Evidence now suggests herd immunity likely impossible without a vaccine

[cmarshall]

2 hours ago, utalkin2me said:

One death a day now in Sweden. They have basically conquered this virus with their policy. Of course there could be a resurgence. The mystery to me is why the world news is not reporting on their success. It makes about as much sense as a country finding a cure for cancer and nobody else talks about it or uses the new treatment. 

Because Sweden has a fatality rate of 544 per million making it the fifth worst country in the world.  Hardly a success.  Of course, in a small country the virus will eventually peter out when it runs out of new victims.  But if indeed there is no herd immunity, meaning that the exposure resulting from infection lasts no more than a few months, then the virus will be back in Sweden in full force eventually.  

 

Success is a death rate per million comparable to China 3.33, S. Korea 5.6, or Thailand 0.84. 

 

But Sweden's performance is even more disgraceful than the statistics indicate.  Apparently, they denied treatment to older Covid sufferers even when facilities were available mounting even to euthanasia:

 

Yngve Gustafsson, a geriatrics specialist at Umea University, told the BMJ that the proportion of older people in respiratory care nationally was lower than at the same time a year before, even though people over 70 were the worst affected by Covid-19. He, too, was aghast at the practice of doctors prescribing a “palliative cocktail” for sick older people in care homes over the telephone.

“Older people are routinely being given morphine and midazolam, which are respiratory-inhibiting,” he told the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper, “It’s active euthanasia, to say the least.”

 

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/deadly-covid-discrimination-against-the-elderly-in-sweden/

 

[Jingthing]

A couple of related points including some good news. 

 

For the crowd that is still cheerleading for natural herd immunity super hot infection zones like Florida may provide some cause for celebration. 

 

While personally I think exponential infection zones are tragic, there is a bright side. 

 

When live population testing begins on promising vaccines that process can be sped up alot by doing the tests in the hot infection zones. 

 

Also if such testing can be done on US populations the tricky politics of exporting such testing colonial style to third world countries can be avoided. 

 

Also there is always the x factor of mutations. Viruses main impetus is to keep infecting as many people as people. That's best done with a less lethal virus because if a virus kills people right away the host isn't helping perpetuate new infections. The point being that although mutations can be towards more or less lethality my sources say less lethal is more likely. 

So although mass infections may not bring about natural herd immunity they might result in a dominant mutation more like a cold. Of course this would totally depend on dumb luck to happen. 

Edited July 16, 2020 by Jingthing

[NCC1701A]

 

[JonnyF]

There won't be a vaccine, but the treatments will become so effective that catching it will be a minor inconvenience. 

 

It will simply fade away but never disappear IMO.

[cmarshall]

38 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

Also there is always the x factor of mutations. Viruses main impetus is to keep infecting as many people as people. That's best done with a less lethal virus because if a virus kills people right away the host isn't helping perpetuate new infections. The point being that although mutations can be towards more or less lethality my sources say less lethal is more likely. 

So although mass infections may not bring about natural herd immunity they might result in a dominant mutation more like a cold. Of course this would totally depend on dumb luck to happen. 

In the past some viruses have probably evolved toward non-lethality, such as a chicken pox and measles.  It is likely to be an evolutionary benefit to the virus to become non-lethal, but only under certain conditions.  On the face of it a virus is only going to become non-lethal if doing so increases transmission because the host is alive longer to keep transmitting the virus.  But if treatment is widely available that renders the illness non-fatal then the lifespan of the host is not reduced even though in the absence of such treatment the host would have died soon after infection.  This may be the case with AIDS, at least in the rich countries where treatments are available that give the HIV-infected a more or less normal lifespan.  

 

Also, if a virus has a low case fatality rate accompanied by a high infection rate, which describes Covid-19, its propagation will not depend very much on transmission by the small percent of fatally infected, unlike HIV.  So, there may be relatively little environmental pressure for the virus to become non-lethal.  Covid's case fatality rate is variously estimated as from 1% to 5%.  But it has an R of 2.5 to 3.  HIV in the absence of treatment has a case fatality rate of 100% and so would have much more environmental pressure to become non-lethal, but in the 35 years or so since HIV emerged, it hasn't, even in poor countries in Africa where the treatments must be too expensive to be widely used.

 

Even if a virus does evolve to become non-lethal, that evolution may well take hundreds or thousands of years.  The Plague of Antoninus, which killed Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD, may have been measles or chicken pox, which are now relatively harmless childhood diseases.  Bubonic plague recurred repeatedly in Europe from 1346 until 1720.  Although later outbreaks did not spread as widely as in the 14th century, the fatality rate remained high in affected areas.  

 

So, evolution is not likely to bail us out of the Covid pandemic.

Edited July 16, 2020 by cmarshall

[Jingthing]

Well I'm certainly no kind of expert on virus mutation but my sources say that there has already been a dramatic mutation towards the now dominant strain at least in the Americas. Much more infectious possible 10x as much but no change in lethality either way. 

Edited July 16, 2020 by Jingthing

[J Town]

13 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

Well I'm certainly no kind of expert on virus mutation but my sources say that there has already been a dramatic mutation towards the now dominant strain at least in the Americas. Much more infectious possible 10x as much but no change in lethality either way. 

As well, people who have caught it and survived can catch it again a few months later. This truly is a novel virus.

[Jingthing]

4 minutes ago, J Town said:

As well, people who have caught it and survived can catch it again a few months later. This truly is a novel virus.

Possibly. Which is really what this thread is mainly about. It is new in the world in humans and scientists are still learning and will be for quite a while. But you're right it is novel. Also it obviously isn't just another flu when you look at the damage it does in many parts of the body other than the lungs in the more severe cases of course. 

Edited July 16, 2020 by Jingthing

[farang51]

3 hours ago, geriatrickid said:

 

7 hours ago, farang51 said:

If it is not possible to achieve natural herd immunity, then it is not possible to achieve herd immunity with a vaccine; unless people get vaccinated every few months. I certainly hope, he is wrong.

Really?  We used the concept to  manage measles, mumps,rubella and polio. It was proven an effective strategy.

Please note that I referred to the opinion by William Haseltine. He said "herd immunity will likely never be achieved for Covid-19 or any other coronavirus" and that we had to hope for a vaccine. I find that contradictory.

 

 

[simple1]

4 hours ago, eeworldwide said:

Would you really put faith in the worlds fastest developed vaccine?? And it will take at least a year for a sufficient amount to be produced.

If developed in a secure and professional environment such as Australia, which has a great reputation for medical research - Yes. No idea how long for production in sufficient quantities. I do understand there are legal licensing mechanisms to distribute production to facilities worldwide; whether a developer of the IP would go down this path is the question. If already contracted to the US in the same manner as the Israeli developer, Gilead, then the answer would be 'no way' for sufficient supply.

[J Town]

11 minutes ago, farang51 said:

Please note that I referred to the opinion by William Haseltine. He said "herd immunity will likely never be achieved for Covid-19 or any other coronavirus" and that we had to hope for a vaccine. I find that contradictory.

Bottom line - no one is an absolute authority. This virus is different from any before its time. Evidence would suggest just doing the simplest of things - washing hands frequently, wearing a mask, practicing social distancing - mitigates this virus. Why anyone would argue against these really, really easy things to do is honestly insane.

[yuyiinthesky]

9 hours ago, kenk24 said:

my sad and unprofessional thought on that, is that the more the virus spreads, the more chance it has to mutate and become more sophisticated at killing us... 

 

maybe, this time, the virus wins... 

 

utter nonsense, scaremongering!

 

A virus which kills - dies itself. Simple evolution. Only a virus which doesn’t kill can spread and survive.

[yuyiinthesky]

3 hours ago, simple1 said:

If developed in a secure and professional environment such as Australia, which has a great reputation for medical research - Yes. No idea how long for production in sufficient quantities. I do understand there are legal licensing mechanisms to distribute production to facilities worldwide; whether a developer of the IP would go down this path is the question. If already contracted to the US in the same manner as the Israeli developer, Gilead, then the answer would be 'no way' for sufficient supply.

Feel free to volunteer as Guinea pig for a fast tracked new experimental gene altering vaccine. I won’t.

[1FinickyOne]

29 minutes ago, yuyiinthesky said:

 

utter nonsense, scaremongering!

 

A virus which kills - dies itself. Simple evolution. Only a virus which doesn’t kill can spread and survive.

yes of course.. I have another friend who thinks nobody is dead or has died from covid... I guess it depends on where you get your news... 

 

but don't take it from me... maybe watch some of the hospital workers talking abt not having enuf beds or respirators or places to put the bodies... 

[yuyiinthesky]

19 minutes ago, kenk24 said:

yes of course.. I have another friend who thinks nobody is dead or has died from covid... I guess it depends on where you get your news... 

 

but don't take it from me... maybe watch some of the hospital workers talking abt not having enuf beds or respirators or places to put the bodies... 

 

Please explain how a virus can spread if his hosts, which it needs to reproduce, die?

 

Everytime a host dies, it becomes unavailable for the virus to reproduce it. If survival and reproduction is the target, then this is a failure.

 

You may want to read up a little on Darwin and evolution, instead of scaremongering journalism.

Or are you one of these people which claim the virus has its own conscience, its free will and that will is to kill us?

 

 

 

Edited July 16, 2020 by yuyiinthesky

[J Town]

2 minutes ago, yuyiinthesky said:

Please explain how a virus can spread if his hosts, which it needs to reproduce, die?

 

Everytime a host dies, it becomes unavailable for the virus to reproduce it. If survival and reproduction is the target, then this is a failure.

 

You made want to read up a little on Darwin and evolution, instead of scaremongering journalism.

Or are you one of these people which claim the virus has its own conscience, its free will and that will is to kill us?

Technically, this virus is not considered a living thing. It really doesn't care, it doesn't know any better. If it kills off all its hosts, well c'est la vie (or NO c'est la vie to be precise).

[fred110]

11 hours ago, ezzra said:

I think Sweden took the punt on herd immunity and lost big time with 76,500 infected and 5,572 dead for a nation of 10 millions... anyone else want to try?...

That's only .05% death toll of the total population, with no shut down

[yuyiinthesky]

4 hours ago, cmarshall said:

Even if a virus does evolve to become non-lethal, that evolution may well take hundreds or thousands of years.  The Plague of Antoninus, which killed Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD, may have been measles or chicken pox, which are now relatively harmless childhood diseases.  Bubonic plague recurred repeatedly in Europe from 1346 until 1720.  Although later outbreaks did not spread as widely as in the 14th century, the fatality rate remained high in affected areas.  

 

So, evolution is not likely to bail us out of the Covid pandemic.

To take up your argument, I think history has proven that no disease, no virus, is able to stop us. We conquered the globe, many billions of us now, everywhere, unstoppable. Our immune system and our intelligence has won every battle, even with the most ferocious attackers.

 

With SARS-CoV-2 now gone already in many countries, it’s quite obvious that evolution and history is on our side, we’ll survive, unless we commit global suicide, shut us down, becoming too scared to live.

 

 

[checkered flag]

8 hours ago, simple1 said:

There is no herd immunity from influenza. There is the annual 'flu' vaccine which worldwide annual deaths at approx 500k instead of millions. Covid is far more infectious (in Oz one person in Sydney from an interstate city with Covid - person zero - has so far caused 34 infections in a cluster within a few weeks. Covid vaccine is predicted to be available in the coming 4 - 12 months with human trails current in some countries, including Australia. Hopefully the Australian government will not permit the US to forward buy the entire production as they have done in at least one other country.

This doesn't make sense. One therapy that works is transfusing patients with Covid serum from recovered patients. Therefore recovered patients have some immunity. Currently we don't know how long the immunity last but it's real. 

People without scientific or medical knowledge simply don't know. 

[J Town]

1 minute ago, checkered flag said:

People without scientific or medical knowledge simply don't know. 

You wouldn't know that with all the medical armchair quarterbacking around the US.

[yuyiinthesky]

5 hours ago, cmarshall said:

Success is a death rate per million comparable to China 3.33, S. Korea 5.6, or Thailand 0.84. 

And more success than that is a death rate of zero, achieved by Cambodia with measures more similar to Sweden than to Thailand, no draconian lockdowns, no bans, no curfews. 

[Sumarianson]

We have been on this planet for millions of years. If there is no herd immunity then this virus was created in a lab! Vaccines will be of no use as there are over 25 strains of Corona Virus and it mutates all the time. So vaccines are not the solution. There is much evidence that vaccines do not work at all but do more harm than good whdn the body encounters the real virus.

[cmarshall]

The opinion of Dr. William Haseltine cited above is sobering with information that is new at least to me.  These are excerpts from his blog:

 

But we waste critical time with this pointless discussion, because the facts are already quite clear: herd immunity will likely never be achieved for Covid-19 or any other coronavirus. We know this thanks to new research on the development and decline of Covid antibodies and from a wealth of epidemiological evidence on coronaviruses as a whole.

While SARS and MERS are the coronaviruses that grab the headlines, there are four other mostly unknown coronaviruses that are much more common: 229E, HKU1, NL63 and OC43. What we know from 60 years of research into these viruses is that they come back year after year and reinfect the same people — over and over again.

 

Over the past weekend, researchers from the United Kingdom published new research which suggests that SARS-CoV-2 does indeed act like its more common cousins. They studied the presence of neutralizing antibodies — the specific antibodies needed to fight off reinfection — and found that a transient neutralizing antibody response was “a feature shared by both a SARS-CoV-2 infection that causes low disease severity and the circulating seasonal coronaviruses that are associated with common colds.”

 

T cells help our immune system by killing off infected cells and activating other immune cells to fight off the infection. We know people make robust and sometimes long-lasting T cell responses to cold causing coronaviruses. However important the T cell response may be in clearing infection, it is clear that it does not prevent reinfection, which occurs regularly with the more common coronaviruses.

 

https://www.williamhaseltine.com/were-wasting-time-talking-about-herd-immunity/

[yuyiinthesky]

4 minutes ago, cmarshall said:

The opinion of Dr. William Haseltine cited above is sobering with information that is new at least to me.  These are excerpts from his blog:

 

But we waste critical time with this pointless discussion, because the facts are already quite clear: herd immunity will likely never be achieved for Covid-19 or any other coronavirus. We know this thanks to new research on the development and decline of Covid antibodies and from a wealth of epidemiological evidence on coronaviruses as a whole.

While SARS and MERS are the coronaviruses that grab the headlines, there are four other mostly unknown coronaviruses that are much more common: 229E, HKU1, NL63 and OC43. What we know from 60 years of research into these viruses is that they come back year after year and reinfect the same people — over and over again.

 

Over the past weekend, researchers from the United Kingdom published new research which suggests that SARS-CoV-2 does indeed act like its more common cousins. They studied the presence of neutralizing antibodies — the specific antibodies needed to fight off reinfection — and found that a transient neutralizing antibody response was “a feature shared by both a SARS-CoV-2 infection that causes low disease severity and the circulating seasonal coronaviruses that are associated with common colds.”

 

T cells help our immune system by killing off infected cells and activating other immune cells to fight off the infection. We know people make robust and sometimes long-lasting T cell responses to cold causing coronaviruses. However important the T cell response may be in clearing infection, it is clear that it does not prevent reinfection, which occurs regularly with the more common coronaviruses.

 

https://www.williamhaseltine.com/were-wasting-time-talking-about-herd-immunity/

Even Germany’s most scaremongering virologist, Drosten, the guy who advises the German government, does not question herd immunity for SARS-CoV-2.

 

[1FinickyOne]

35 minutes ago, yuyiinthesky said:

 

Please explain how a virus can spread if his hosts, which it needs to reproduce, die?

 

Everytime a host dies, it becomes unavailable for the virus to reproduce it. If survival and reproduction is the target, then this is a failure.

 

You may want to read up a little on Darwin and evolution, instead of scaremongering journalism.

Or are you one of these people which claim the virus has its own conscience, its free will and that will is to kill us?

 

 

 

what are you smoking? 

 

obviously there is an incubation period during which it spreads... which has nothing to do w/journalism... or cheesecake or any other tangent you want to attach to my comments... 

[rumak]

10 hours ago, kenk24 said:

my sad and unprofessional thought on that, is that the more the virus spreads, the more chance it has to mutate and become more sophisticated at killing us... 

 

maybe, this time, the virus wins... 

There is certain to be a movie opportunity here.   Female applicants can apply for the highly sought

after starring role in  Mad Maxine.....   The villain has already been chosen .  Hint ..... think Bill

[Sujo]

Herd immunity is not working. Sweden is bad. UK is bad. US heading there.

 

Places that locked down and tried to contain it will be the first to open up their economy. But not to those that tried herd immunity. They will be the last countries allowed travel.

[Why Me]

From the Mayo Clinic:

However, there are some major problems with relying on community infection to create herd immunity to the virus that causes COVID-19. First, it isn't yet clear if infection with the COVID-19 virus makes a person immune to future infection.

 

Research suggests that after infection with some coronaviruses, reinfection with the same virus — though usually mild and only happening in a fraction of people — is possible after a period of months or years. Further research is needed to determine the protective effect of antibodies to the virus in those who have been infected.

 

Even if infection with the COVID-19 virus creates long-lasting immunity, a large number of people would have to become infected to reach the herd immunity threshold. Experts estimate that in the U.S., 70% of the population — more than 200 million people — would have to recover from COVID-19 to halt the epidemic. If many people become sick with COVID-19 at once, the health care system could quickly become overwhelmed. This amount of infection could also lead to serious complications and millions of deaths, especially among older people and those who have chronic conditions.

 

We'll just have to wait for the vaccine I guess. There was good news from Moderna yesterday so maybe it won't be long.

[Monomial]

If this is actually true - that herd immunity is impossible - then it becomes even more critical we stop all this ridiculous lockdown nonsense and border closures and get on with the normal processes of living.

 

The current situation is untennable as a permanent lifestyle.  We just have to accept the virus as a risk the same way we accept car accidents as a risk.  Let the medical community concentrate on treatment options just as they did with HIV, and let everyone else concentrate on getting back to living their lives and letting the human race adapt to the new conditions.

 

This is not an extinction level event. It's time to put this behind us. A virus that resists immunity also can't be eradicated. Best we stop trying now. We need to evolve to overcome its effects.

 

[yuyiinthesky]

9 hours ago, simple1 said:

There is no herd immunity from influenza. There is the annual 'flu' vaccine which worldwide annual deaths at approx 500k instead of millions.

Again a misleading statement. The influenza virus of this year is not coming back next season, but a changed version. The influenza virus is, very different to the common corona viruses, mutating heavily and thus presents itself to the immune system differently every season, it’s like being a different virus. The influenza vaccination tries to guess the coming mutations, based on the last one, with more ore less success each year.