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| JohnnyMalaria:
--- Quote from: coppice on March 21, 2021, 04:38:13 pm --- --- Quote from: Mr. Scram on March 21, 2021, 03:29:46 pm ---COVID won't go away.... --- End quote --- Really? So this epidemic is unique? Most other epidemics have just gone away. They weren't beaten by human action, or by the disease running out of victims to infect. Herd immunity is obviously a part of the picture, but it doesn't explain a lot about the way infection patterns reduce. Our understanding of why epidemics go away is very weak, but we do know they generally go away. --- End quote --- An epidemic has a finite duration but the causal agent persists. More specifically, an epidemic is characterized by an unexpectedly large number of infections in a population in a short period time. Exactly what numbers are used depends on the infectious agent. Just because the number of infections falls below the limit arbitrarily defined to indicate an epidemic doesn't mean the infectious agent has magically gone away. The viruses responsible for the common cold haven't gone away but we don't hear common cold epidemics. Eventually, some mutations of the original COVID-19 will persist at sub-epidemic levels and we'll adapt to live along side it like other endemic diseases. |
| Mr. Scram:
--- Quote from: coppice on March 21, 2021, 04:38:13 pm ---Really? So this epidemic is unique? Most other epidemics have just gone away. They weren't beaten by human action, or by the disease running out of victims to infect. Herd immunity is obviously a part of the picture, but it doesn't explain a lot about the way infection patterns reduce. Our understanding of why epidemics go away is very weak, but we do know they generally go away. --- End quote --- COVID not going away and the pandemic not going away are two very different things. As we develop at least a base immunity, the impact of COVID will dwindle. Historic immunology tells us it's also likely COVID will evolve into a less severe, possibly more contagious variant. There's interesting reading material on how that gets selected for in society. It'll likely become another common human disease, like the flu, cold and many others. We've seen similar patterns with many other epidemics. You either eradicate a disease, or if that's not possible mitigate its effects to the point of regular life being possible. Odd as it may sound, both humans and the virus itself benefit from it being comparatively benign. The common cold is an incredibly successful disease by virtue of people being mildly inconvenienced and generally carrying on while being highly contagious. Conversely, Ebola tends to kill off its victims so rapidly it hampers its own succes. |
| Zero999:
--- Quote from: Mr. Scram on March 21, 2021, 05:43:51 pm --- --- Quote from: coppice on March 21, 2021, 04:38:13 pm ---Really? So this epidemic is unique? Most other epidemics have just gone away. They weren't beaten by human action, or by the disease running out of victims to infect. Herd immunity is obviously a part of the picture, but it doesn't explain a lot about the way infection patterns reduce. Our understanding of why epidemics go away is very weak, but we do know they generally go away. --- End quote --- COVID not going away and the pandemic not going away are two very different things. As we develop at least a base immunity, the impact of COVID will dwindle. Historic immunology tells us it's also likely COVID will evolve into a less severe, possibly more contagious variant. There's interesting reading material on how that gets selected for in society. It'll likely become another common human disease, like the flu, cold and many others. We've seen similar patterns with many other epidemics. You either eradicate a disease, or if that's not possible mitigate its effects to the point of regular life being possible. Odd as it may sound, both humans and the virus itself benefit from it being comparatively benign. The common cold is an incredibly successful disease by virtue of people being mildly inconvenienced and generally carrying on while being highly contagious. Conversely, Ebola tends to kill off its victims so rapidly it hampers its own succes. --- End quote --- That's right. The disease won't go away, but it's likely to have less as an impact, as time goes by. The reason why Ebola doesn't spread, has more to do with the fact that it's not airborne, so close contact is required and it's only spread by those who are obviously ill, rather than high virulence. Viruses generally mutate to become more contagious and less deadly over time, but that doesn't seem to be the case with COVID-19 so far, because most of the spread occurs before it causes severe disease, just like HIV, so there's not the same selective pressure for decreased virulence. The newer strains seem to have a higher case fatality ratio, than the original one. This might be in part due to health care being overwhelmed in the case of the P1 strain in Brazil, but isn't true for the B.1.1.1 found in the UK, where care has improved and hospitals were never overwhelmed. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/961042/S1095_NERVTAG_update_note_on_B.1.1.7_severity_20210211.pdf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CADDE-CENTRE/Novel-SARS-CoV-2-P1-Lineage-in-Brazil/main/manuscript/FINAL_P1_MANUSCRIPT_25-02-2021_combined.pdf It doesn't mean this will continue to become infinitely more deadly. Herd immunity will probably be the dominant factor in the reduction in widespread severe disease, than the virus mutating to become more or less deadly, because even the more virulent stains less often cause severe disease in those who've been previously infected, or vaccinated. |
| Microdoser:
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on March 21, 2021, 10:39:25 am --- --- Quote from: Microdoser on March 21, 2021, 10:25:41 am ---Anyway, once they implant all the nano-devices they won't need to do it again. --- End quote --- Oh but all the nanodevices need upgrades, 5G will be soon outdated so at least a 1G update patch needs to be injected to everybody for 6G. --- End quote --- Couldn't they do that with an OTA update? I hear some variants are airborne now |
| tom66:
COVID-19 has an IFR of approximately ~0.4% [1] in England. So, if we take base case assumptions, at a 100% infection rate (more realistic would be 75-85%) and 56 million in England, we'd expect to see cca ~224,000 deaths in England. Instead, we have seen about 85,000 in England. So, interventions have potentially saved ~139,000 lives -- although the true figure may only be known by the end of the year once vaccinations are complete and this pessimistically assumes that behaviour wouldn't change at all with COVID present. The question is was the cost of the interventions worth the numbers saved? At first glance it seems so, but I would argue it is more difficult to say. The NHS typically spends around £30,000 per person-year saved, and the average COVID patient who dies has around 10 years of quality life remaining. This seems cold, but every healthcare system, public or private, has to determine whether the cost of an intervention is proportionate to its benefit. So the maths is fairly simple: £300,000 (total cost of typical intervention for 10 years gained) * 139,000 = £41.7 billion. The actual cost spent is closer to £300 bn in direct Treasury costs, plus around 4% in GDP loss after the pandemic's effects are over [2], plus additional unknown costs in the form of permanently lost jobs and social development. Ignoring the last term as it is impractical to assign a direct cost to it, but we have easily spent around £400 bn on COVID - ten times what we would spend on, for instance, lung cancer, or heart disease. Why did we decide to assign such a drastic cost to COVID that we did not assume to other diseases? [1] https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/estimating-the-infection-fatality-ratio-in-england/ [2] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8866/ |
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