be against a corvid vaccin. But when you fact check the vaccine never killed these kids it was just an US anti vac crazy that stirred up fake news.

 

I love the internet but there is so much fake news out there and stupid people lap it up.

Indeed, unfortunately some are easily taken in with conspiracy theories despite credible fact checks from a variety of organisations and outlets.

 

Here are just a few more debunking this complete myth and dangerous fake news that all started with a social media post and spread:

 

https://factcheck.afp.com/gates-foundation-targeted-misleading-claims-about-india-polio-vaccine-campaign

 

https://thelogicalindian.com/fact-check/bill-gates-polio-vaccine-covid-19-gates-foundation-21270

 

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/23/facebook-posts/anti-vaxxers-spread-conspiracy-about-bill-gates-an/

 

https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/no-bill-gates-foundation-did-not-paralyse-496000-children-in-india-while-testing-polio-vaccine-2590715.html

 

Of course then you have Facebook labeling the post as fake news

 

 

[yuyiinthesky]

2 hours ago, ballpoint said:

Interestingly, the Corbett report you link to contains this fact checking link:

https://thelogicalindian.com/amp/fact-check/bill-gates-polio-vaccine-covid-19-gates-foundation-21270

 

The fact check gives the source of the claim as 

"According to a report by PolitiFact, the claim can be traced back to an Instagram post by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of former US president John F. Kennedy and a leader of the World Mercury Project on April 7. World Mercury Project, a group headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a California-based organization has been vocal against vaccines. Further, they are one of the biggest sources of anti-vaccine advertisements on Facebook"

 

The conclusion?

 

 

You obviously did not bother to check the fact check of James Corbett. Exactly that "Logical Indian/Politico" fact check is the fact check he analyzed, and debunked. Politico has, same as you, never checked the Indian study, the Indian doctor's findings, despite the link provided.

Here it is again, the link to the Indian study with details: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6121585/pdf/ijerph-15-01755.pdf

Whatever Politico checked, it was not that original Indian study, they totally ignored it.
 

It makes sense to actually listen to the Corbett Report containing (among other fact checks) his fact check of that Politico fact Check about this Polio vaccination issue in India: https://www.corbettreport.com/fact-check-polio-vaccines-tetanus-vaccines-and-the-gates-foundation/

Please note also that fact checker Politico has a conflict of interest here, it is funded by, among others, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (details also provided in the Corbett report).

Edited June 25, 2020 by yuyiinthesky

[yuyiinthesky]

15 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

Indeed, unfortunately some are easily taken in with conspiracy theories despite credible fact checks from a variety of organisations and outlets.

 

Here are just a few more debunking this complete myth and dangerous fake news that all started with a social media post and spread:

 

It is correct that the "fact checks" listed above are talking about a social media post somewhere. However if you want to talk about and check the real issue about these polio vaccinations in India, you could of course check the real source, the real data, as reported not by some social media posts somewhere but by the Indian doctors examining the problem:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6121585/pdf/ijerph-15-01755.pdf

 

Of course, it is much easier to just hide behind dubious fact checks which did not look at the real source but talk about weird social media posts. Up to you.

Edited June 25, 2020 by yuyiinthesky

[yuyiinthesky]

There are so many lunatics coming up with the weirdest theories. Now if such a lunatic says that the sky is blue, that does not mean that the sky is not blue. If in doubt we could check with an expert, with science, but not focussing on the lunatic, but focussing on the question at hand, is the sky blue, and looking at research about that. 

[farang51]

12 minutes ago, yuyiinthesky said:

You obviously did not bother to check the fact check of James Corbett. Exactly that "Logical Indian/Politico" fact check is the fact check he analyzed, and debunked.

Don't you just hate it when people do not bother to check the facts. Like the name of the fact checker they do not like.

 

13 minutes ago, yuyiinthesky said:

Please not also that fact checker Politico has a conflict of interest here, it is funded by, among others, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (details also provided in the Corbett report).

Politico is not funded by Gates, neither is Politifact. You can check it here: https://www.politifact.com/who-pays-for-politifact/

[Logosone]

10 hours ago, steelepulse said:

it seems quite a large number of the population is not susceptible

This exact point is suggested by the most exhaustive study and testing regime undertaken in relation to SARS Cov2, the study in Iceland.

 

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2006100

 

The Iceland study found that only 0.8% of the population sample tested in Iceland actually had the virus.

 

This study was different because unlike in some countries where only the very sick were tested, the 0.8% figure refers to the general population, not at risk sick people or people who travelled. It referred the average person.

 

In terms of scale, the US had done 7,600 tests per one million people at the time. Using that same scale that accounts for Iceland's population, Iceland has undertaken 100,000 tests per million people.   

 

If only 0.8% of the population have the virus that implies that indeed only very, very few are susceptible to the virus.

 

It would explain a lot, including the small number of deaths in Thailand. There's just very few people infected.

 

 

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by Logosone

[Bkk Brian]

41 minutes ago, yuyiinthesky said:

It is correct that the "fact checks" listed above are talking about a social media post somewhere. However if you want to talk about and check the real issue about these polio vaccinations in India, you could of course check the real source, the real data, as reported not by some social media posts somewhere but by the Indian doctors examining the problem:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6121585/pdf/ijerph-15-01755.pdf

 

Of course, it is much easier to just hide behind dubious fact checks which did not look at the real source but talk about weird social media posts. Up to you.

No if you actually go to the link at the AFP factcheck on this it refers to this exact study you've linked to, it also gives a link to the WHO website which contains the official figures of Paralysis caused by Polio (AFP) and vaccine induced paralysis (cVDPV). It shows a very small number of cases of cVDPV were recorded in India only in 2009 (15) and 2010 (2). Total of 17 cases only. Not 400k+ as falsely claimed.

 

https://factcheck.afp.com/gates-foundation-targeted-misleading-claims-about-india-polio-vaccine-campaign

 

I've read the study you linked to and find it very speculative. The are major concerns on its conclusions that are highlighted in some peer reviews:

 

Here's one of them by "International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health" https://europepmc.org/article/med/30577578 There are another 5 peer reviews that are also very critical.

 

 

The authors of the published article ‘Correlation between Non-Polio Acute Flaccid Paralysis Rates with Pulse Polio Frequency in India’ [1] have not considered several important variables in their conclusions of their findings, which might have affected the validity of the correlations.

I would like to highlight several important points:

1. The Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) surveillance data that the authors have used include reported cases of the 0–15 year age group and the rates are calculated forthwith. However, the use of Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) in Intensified Pulse Polio Immunization (IPPI) or Pulse Polio campaigns is targeted toward children in the age range of 0–5 years. Hence, correlating the two does not actually answer the hypothesis unless some analytical evidence is provided to show that the AFP rate in the 5–15 year age group is not influencing the results.

2. There is the possibility that the sensitivity of surveillance and, therefore, the number of AFP cases reported depended not only on the broadened case definition, to include even atypical or non-classical AFP cases, but also on the focus and efforts in terms of active case search (ACS) visits by the surveillance officers. It is a reality that due to the transitioning plans, a shifting of focus from polio, and the reduced presence of specialized surveillance system workforce from partner agencies such as WHO, especially in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the number of ACS visits to the reporting and informer units of the AFP reporting network have decreased considerably. This might also be correlated with the non-polio AFP rates in recent years.

3. When comparing the data from states such as Delhi, Karnataka and Kerala, as per the data sheet provided by the authors, one fails to see the correlation observed by the authors for these states. Even the southern and northern parts of states such as Karnataka, with the same frequency of pulse polio campaigns, have widely variable non-polio AFP rates.

4. The frequency of administration of OPV has increased due to routine immunization strengthening efforts, especially in northern states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, stemming from campaigns such as special immunization weeks, Mission Indradhanush, and Gram Swaraj Abhiyan, which have been active from 2013/2014 onwards. The routine immunization OPV doses (5) are reaching a greater percentage of each birth cohort (about 30-40% more in northern states since 2013/2014), which is not accounted for by the authors.

5. There was a change in OPV type during the global switch from tOPV to bOPV in 2016. IPV was introduced prior to the switch to avoid the risk of VDPV emergence. In addition, the complex effects of IPV generated immunity against polio paralysis of any type (WPV, VDPV, or VAPP), when administered simultaneously with bOPV, due to variation in the speed and magnitude of serosal immunity generation by IPV vis-à-vis that by bOPV, and the subsequent reduction in the risk of generation of paralytic illness is also not discussed or accounted for. Moreover, the low coverage of IPV, due to global shortages in supply chains, is not accounted for.

6. The possibility of post vaccination paralysis, though described in the literature to be about one in two to three million doses, might apply only to those children who take vaccines for the first time, those who are totally naïve with no pre-existing immunity. This might be much more uncommon in already vaccinated children. As the naïve cohort will remain similar (or with only a slight change caused by the birth rate) irrespective of the number of polio campaign rounds or the routine immunization schedule, the possibility of the OPV induced paralysis rate changing much each year is questionable. Hence, there appears to be no biological plausibility for the conclusions on correlation described by the authors, which should be regarded as spurious unless proved otherwise by further studies.

7. Another important factor, i.e., non-polio enteroviruses (NPEV) causing polio like paralysis, and variations in the temporal and spatial distribution of NPEVs across Indian states are unaccounted for.

8. The authors do not describe how the proportions of actual diagnoses of AFP cases have varied over time, nor what percentage fit into the classical AFP criteria as practiced in the western countries to which the authors have drawn the non-polio AFP rate comparisons of India.

 

With all of these questions at bay, the findings and inferences described in the article are questionable and should be considered spurious unless proved otherwise by further study and analysis using more rigorous methods.

[yuyiinthesky]

12 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

With all of these questions at bay, the findings and inferences described in the article are questionable and should be considered spurious unless proved otherwise by further study and analysis using more rigorous methods.

Thanks for this review. Especially for not basing it on the social media posts of some lunatics, but looking at the real data. That‘s how a fact check should be. Excellent, indeed!

[yuyiinthesky]

49 minutes ago, Logosone said:

This exact point is suggested by the most exhaustive study and testing regime undertaken in relation to SARS Cov2, the study in Iceland.

 

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2006100

 

The Iceland study found that only 0.8% of the population sample tested in Iceland actually had the virus.

 

This study was different because unlike in some countries where only the very sick were tested, the 0.8% figure refers to the general population, not at risk sick people or people who travelled. It referred the average person.

 

In terms of scale, the US had done 7,600 tests per one million people at the time. Using that same scale that accounts for Iceland's population, Iceland has undertaken 100,000 tests per million people.   

 

If only 0.8% of the population have the virus that implies that indeed only very, very few are susceptible to the virus.

 

It would explain a lot, including the small number of deaths in Thailand. There's just very few people infected.

 

 

 

To say the obvious, which might not be seen by everyone immediately, but which has a huge importance: The above means that, whatever the required value of immune (or non-susceptible) people for a herd immunity might be, it will be reached much faster than previously expected. 
 

[partington]

3 hours ago, Logosone said:

This exact point is suggested by the most exhaustive study and testing regime undertaken in relation to SARS Cov2, the study in Iceland.

 

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2006100

 

The Iceland study found that only 0.8% of the population sample tested in Iceland actually had the virus.

 

This study was different because unlike in some countries where only the very sick were tested, the 0.8% figure refers to the general population, not at risk sick people or people who travelled. It referred the average person.

 

In terms of scale, the US had done 7,600 tests per one million people at the time. Using that same scale that accounts for Iceland's population, Iceland has undertaken 100,000 tests per million people.   

 

If only 0.8% of the population have the virus that implies that indeed only very, very few are susceptible to the virus.

 

It would explain a lot, including the small number of deaths in Thailand. There's just very few people infected.

 

 

 

If only 0.8% of the population have the virus this does NOT logically mean that very very few are susceptible to the virus: this is a completely unwarranted conclusion.

 

It could equally well mean (and given that Iceland is sparsely populated, hugely socially aware, carried out stringent test and tracking before a single case was observed in the country  and has but  a single airport it is more likely to mean) that very few have been exposed to the virus.

 

The way of  ensuring that very few people are exposed to the virus is by stringent containment measures. The authors of the study you cite here suggest this is the reason for the low infection rate. They do not feel the need to invoke widespread unrecognised immunity, and nor should you!

 

Here is what they say

N Engl J Med 2020; 382:2302-2315 Spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the Icelandic Population. Daniel F. Gudbjartsson, et al.

 

"The lack of increase in the incidence of infection over time may be due to containment efforts by the Icelandic health care authorities and their nimble response to the outbreak abroad. Testing of exposed persons with symptoms had been carried out for 1 month before the first SARS-CoV-2 case was identified in Iceland. Self-isolation, quarantining, and other social-distancing measures may also have helped to prevent an increase in the infection rate."

[...]

Thus, the frequency of the SARS-CoV-2 infection in the overall Icelandic population was stable from March 13 to April 1, a finding that appears to indicate that the containment measures had been working. However, the virus has spread to the extent that unless we continue to test and isolate, track contacts, and quarantine, we are likely to fail in our efforts to contain the virus." 

 

[Logosone]

4 hours ago, partington said:

If only 0.8% of the population have the virus this does NOT logically mean that very very few are susceptible to the virus: this is a completely unwarranted conclusion.

 

It could equally well mean (and given that Iceland is sparsely populated, hugely socially aware, carried out stringent test and tracking before a single case was observed in the country  and has but  a single airport it is more likely to mean) that very few have been exposed to the virus.
 

The problem with that theory, making Iceland a singular case, is that it is not supported by the evidence.

 

If you look at Germany, another that has tested broadly and not just the very sick but also many of the general population, a country that is not sparsely populated, indeed one of the largest populations on earth with many very densely populated areas, and which of course has many airports, they currently, using Johns Hopkins data, have 193,371 cases. Germany's population is 83,000,000.

 

That means 0.23% of the German population has the virus at this time if you use evidenced, verified data and not speculation.

 

Even allowing for a small rise in infected in the future and allowing for the fact that there is a certain number of unidentified cases, Germany's figure could rise by a factor of four and still be in the 0.8% ballpark.

 

The same applies in virtually every country, the actual number of infected is very small, around or substantially below the 0.8% number in most cases.

 

You could argue that is because of unidentified cases but this applies also in countries that are known to have made a serious effort at testing. 

 

Nor is the extremely low number of infected in most countries explained by containment policies. In those countries that put those policies in place late or not at all the number of infected is still very low.

 

An obvious explanation would be that most people are not highly susceptible to the virus. It would also explain why countries like Thailand, who put containment in place late, did not test 99% of their population and relied on hand gel, temperature readings and masks, still have less than 8000 deaths, there are just very few infected.

 

Of course this could change as the virus adapts to humans. It's very early days still.

[Logosone]

8 hours ago, yuyiinthesky said:

To say the obvious, which might not be seen by everyone immediately, but which has a huge importance: The above means that, whatever the required value of immune (or non-susceptible) people for a herd immunity might be, it will be reached much faster than previously expected. 
 

That's right, the latest on herd immunity anyway is that 43% immunity would suffice, 60% per cent is not necessary:

 

"National herd immunity to the coronavirus could build up with just four out of 10 people catching the disease, scientists claim. Researchers say that immunity among the most socially active people in a country could protect those who come into contact with fewer others.

 

Previous estimates have suggested around two thirds (60 per cent) of a population would have to catch Covid-19 for herd immunity to develop, which would see hundreds of thousands of Britons die if it was achieved without a vaccine.But this exposure level could be slashed to just 43 per cent, according to scientists from Nottingham and Stockholm."

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8454555/Herd-immunity-develop-just-43-people-catching-Covid-19-scientists-claim.html