Reposted from Dr. Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.
Posted on January 10, 2021 by niclewis |
By Nic Lewis
Introduction
Many people, myself included, thought that in the many regions where COVID-19 infections were consistently reducing during the summer, indicating that the applicable herd immunity threshold had apparently been crossed, it was unlikely that a major second wave would occur. This thinking has been proved wrong. In this article I give an explanation of why I think major second waves have happened.
Key points
- The herd immunity threshold (HIT) depends positively on the basic reproduction number R0 and negatively on heterogeneity in susceptibility.
- Since neither of the factors on which the HIT depends are fixed, the HIT is not fixed either.
- R0 depends on biological, environmental and sociological factors; colder weather and the evolution of more transmissible strains likely both increase R0; more (less) cautious behaviour and social distancing / restrictions on mixing reduce (increase) R0.
- Second waves were due primarily to changes in these factors increasing R0 and thus the HIT from below to above the existing level of population immunity.
- Heterogeneity in susceptibility is partly biological, but social connectivity differences are key.
- The effect of heterogeneity in susceptibility on the HIT can be represented by a single parameter λ.
- λ will always exceed 1 (its level in a homogeneous population); pre-epidemic λ may be ~4. The higher λ is, the lower the HIT for any given R0.
- The natural infection HIT is hence bound to be below the level of {1 – 1/R0} quoted by ‘experts’.
- Government restrictions reduce λ as well as R0, so the HIT falls less than it would if λ were fixed.
- The final size of an uncontrolled epidemic will substantially exceed the HIT, due to overshoot, so high reported seroprevalence levels can be consistent with a much lower HIT.
The herd immunity threshold (HIT) for a disease epidemic is the proportion of the population needing to have been infected, and thereby no longer susceptible to infection, before the rate of new infections starts to decline. The HIT depends both on the basic reproduction number for infections (R0) – the number of other people that at the start of an epidemic an infected person will on average infect – and the degree of heterogeneity in individuals’ likelihood of being infected (their susceptibility). That likelihood in turn depends on both their social connectivity and biological susceptibility to infection. Neither R0 nor the degree of heterogeneity in susceptibility is fixed in value, so the HIT is not fixed either.
Changes in population behaviour – whether arising from government interventions or in response to increasing disease incidence – affect both R0 and heterogeneity in susceptibility. In addition, R0 (which is proportional to how readily infection is on average transmitted between individuals) may vary seasonally, and change as the virus or other infectious organism mutates.
The resurgence of COVID-19 infections in a second wave after the summer ended is almost certainly due to some combination of the foregoing sociological and biological factors. It has been claimed that the influence of weather on its transmission is relatively minor,[1] and it has so far proved difficult to detect seasonality for COVID-19.[2] However, common colds caused by other coronaviruses are highly seasonal and I now think that it is reasonable to work on the basis that COVID-19 shares that behaviour.
I focus in this article on the mathematical dependence of the HIT to R0 and heterogeneity in susceptibility, and on the factors influencing those controlling variables. I also touch on difference between the HIT and the final size of an uncontrolled epidemic. I discuss in an appendix how, in my view, changes in the factors influencing R0 and heterogeneity in susceptibility likely shaped the evolution of the epidemic in western Europe
How the HIT varies with R0 and population heterogeneity
Table 1 illustrates how the herd immunity threshold varies with R0 and population heterogeneity in susceptibility to infection. The effect of such heterogeneity on transmission of infection and on the HIT can be represented by a single parameter λ, the heterogeneity factor (Tkachenko et al. 2020)[3], which is a function of population variability in both social connectivity and in biological susceptibility.[4] The reproduction number at any time, Rt, and the HIT are related as follows to R0 and λ:
Rt = R0 × Sλ
HIT = 1 – (1/R0)1/λ
where S is the proportion of the population that remains susceptible to infection. For a homogeneous population, these formulae reduce to the classical results Rt = R0 × S and HIT = 1 – 1/R0. With heterogeneity in susceptibility to infection, Rt falls more than pro rata to the susceptible proportion S decreases. Initially, Rt falls λ times as fast with S as in the homogeneous case.
Note that an epidemic takes some time to die out after the HIT is reached, since at that point many people will be infected and will go on to infect others, albeit at a declining rate. Therefore, the final size of the epidemic (FSE) – the attack rate (the ultimate proportion of the population that has been infected) – will exceed the HIT. The columns to the right of each HIT column show (in italics) the FSE if social and biological factors remain unchanged throughout the epidemic.[5] As shown in a previous article,[6] well timed short term restrictions to reduce transmission as the HIT is approached can prevent the FSE from significantly overshooting the HIT.
Table 1. Relationship of each of the herd immunity threshold (HIT) and the final size of the epidemic (FSE) with the basic reproduction number R0, at varying levels of heterogeneity factor λ that arises from heterogeneity in susceptibility (assumed gamma-distributed) across the population, from none (λ = 1) to an estimated normal level (λ = 4). The FSE values assume that the same R0 and λ value applied throughout the epidemic.
Since a person’s social connectivity, which reflects their average rate of contacts with others, equally affects their infectivity, variability in it has a more powerful effect than variability in biological susceptibility.[7] Note that heterogeneity in infectivity that is uncorrelated with susceptibility does not affect the overall progression of an established, large epidemic, although it may affect smaller scale features such as clustering of cases.
For a population that is homogeneous in both biological and social components of susceptibility, λ = 1 (pink columns). In that case, the ‘classical’ formula HIT = 1 – 1/ R0 is valid. This formula also applies to immunity gained through vaccination at random, since such vaccination – unlike natural disease progression – does not preferentially confer immunity on individuals who are more susceptible to infection (and also more likely to infect others).
Analyses of contact networks indicate that, in normal circumstances, the coefficient of variation (standard deviation / mean) for social connectivity in a population is about 1, while biological susceptibility is likely to have a coefficient of variation of about 1/3 or more (Tkachenko et al). Use of those figures implies that λ = 4 (green, rightmost columns).
The effect of government social distancing measures on R0 and the heterogeneity factor
It has been estimated that, prior to significant social distancing taking place, 80% to 90% of all transmission of infection is caused by circa 10% of infected individuals, often at superspreading events where a large number of people are present. When restrictions on gatherings, bars and other venues are introduced, non-household social mixing generally is reduced and superspreading opportunities fall even further, while household mixing will be little affected. The result will be a reduction in R0, but also reduced heterogeneity in social connectivity and hence λ. A further reduction in both these factors can be expected to occur when a lockdown (stay-at-home order) is introduced.
The effects of such government measures, for a range of resulting R0 values, are illustrated by the two middle sets of columns. These both assume the same 1/3 coefficient of variation for biological susceptibility, but a reduction in the coefficient of variation for social connectivity to 0.625, resulting in λ = 3 (yellow columns) or to 0.25, resulting in λ = 2 (salmon columns).
Even in the absence of legal restrictions being imposed, people can be expected to significantly change their behaviour when an epidemic involving severe disease takes hold. The resulting reduction in λ, for any given resulting reduction in R0, might however be less than under an enforced reduction in mixing, since more gregarious people may be less cautious and reduce their high social mixing proportionately less than more cautious, less gregarious people do – the opposite relationship to that arising from restrictions on gatherings, bars and other venues.
How a high seroprevalence level can arise even in the presence of substantial heterogeneity
It might be thought that a high attack rate is incompatible with significant population heterogeneity in susceptibility and hence a moderate HIT. An attack rate of 76% has been claimed for the city of Manaus.[8] However, the weighted measured seroprevalence on which that estimate was based was not from a random sample nor representative of the population,[9] and never exceeded 44%[10]. A random population survey found seroprevalence in Manaus to be only between one-quarter one-third the level claimed in the foregoing study, casting severe doubt on its claim.[11]
The first mentioned study also estimated that in or just after mid-March, near the start of the epidemic in Manaus, Rt – which at that point would not have been far short of R0 – was approximately 2.5, suggesting R0 was in the 2.6 to 2.8 range. The extent of physical distancing that they estimated applied then was moderate, similar to that near the end of the main epidemic. In a relatively poor city like Manaus with household and transport crowding it seems quite likely that in normal circumstances there is lower population heterogeneity in social connectivity than in a high income city, indicating an heterogeneity factor λ perhaps more like 3 than 4 (yellow not green columns). And under moderate social distancing the heterogeneity factor λ might be closer to 2 than 3. For an R0 of 2.6, λ = 2 implies an HIT of 38% but a final epidemic size (FSE) of 64%[12]. Even at λ = 3, the FSE would be 49% (with an HIT of 27%).[13]
To summarize, it seems doubtful that the attack rate in Manaus in fact exceeded 50% – it may have been no more than 20-25% – and an attack rate of 50% is fully compatible with the HIT being below 30%.
Appendix – Changes in R0 and population heterogeneity during the epidemic
The following discussion, which represents my semi-quantitative broad brush analysis of what has occurred, relates primarily to the progress of the epidemic in western Europe. However, it may also be somewhat applicable to the north east United States, where the epidemic took off only slightly later than in western Europe and where the seasonal variation in climate is also large.
In the initial stages of the first wave, which generally started in major cities, in early spring 2020, infections appear to have been doubling every three days or so prior to governments imposing restrictions or people becoming significantly more cautious. Depending on the assumed distribution of the generation interval (from one infection to those it directly leads to), that implies an R0 value of between 2 and 4.[14] I will assume a middle of the range R0 value of 3 for illustrative purposes. That would imply a HIT of 67% for a homogeneous population, reducing to 24% for a population with the highest degree of heterogeneity illustrated in Table 1, which might be expected to apply before people started behaving more cautiously and mixing less.
When people started mixing less, voluntarily or by government fiat, R0 would have reduced, but as discussed above λ will also have fallen. The combined effect of these changes can be visualised as moving diagonally upwards and leftwards in Table 1, from the green columns to the yellow columns and then to the salmon columns. The resulting reduction in the HIT would therefore be somewhat smaller than that implied by the reduction in R0 alone.
By late spring or early summer the first wave had largely faded, and it generally continued to decline after restrictions on mixing were at least partially relaxed. As summer progressed, people’s behaviour unsurprisingly returned closer to pre-epidemic norms. I will assume for illustrative purposes that the yellow columns (λ = 3) were representative of that period. Since by midsummer the epidemic appears to have been declining even where only a minor first wave had occurred, it seems that R0 must generally have declined to 1 or below, so that population immunity levels would everywhere have exceeded the HIT (which is only positive if R0 > 1).
As autumn arrived, infections and then serious illness started to rise again, although where testing was increasing the rise may have been exaggerated. It follows that R0 must have risen again, resulting in the HIT increasing to above the level of population immunity. An obvious explanation for the rise in R0 is seasonally reduced sun and cooler weather, with more contact occurring indoors, where almost all COVID-19 transmission appears to take place. A major increase in mixing among young people as school and, particularly, university terms started likely also boosted R0 and the level of infections in the autumn; young adults have generally had the highest incidence rates during the second wave.[15] In some places the rise in infections appears to have occurred slightly earlier, perhaps as a result of holidaymakers returning infected from areas where COVID-19 was more prevalent.[16]
Initially it seemed that some large cities where a significant proportion of the population had been infected in the first wave might be spared, but in most cases the increase in R0 evidently became sufficiently large to raise the HIT to above the level of population immunity. As a result of increasing infections, government-imposed restrictions were generally increased, which as well as reducing R0 will also have reduced the heterogeneity factor λ. This can be visualised as a move diagonally upwards from the yellow columns to the salmon columns. Those actions appear typically to have pushed Rt down to about 1, or slightly lower, which in the presence of a reasonable degree of existing population immunity implies an R0 level significantly above 1. With reduced heterogeneity, the existing level of population immunity causes a lesser reduction in Rt, relative to R0, but Rt will still be a smaller fraction of R0 than the proportion of the population that remains susceptible to infection.
In the UK, and possibly various other countries, a new lineage (B.1.1.7) of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has now emerged[17] and grown faster than existing ones, as discussed in a previous article[18]. Since writing that article, some further data has provided less indirect evidence that B.1.1.7 is 25–50% more infectious than pre-existing variants.[19] On the other hand, recent data from the regions where B.1.1.7 has become dominant suggests that it may now be growing no faster than other variants.[20] It has been suggested that the fast growth in the regions where B.1.1.7 now dominates may have been at least partly due to it spreading there in schools.[21] However, making for illustrative purposes the assumption that B.1.1.7 is actually 25–50% more infectious, R0 will have been increasing, perhaps typically reaching somewhere in the range1.5 to 2.0 once B.1.1.7 becomes the dominant variant, if R0 was previously in the 1.2 to 1.4 range.
Tougher restrictions that have been introduced in a number of countries in response to infection rates increasing, whether due to the spread of the B.1.1.7 lineage, to cold winter weather or to greater mixing, will have reduced population heterogeneity in social connectivity further. In these circumstances, is unclear whether existing levels of population immunity will suffice to prevent further growth of the B.1.1.7 lineage, or the rather similar one that has emerged in South African, even with severe restrictions being introduced. However, increased population immunity resulting from some combination of further spread of infections and vaccination programmes, the combination varying from one country and region to another, should bring COVID-19 epidemics under control within the next few months.
Nicholas Lewis 10 January 2021
[1] “All pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions are currently believed to have a stronger impact on transmission over space and time than any environmental driver.” Carlson CJ, Gomez AC, Bansal S, Ryan SJ. Misconceptions about weather and seasonality must not misguide COVID-19 response. Nature Communications. 2020 Aug 27;11(1):1-4. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18150-z
[2] Engelbrecht FA, Scholes RJ. Test for Covid-19 seasonality and the risk of second waves. One Health. 2020 Nov 29:100202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.onehlt.2020.100202
[3] Tkachenko, A.V. et al.: Persistent heterogeneity not short-term overdispersion determines herd immunity to COVID-19. medRxiv 29 July 2020 https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.26.20162420 They use the term ‘immunity factor’ for λ. Equations [11)], [12] and [13] and intervening paragraph. I adopt their assumption that there is negligible correlation across the population between biological susceptibility to infection and either social connectivity or biological infectivity.
[4] I make from here on the common assumption that a gamma distribution can well represent variation within the population in both social connectivity and biological susceptibility, on which basis λ = (1 + 2 × CVs2) × (1 + CVb2) where CVs and CVb are respectively the social and biological coefficients of variation (standard deviation / mean) for the population.
[5] The FSE (1 – S∞) depends on the sum of the squared coefficients of variation η = CVs2 + CVb2 as well as on λ. It is given by the solution to the equation S∞ = (1 + R0 η [1–S∞λ–η]/[ λ–η])–1/η. See Tkachenko et al. equation [17].
[6] https://www.nicholaslewis.org/when-does-government-intervention-make-sense-for-covid-19/
[7] Variability in infectivity that is uncorrelated with susceptibility in the population has no overall effect in a sizeable epidemic.
[8] Buss, Lewis F., et al. “Three-quarters attack rate of SARS-CoV-2 in the Brazilian Amazon during a largely unmitigated epidemic.” Science (2020).
[9] It was a convenience sample, comprised entirely of blood donors.
[10] That maximum seroprevalence estimate was adjusted upwards to 52% to account for test for sensitivity and specificity. The attack rate estimate further assumed that antibodies would no longer be detectable in a proportion of previously infected individuals.
[11] Hallal, P.C. et al:SARS-CoV-2 antibody prevalence in Brazil: results from two successive nationwide serological household surveys. Lancet, 8(11), e1390-e1398,, September 2020 https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30387-9
[12] Actually slightly lower, as the stricter social distancing measures in the middle part of the epidemic would have reduced the excess of the FSE over the HIT.
[13] If R0 = 2.0, which is possible if a shorter estimate of the generation interval is used, the corresponding FSE sizes would be 52% or 38%, with the HIT being respectively 29% or 21%.
[14] Assuming a gamma distributed generation interval with a mean in the range 4 to 6.5 and a coefficient of variation between 0.37 and 0.74.
[15] Aleta A, Moreno Y. Age differential analysis of COVID-19 second wave in Europe reveals highest incidence among young adults. medRxiv. 13 November 2020. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.11.20230177
[16] It is also possible that, notwithstanding a published finding to the contrary, the A20.EU1 variant that was brought back from Spain by people infected on holiday there may have been somewhat more infectious than existing variants.
[17] Other evidence that has now become available suggests that a similar variant arose in Italy prior to B.1.1.7 being detected in the UK.
[18] https://www.nicholaslewis.org/the-relative-infectivity-of-the-new-uk-variant-of-sars-cov-2/
[19] The observed 50–70% increase in weekly growth rate corresponds to roughly a 25–50% increase in infectivity (and hence in R0), assuming a generation interval with a 4–6 day mean and a reasonable CV, if R0 was previously not substantially above 1.
[20] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/adhocs/12722estimatesofcovid19casesto02januaryforenglandregionsofenglandandbycasescompatiblewiththenewvariant
[21] Loftus (2021, Jan. 1). Neurath’s Speedboat: Did the new variant of COVID spread through schools? Retrieved from http://joshualoftus.com/posts/2021-01-01-did-the-new-variant-of-covid-spread-through-schools/
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If at first you don’t succeed…
With libtards, there is never-enough mentality at work.
If some Big Government public policy or increased spending (money thrown at problem) didn’t work, for the Liberal mind that is seen as evidence they just didn’t try hard enough or spend enough, so they spend more and grow more government.
Joel, I think Scissor is commenting regarding Nic’s May 10 article conclusion:
“In my view, the true herd immunity threshold probably lies somewhere between the 7% and 24%….” which was foobar.
It was, then it wasn’t. We observed the exponential peak and decay. What followed was caused by an external or out-of-band factor that was not considered.
I think that sounds like what I was thinking. In other words, I don’t recall ever seeing that a significant fraction of the population had ever been infected/exposed. So a “second wave” was always likely to be just as bad as a first wave.
..and I use “significant” to mean more than just a certain fraction of the general population, but to also take account of vulnerability and other ‘special group’ considerations.
As of May 2020, most sources were saying herd immunity to COVID-19 requires about 70% (or numbers close to that) of the population to be immune. The percentage of the population that became immune by being infected was a lot smaller than this. The infection rate dropped in the spring of 2020 because people did what was necessary to make the infection drop, and they did that better then than they have so far ever since.
FUBAR!
So the lockup/mask/aversion worked, then it didn’t work, then it did, then it didn’t, but it might in the future?
Meanwhile influenza has disappeared. Why? Because the restrictions worked for flu but not Covid? Because the Ro’s are different? But the Ro’s vary with heterogeneity or some such tripe, correct?
Yes, you were wrong. Yes, your theories are garbage. Yes, it’s demonstrable. But keep on trying. Math is fun. You sound like a scientist. What else matters?
Keep the PANIC going. That’s what’s important. FEAR must never leave us.
Amazing that a 0.1 micron virus can be stopped by masks, distancing and lockdowns but ONLY if it is named influenza.
It is SO obvious the books are being cooked. Bad data being used to justify bad policy (for us not them)
Masks are useless. N95 rated masks block particles down to ~3 microns, that’s bacteria sized. We are talking about virus particles down to 0.02 microns, or less. The sheeple really don’t understand the size difference here. Masks, rated/unrated, even correctly fitted, dry and only used once, are completely useless but they are being mandated. Don’t get me started on ordinary cloth masks.
Most viruses leaving people’s faces are riding droplets of saliva or mucus that are easy for masks to catch. If these droplets are not caught by masks on the way out, they evaporate down to smaller particles that pass through masks more easily.
Most non-N95 masks have significant effectiveness against outgoing viruses, not so much against incoming ones. Outgoing viruses are mostly riding droplets of mucus or saliva that are a lot larger than .1 micron. If these droplets are not caught by masks on the way out, then they evaporate down to smaller particles that pass through masks more easily. As for influenza being knocked down more than COVID-19: Covid-19 is more contagious, and greater participitation is needed in social distancing, avoiding gatherings and wearing masks properly is necessary to bring down the COVID-19 numbers than is necessary to keep flu numbers down.
It’s been 8 months or more of all these “scientific” measures. I think it’s time to try a new way. Ivermectin FTW
Or we can keep flogging a dead horse
MIke, I have been an active participant in the web initiative “Flu Near You” for a decade now. It would normally strike me as strange that this year flu reporting is almost non-existent as the media breathlessly announces the daily contractions of the dreaded COVID.
Sometimes it doesn’t take a math or science genius to see what is clearly in front of your face. You get Sick – its COVID. You Die its COVID. The Hobgoblin is not growing but the hysterical reporting is. It certainly gives the mathematicians fodder for figuring.
Exaaactly, Mr. Powers.
The flu is common. It shows up every year. While the common flu can be a nasty disease, almost everybody has had it once or more. It doesn’t FREAK OUT the populace. We’re used to it.
Flu doesn’t generate massive fear. There’s never been a lockdown for flu, or mandated masks, or year-long school closures, or stripes in the aisle, or cancelled Christmas, or epidemic bankruptcies and record unemployment.
We here know the Alarmist drill, how fomenting fear serves the authoritarian agenda, why tyrants use intimidation, how well-meaning but ignorant people are susceptible to dire announcements, how easily frightened and cowed they become when the Media goes hysterical, how the Government uses Big Lies to manipulate the masses. It’s the “Good German” syndrome.
There is no cure for government-sponsored terror. There may be treatments that work a little bit now and then, but as long as humans are prone to panic, panic-mongering will be used against us.
I have been looking for confirmation of excess death numbers. The CDC appears to show excess deaths almost matching China flu deaths. The reported Hopkins study is supposedly based on the CDC numbers.
I would like it to be true, yet do not see how, based on what the CDC shows.
I’ve been following those and the jump in December is interesting and unexplained. Personally I thought all the vulnerable would have been gone. Unless we are seeing more overdoses, suicides, etc which is entirely possible.
Total/Excess deaths are apparently the hardest number to rig/adjust/fix so I like that. Takes 6-8 weeks for all the states to get their data in and finalised so maybe end of February. For some reason North Carolina is always the latest to report.
Yes, I agree, excess deaths is the best barometer. In early April the stats showed about 30 k cases each day and about 2100 Cov19 deaths.
Recently daily cases have reached 300 k, a ten fold increase, and daily deaths about 3100, only a fifty percent increase in deaths, and a one thousand percent increase in cases.
I saw a couple of statistics from the Hopkins study, but zero analysis on exactly what data they pulled from the CDC, and why it conflicts.
At any rate, the inexpensive Inverticin and HCQ treatments, along with fresh air, sunshine and vitamin D, would likely have lowered the mortality numbers by 65 to 90 percent. Ignoring these treatments, may fall into the category of democide.
Given what Hopkins did with another recent analysis on covid vs. excess deaths, no surprise they haven’t/won’t publish anything on this data.
If you believe in witches, everything bad that happens MUST be due to witchcraft – this fallacy was our curse for hundreds of years. The modern equivalent is belief in ‘climate change’ – just about everything now seems to be attributed to it!
You get an adverse reaction to the completely experimental, NEVER worked in man nor beast vaccine and it’s …… not vaccine related.
Climate will kill you in the year 2100 no longer worked. We became immune to that threat . So they needed Virus will kill you now to keep the power grabbing going.
In a population of 350 M people like the US you will find enough yearly deaths that can be used for this show. US 376.695 Co deaths ( if you believe the numbers) on a total of around 3 million normal deaths per year.
@Bill Powers
For flu the population does not have naive immunity like for COVID but already a working one so the non-pharmaceutical interventions can way more easily kick in to suppress the spread altogether. At least for Germany I know of data that supports that there was a flu wave piling up but the first lockdown stage stopped it where the lockdown was not enough to stop COVID. Too many people susceptible and too many not complaint.
Mr Kidd? Try, try again Mr Wint.
How about persistence or latency in the virus? Imagine a virus that can lie dormant in the body until ones personal susceptibility changes – due to personal circumstance (internal (getting older) or external (getting drunk)) or due to systematic factors that impact everybody – like temperature, lack of sunlight, and so forth.
In this case most people could have been infected before even the first wave was identified – some got ill, got better, and some just held the virus, and it re-emerges many months later. The numbers would then make sense in that, the second wave starts as soon as it gets colder and darker, whereas the first was in mid-late season.
Anyhow, we don’t need to worry now because ivermectin has been shown to be an effective treatment. See FLCCC guidance .
This corona virus does not linger in the human host with a healthy immune system. You either clear it or die.
The natural reservoir species, probably a highly adapted bat colony in a few Chinese caves, the virus likely exists in a chronic infection state in the host with little fitness costs to the bat.
It is a symbiotic relationship from a purely ecology view point.
The bat provides the replication host for the virus, and the virus protects the bats from predators by killing them if they try to feed on them.
I’ve been curious, but too lazy, to find out about typhoid Mary and her unique ability….
(before I hit send, I read a little. It appears that there is not an answer as to the how/why a carrier can be symptom free. Poor Mary was not the only one ….)
(“…. roughly 1 to 6 percent of people infected with Salmonella bacteria, the microbes that cause typhoid, become simply carriers.”)
Mary was not all that unique. It is just that she was a cook/spreader, and in a position to spread more & faster than other carriers. She even had tests that showed negative.
We know less about The Covid than we know about the Typhoid.
most likely there is no true reservoir species, b/c the virus mutated to its current human-transmissible form in the miners’ lungs
Interesting idea. I’m still going with accidental release from the Wuhan lab as my 1st goto explanation as it fits the most facts but that is another vector. We will probably never know.
Reports of secure/remote mink farms becoming infected make me wonder about other vectors. The recent report of a wild mink being infected, if true, would show that we don’t really know anything (although the anti’s will lie and exaggerate about anything to move their agenda forward).
‘Imagine a virus that can lie dormant in the body until ones personal susceptibility changes – due to personal circumstance (internal (getting older) or external (getting drunk)) or due to systematic factors that impact everybody – like temperature, lack of sunlight, and so forth.’
Hmm.. like shingles and so forth or polio and so forthL.
You have zero idea what you talking about Lee L.
Do shingles and polio not reside in the body and flare up?
they do and can
No need for that. If you are old and weak any virus or bacteria can kill you.
What if the data on number of cases are all wrong? What if cases were lower in the “first wave” because not as much testing was done, and higher in the “second wave” because the PCR test is far too sensitive and is picking up positives in people who recovered during the first “wave”? Given how unsuitable the PCR test is for diagnosis, talking about “waves” is GIGO.
Why does Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine work in India and not the United States?
Covid deaths have bee a small fraction of US deaths because of early use of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine
https://trialsitenews.com/covid-19-cases-drastically-dropping-in-india-leading-to-glut-of-antivirals-remdesivir-favipiravir/
and https://trialsitenews.com/an-unlikely-nation-is-kicking-this-pandemic-guess-which-then-why/
It works really well in Peru as well. It also worked really well in the more than 27 clinical trials that have taken place over the World.
Possibly. But, Peru has the highest death rate in the world. Look up excess deaths at the financial times. It could just be that the majority of the vulnerable population was already decimated.
They had a high death rate – not the highest. You may be partially correct. But the numbers improved tremendously inthose regions where invermectin was distributed and not in those that weren’t. Read the study at FLCCC https://covid19criticalcare.com/
Peru is 13th in the world in terms of Wuhan virus deaths per million.
Don’t trust anything from FT. They did the USA and used the worst 13 states when all 52 datasets were available (50 states + DC + New York City).
Much of Peru has little pressure and less oxygen.
The Lima region, the largest city, didn’t use it so they skew the deaths upwards. The graphs showing Lima vs the regions using Ivermectin is very telling.
Hydroxychloroquine takes time to build up in you system. For malaria you must start taking it two weeks before you go to a malaria infected area. Those that have been taking doses of 200-400 mg per day for a while will have the best defense already established.
And contrary to all those “doctors” who post here, azithromycin has a known major interaction with hydroxychloroquine and can cause severe heart rhythm irregularities in certain people.
I suspect that due to the very low cost of hydroxychloroquine and that Fauci has a supposed stake in the drug company that produces Remdesivir, trials were designed to give the worst outcomes of hydroxychloroquine. But that is strictly my opinion.
Fight Climate Fear. Warmer is Better.
The antibiotic Doxycycline serves the same purpose as azithromycin, and does not have the heart complications of azithromycin.
Also, it is said that hydoxychloriquine and Ivermectin work very well in combination. There are some studies that have used both.
There have been several reports showing the heart issue to be very rare as well as the mechanism for antimalarial activity (and prophylactic use) is not necessarily the same as antiviral activity for hcqvagainst coronavirus. I strongly disagree with you and encourage others to look into the Zelenko protocol for early ( first stage) infection. Even the AMA has agreed in this by now.
I have been prescribed HCQ for arthritis and it certainly does come with the drug interaction warning. As Tom Abbott says above, Doxycycline works just as well so why take the chance especially if you have any kind of heart condition.
In 1988 I was prescribed azithromycin with a powerful antihistamine, Seldane, for shingles. I had heart palpitations. It took me 20 minutes of jogging to get my heart rate to normal (yes, exercise to absorb the increased rhythm helped). In July 1992, the Canadian Broadcasting Company reported that Seldane was banned after having been found to be the culprit when used in combination with azithromycin; the antibiotic was not the cause. As far as I know from reading WHO CDC bulletins, azithromycin has not been involved in cases of heart rhythm irregularities.
I should add that the jogging I mentioned above is used to more quickly metabolize the medicines. Obviously, I am writing about a healthy individual, not one with a history of heart problems. Fortunately, I was in my forties when the situation occurred, now 75 years old. It took me 20 years to get my doctor to correct my medical records and remove the reference to azithromycin causing the heart palpitations.
“Why does Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine work in India and not the United States?”
Because Trump promoted therapeutics like hydroxychloriquine and Ivermectin. The drugs work, it’s just that the political atmosphere surrounding the drugs won’t allow them to be used in the U.S.for fear of making Trump look good.
I have not looked at this website below:
myfreedoctor.com
but supposedly, there are doctors at the website and you can go there and fill out a questionaire and request drugs like hydroxychloriquine and Ivermectin and several others that are proving effective against the Wuhan virus, and if your answers meet the doctor’s requirements, then they will contact your local pharmacy and you can get these drugs.
Like I said, I haven’t looked at that website so all I know is what I have been told. And you know how reliable some of that kind of information can be. Buyer beware.
But I have been told that some people have recieved these perscriptions, and they are filled by your local pharmacy, so that should eliminate the danger of your buying a counterfiet drug.
I just talked to someone who used the free doctor website to acquire, hydroxychloriquine, ivermectim, azithromicin and several other drugs pertinent to the Wuhan virus.
She said she had to fill out a form of about 12 questions, then she came to a part where the website requested a donation, but she put “0” in the amount, and the website came back and said, thank you, we understand times are hard, and then processed her request and her pharmacist was sent an e-subscription for the drugs within about an hour and she went down and picked them up for a little over $50.
I’m debating whether to get myself a supply since I am expecting to get the vaccine maybe in the next week. It’s probably better to be safe than sorry. And it’s probably better to be in control of one’s own future as much as possible. And it’s only about 50 bucks. Cheap insurance.
why would you risk the vax when ivermectin works better faster n safer?
Here is the problem with those two drugs. First, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are cheap, thus not profitable. Second, if this disease was cured quickly it would have made Trump look good. To these people, it would is better to have 1 billion people die and 6 billion people get into poverty than to let someone outside the swamp succeed. Now that Biden has fraudulently won (and the courts fraudulently refused to act), an effective drug can be promoted.
Also cheating would have been far more difficult had the China flu not given incentive/ excuse to do mail in ballots, making election fraud far easier.
( Twitter does not approve of this post insinuating election fraud)
When Ivermectin first came out, the developer voluntered to give it for free-due to mainly it’s use to treat River Blindness, for which earlier drugs were not effective.
I saw a note that Ivermectin was a “miracle drug from Japan” but anti-Trump politics there also prevented wide adoption. The average Indian appears to think Trump a good cowboy compared to Modi.
Prime Minster Modi and President Trump were very harmonious. The videos of them together in Huston, and in India are amazing.
They work as placebos just as well in both places. Public and health care workers’ belief in media stories of them working is just much more prevalent in India.
??? Curious, as they work equally well everywhere else they have been properly administered.
Are you saying the mortality numbers regarding India from Worldometer are wrong?
Are you saying the academic studies reported in the media did not happen?
You should read more about placebos. They work for subjective symptoms like pain but not for objective symptoms like death. The medical community fosters a lot of myths about placebo.
How about the idea that “Green” buildings recirculate a large portion of the air inside the building to save energy plus the time the virus stays viable in that environment.
Don’t know enough about either of those circumstances but it might explain the uptick as the weather gets colder and people spend more time indoors????
John G
It’s not just “green” buildings, all buildings do this. Very few occupancies use once-through ventilation. The International Mechanical Code requires that spaces mechanically ventilated provide not less than 5 and up to 20 cubic feet per person per minute of outside air. So an office floor 100′ x 100′ x 8′, a total of 80,000 cubic feet, with an occupant load of 125 persons would require 625 cubic feet per minute of outside air. That space might see a circulation rate of 3 air changes per hour, or (80,000 x 3)/60 = 4,000 cubic feet per minute at the air handler. The fresh air represents about 15% of the air circulation rate.
We’ve been aware of that since the TB epidemics early last century. You should always change out air in your home and offices.
Without a UVC system on the recycled air you will be in trouble sooner or later. It’s the only way to “kill’em all”.
The average house in the US, including ones with special details to reduce air leakage, change their air 2-5+ times/hour. Older houses, typical in big cities and old towns are on the high side. The lower numbers apply to some recently built housing with extra attention to details that reduce air exchange and heat loss.
Typical details for lower air turnover/heat loss- heat exchanger on instake/exhaust air , 2X6 studs in walls, solid foam insulation, gluing and taping inside and outside drywall and insulation, 24in of ceiling insulation, taping ceiling and wall joints, specialized skylights, triple or quad pane insulated glass windows, multiple seals on all moving windows and doors, and more. This stuff is often provided in factory built panels since they provide much better cut/fit/assembly than on-site construction.
Yawn. Or failing all that just conflate flu with CV 19, manufacture false positives and make up numbers. 2018 2nd week Jan in the UK 15k died. This year, won’t even crest 7 K. On the positive side Pfizer et al will make billions from their soon to be mandatory poison jabs.
Morning, Ferd
I’d like to look closer at these numbers. Can you give a reference?
juan
I dont know if the figures from Ferd are correct but here are the stats for UK 2020 deaths from the Office of National Statistics
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommuni….
The numbers who have died in 2020 are of the same order as those who have died in preceding years. This is better illustrated by the first graphic in this article;
The not-so exceptional year of Covid | The Conservative Woman
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/wp-content/up…
Stats are confused by corona virus being active during warmer weather, unlike flu which tends to be an Autumn and Winter ailment hence the notion of ‘excess winter deaths’
Consequently it is as yet difficult to know what ‘excess winter deaths’ will be during 2020/2021 as at present they are not exceptional, as can be seen in Figure 1 of the ONS data .
So what will constitute the criteria for ending lockdown depends on what we believe to be an especially bad or unprecedented year. So the statisticians will need to argue as to whether 2020 and 2021 warrant the dramatic action being taken that is affecting every facet of our lives and will have a long term effect on our physical mental and financial health.
Bear in mind there were up to 40/ 50000 flu/pneumonia/respiratory deaths in both 2016/17 and 2017/18 in the UK and we then had 2 light flu seasons. This seems to tie in with the average age of a covid death being 82, whereas the average life span in the UK is 80.
Hope this data helps
tonyb
For some Canadian numbers (Ontario – where we are now in double-secret-lockdown protocol #43 – all based on models, of course):
https://twitter.com/Milhouse_Van_Ho/status/1348975636413620225/photo/1
I think you are mixing up 15,000 total deaths and 3,075 respiratory deaths
Why should infections “overshoot” the herd immunity threshold?
<i>Note that an epidemic takes some time to die out after the HIT is reached, since at that point many people will be infected and will go on to infect others, albeit at a declining rate. </i>
That doesn’t make any sense. It’s like saying that if you throw a baseball into the air it is going to reach it’s peak altitude as determined by Newton’s laws and then go a little higher “due to overshoot.”
Never mind, I see, you are making the obvious point that the infection will follow a logistical curve. I am not sure “overshoot” is the right word then, it makes it sound like the normal case would be that the epidemic would stop the instant HIT was reached.
Pretty poor analogy.
Think of driving a car. If you don’t ease off the throttle and apply the brake in time, you will go through the stop light. Or a damped pendulum: its rest position is hanging vertically, but if you release it from an angle it will overshoot unless it is very heavily damped.
I think he is mixing up the first and second derivative. The first derivative curve begins dropping the instant herd immunity is reached by definition, the second derivative curve keeps climbing forever until all deaths stop.
It’s simple, a massive increase in cases was a direct result of a massive increase in testing.
It all started on Jan 10th 2020, when WHO reported that there is an outbreak in China caused by a novel coronavirus.
On Jan 17th 2020, The WHO recommended the use of the Corman-Drosten PCR test as a gold standard for detecting SARS-Cov-2 before the paper was even submitted for publishing.
On Jan 21 2020, the Corman-Drosten paper was submitted to the scientific journal Eurosurveillance describing the PCR test.On Jan 22 2020, it was accepted for publication.
On Jan 23rd 2020, it was published.
Keep in mind that at the point when they started working on the PCR test, the genetic material of the virus was not yet sequenced.
“We aimed to develop and deploy robust diagnostic methodology for use in public health laboratory settings without having virus material available.”
“The PCR test was therefore designed using the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV” “Design and validation were enabled by the close genetic relatedness to the 2003 SARS-CoV.”
Listen to Kevin_McKernan @ur momisugly 10:37 he estimates that hey started working on the PCR test at least 2 months prior to the publication of the paper, so towards the end of Nov 2019.
https://bretigne.typepad.com/on_the_banks/2020/12/wtmwd-50-kevin-.html?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=socialnetwork
“You have to recognise the body of the work that they presented is not something you can do in a week that looks like maybe 2 months worth of work, which of course begs the question of who tipped them off to making this, early, prior to actually being a pandemic.
The paper was not peer-reviewed. It was approved in one day. It takes on average 179 days to peer review an article.
Conflict of interest was not declared: a) Drosten and his co-author Dr Chantal Reusken happen to be members of the editorial board of Eurosurveillance.
Olfert Landt, of Tib-Molbiol, the company that developed the PCR test being used, was also a co-author of the Drosten paper. “they distributed these PCR-test kits before the publication was even submitted.” They were already in business before the pandemic started.
In March 2020, the pandemic happened. The more we tested, the more cases we got, the more we assigned any death with a positive test to COVID19.
The world went into lockdown based on a fear of rising cases, asymptomatic transmission, widespread susceptibility, lack of pre-existing immunity, & lack of acquired immunity after Covid, with complete disregard to the fact that 80% of cases had no symptoms or mild symptoms and that mortality followed an age gradient. All these fears were not justified and contradicted our accumulated scientific knowledge. Basic immunological facts were put to question to disinform and confuse the innocent public.
Countries adopted an umbrella approach despite the fact that the profile of the vulnerable population was very clear since March 2020: older individuals with multiple comorbidities were at high risk of developing serious disease that could culminate in a negative outcome.
In June 2020, the casedemic happened. As the prevalence of C19 decreased & herd
immunity approached, we started to tally up false (+) ‘cases’. The test was more likely to detect viral debris at this point than an infectious virus, especially with cycle thresholds above 30.
The WHO & Corman-Drosten protocol recommended a Ct of 45 cycles. Studies that conducted viral culture showed that with a PCR test Ct >30, the tests were not detecting an infectious virus anymore. Yet governments turned a blind eye to these findings & never revised
their Ct.
On the 27th of November 2020, 23 scientists finally reviewed the Corman- Drosten paper and have demanded it’s retraction.
Go here:
https://cormandrostenreview.com/report/
The whole affair stinks to high heaven IMO.
There is evidence that the virus was in the US in December 2019: Forbes Article
How is that relevant to the timeline of the PCR debacle?
Jeff, I agree with Lurker Pete that it is not relevant to his PCR timeline. However, my doc is convinced I had and kicked COVID in DEC 2019 with a resp illness that started around 15-DEC-2019. I had already been on 2000 IU of D-3 daily since 4 years before this time. Low level treatments could not kick it, and it was only a Zpac script after New Years Day 2020 that finally kicked it. Fast forward to mid April when I was back in my doc’s office for follow up after appendectomy I had in early March. He told me he was part of medical professionals in the first LA County COVID study, and asked if I wanted to be tested. I said sure. Results came back that I was NOT infected with COVID, but I did show antibodies for it. I have had precisely zero upper resp events since then, and have had contact with plenty of people on my summer road trip from CA back to OH and back.
Thank you for providing the links to the paper. It’s clear in the US if they are doing up to 40 Ct’s the results become meaningless. But instead the “positives” are counted. History will not look kindly on some of the science currently taking place.
Depends on who writes it.
The 85+ year old demographic account for 32% of all C-19 deaths yet they are only 2% of the population.
The 65+ year old demographic account for 80% of all C-19 deaths yet they are only 16.5% of the population.
In other words, those under 65, over 80% of the population, are not catching C-19 and not dying from it if they do.
In fact, half of those tested positive for C-19 never see a doctor, clinic, hospital or morgue.
Seems to me that would be newsworthy.
Guess not.
If you are following the lying, fact free, fake news MSM left wing propaganda coup machine you are not just uniformed but actively misinformed, i.e. ignorant.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_outbreak
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesinlast7days
So according to your stats, 20% of all deaths are below 65 y/o? Feeling lucky? Stories of that 31 year old who died….he was in perfect health….stories of that 45 year old who was sick and says “you don’t want this stuff”. The “Quomo” idiot governor and his ilk are power grabbers but why do the Chinese and N. Korea react so strongly to the virus when they already have total power? The only 65 y/o’s that Xi Jinping cares about is maybe his family.
“Hard cases make bad law.” The death of the 31-year old is noteworthy for its rarity.
Most but not all of the under 65 yo’s that died also had a similar co-morbidity profile.
BTW for every 45 yo that was sick and says “you don’t want this stuff” there were mid 70 yo’s like my pastor friend and his wife had mild cold like symptoms only.
The CDC has stated that COVID-19 by ITSELF kills very few, about 6% of the total deaths.
About 1,000 people age 19 and under has died.
“In other words, those under 65, over 80% of the population, are not catching C-19 and not dying from it if they do.”
I’m now seeing reports that up to 75 percent of those who have had the Wuhan virus are experiencing at least one adverse medical aftereffect from the infection. And that applies to asymptomatic people, and young and old, too. Brain damage of various types seems to be showing up more and more.
Dying isn’t the only bad thing that can happen with this disease.
Fortunately, we have therapeutics to treat this disease if used early enough in the infection.
Unfortunately, early treatment with therapeutics is not on the national medical policy radar. So our hospitals overflow, when it is not necessary. We have treatments we are not using.
All because they don’t want to do something that would make Trump look good. it’s as simple as that.
“I’m now seeing reports that up to 75 percent of those who have had the Wuhan virus are experiencing at least one adverse medical aftereffect from the infection.”
Please elaborate or give links please. I’ve heard this but never seen the proof. Thanks for any info.
Here’s a link
https://www.sciencealert.com/most-covid-19-patients-still-have-at-least-one-symptom-after-6-months
Thanks Tom.
From the study; ”Fatigue or muscle weakness was reported by 63 percent, while 26 percent had sleep problems.”
I see many potential non viral causes here; depression from the world conditions, job loss, lack of healthy activity, etc…
could all lead to feelings of malaise, physical atrophy and sleep disorders.
Exactly. People may be attributing these “continuing” problems to Covid when it has no relation at all.
For about 40 years.
I agree about the treatments ignored. I am not certain about how overcrowded our ICUs are compared to a common bad flu year.
As to the continuing adverse symptoms even in those recovered from mild Cov19 infection, that is a concern to be studied for certain, yet I think it will take considerable time as the numbers of positive cases are so large, that Cov19 follow up adverse medical conditions must be compared to normal percentages of new adverse symptoms appearing in the population.
i have read on normal flu pnumonias that heart issues etc arent unexpected for the following 2 or more months
fatigues also normal if you had a severe standard flu or pnumonia also
Take away country and state borders and you are left with county-level waves that take longer to spread in the absence of international airports, train terminals, and cruise liner ports. Generalization bias and HIPPA laws are not helping in this modern day pandemic.
A Snip from good article discussing the difference in results cuased by using diagnostic tests vs screening tests. Also in the US every COVID positive hospital patients causes $14,000 in revenue for that hospital.
When we see statistics of COVID-19 deaths, we should recognize that some substantial percentage of them should be called “Deaths with a COVID-19-positive test.” When we see reports of case numbers rising, we should know that they are defining “case” as anyone with a COVID-19-positive test, which, as you might now realize, is really a garbage number.
Summary:
Personal experience. My mother in law is 84 and has had non hodgkin’s lymphoma for 10 years. She recently fell and fractured her patella. Excessive pain killers caused an intestinal blockage which required hospitalization for two weeks. Two COVID tests in hospital were negative. She was then sent to a rehab facility to help her with her patella. Negative COVID test upon arrival, positive test 1 week later. I called the nurse to see what test they gave fearing the CPR test would give a false positive. I was told she had the antigen test which is supposedly 95% accurate. She had no symptoms but was put in the COVID area. Now 10 days later, still no symptoms, still no COVID. But I am sure the rehab facility got paid $$$$$$ for taking care of a COVID patient for those days.
A Seattle talks show host, Dori Monson, interviewed a lady whose grandmother was in the hospital being treated for cancer. She had been in the hospital for weeks. And, amazingly, a few days before her inevitable death, the hospital said she suddenly had Covid. She wasn’t allowed visitors, due to Covid restrictions, so, if she really had it, she got it from the staff.
If that’s true, then either the staff don’t know how to use PPE properly, or PPE isn’t as effective as we’re told.
Then, they said that she died from covid. How often does this happen?
I couldn’t find a written article, but here’s a link to the podcast, if anyone is interested.
It happens very frequently – how else is covid-19 to be made to appear lethal ?
In the UK a driver delivering to me last week was telling me about his mother. She was also in hospital with terminal cancer and whilst there contracted Covid-19. She was offered the choice of discharge to a hospice or to her home to die, she chose the latter.
The family then had an uphill battle, which they eventually won, to get the coroner to record her death accurately as from cancer rather than from covid-19. It appears there is a standing instruction to coroners and health staff in the UK that any death where there has been a positive PCR test in the preceding 28 days is to have the death recorded as from Covid-19.
The PCR test is known to be unreliable and with the UK testing at 45 cycles rather than the recommended 35 it will pick up RNA particles that may be left over from a variety of sources or from a covid-19 infection that was recovered from months previously. Well known but despite that the PCR test results are treated as ‘Gospel’ by the health ‘professionals’ advising the UK government.
A very sad state of affairs.
Lockdowns concentrated the virus and allowed the uninfected to get dosed at a much higher level than normal life would have allowed for …
My neighbours have treated being off work due to lockdown as an excuse to have a load of friends over most evenings – they don’t seem to care who they put at risk as long as they can keep on having a good time. If this behaviour is in any way typical then I don’t wonder that measures to limit the spread have been ineffective.
We need to change the behavior of our governments not the People.
If I catch the damn thing it won’t have been spread by the government. A little common sense might be more appropriate, don’t you think?
The government, through suppressing proper preventive therapeutics, Invertim, HCQ, sunshine and fresh air, has conciveably spread this virus to the point of democide.
No they haven’t. You’re basically arguing that the government MUST act as a nanny and nurse, providing all possible therapeutics so that our lives aren’t inconvenienced in any way. I’m saying that if people acted as adults, showed a little bit of common sense and got a little bit of short-term inconvenience, then there’d be fewer cases of the virus being able to spread and most of the therapeutics wouldn’t be necessary. The trouble is that most people don’t see why they should be inconvenienced and are perfectly willing to make the government clean up after them and scream bloody murder when the government simply can’t cope. There are both benefits and responsibilities to living in a democratic society – unfortunately most people believe they can have the benefits without the responsibilities.
Richard, the CDC had a job. They get my money for that job. I NEVER said they had to force people ( nanny state) to take VERY inexpensive, very effective treatments, yet they could and should have promoted those treatments.
Instead they allowed horrible studies that made obvious errors and demonstrated political objectives.
I stand by my statement.
Interestingly the UK statistics put out by PHE and NHS show transmission rate within households which are isolating due to a family member testing positive is just 15%.
The common cold would infect the whole family in those circumstances as most likely would the ‘flu. So looking at a that as a layman whose daughter had Covid-19 in Feb 20 (4 days to full recovery) and wife in March 20 (6 days to full recovery) whilst neither I nor my son suffered – Covid-19 doesn’t seem to me to be the very infectious disease it is made out to be.
I was a high school Chemistry teacher. Always around students with colds and influenza and have never had a case of influenza and only rarely a common cold.
Transmission of Infectious respiratory viruses are not automatic
There’s a reason why winter, not summer, is considered “flu season”.
These factors will impact any easily transmissable disease.
Exactly. IMHO, weather is a vaery significant factor for any respiratory virus.
San Diego county had a late June/early July peak that was followed by a three month quiet period, with an ongoing climb in infection rate starting mid-October. Dew point in the mid-July to early October was typically between 60 and 70F, with a decline starting in October. Days were also getting shorter with less UV.
Cases in the Norther Great Plains area spiked after a widespread cold spell.
It is not winter per se. It is staying inside sealed buildings with not much change out of the atmosphere. In Arizona the first wave was in the summer time. Everyone is inside A/C building day and night.
The reason is that this is not caused by a virus. So much proof of that now. Or even – no study showing causation – it just has not ever been done. The reason is that 5G kept being rolled out. September was the goal month to get the majority turned on. The electromagnetic cause and effect escallated after that. Open your mind.
This post makes the wwt site look stupid.
No, it makes “ilo” look stupid.
Yeah, let’s put the blame where it belongs. Not on WUWT.
Well, yes, ilo; but a site is often judged by its commentators.
Only judged by people who flunked logic.
Another dead post from you, why can’t you try making a case against the article instead?
I have no choice but to judge YOU by your 100% substance free off topic drivel.
What about the article itself? can you tell us why YOU think it is bad.
wwt? “Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust”? “World Wide Technology”? “Waste Water treatment”?
just as ilo’s post only makes ilo look stupid. Your stupid reply to it only makes you look stupid. the “wwt” site (I’m assuming you typo-ed your concern trolling target there) doesn’t even factor into it.
Yes, WUWT. If I could edit my typo, I would, but afaict that’s not possible.
Is WUWT represented by every comment? No.
I’m guessing some people think WUWT should follow in Twitter’s footsteps and ban anything that isn’t rightspeak.
Yet you came and post a dead end comment, how did that help anyone?
Won’t see 5G in my rural area for another couple of years. So that doesn’t explain the increases in our area. Find a better theory
the 5G affects & hangs onto your aura, and when you travel home (from your out of area visits) it rubs off on those with similar auras.
5G, its not only scary, it’s worse than we thought!
There is good news for those with unique auras (like ilo) … they are likely safe as long as they stay away from the 5G broadcast areas.
Hundreds of studies showing that COVID is a virus.
Only a handful of nutcases saying it has anything to do with 5G.
Your tinfoil hat needs a couple more layers.
The first wave died down because a lot of people took a lot of care to avoid catching and spreading the virus, including avoiding being inside retail stores and avoiding gatherings, a lot more than they did this summer and afterwards. Rhe second wave happened because people did less to keep it from happening than they did to get the numbers down during the first wave.
The first wave ended with community immunity in isolated populations. The restrictive mandates suppressed and delayed transmission in vulnerable populations. The masks have been known since the early 80s to increase patient infections in surgical centers and in recent controlled trials to either have no effect in over 90% of the population and to either increase or decrease infections with a flip of a coin.
Whether the data supports this or not is fairly immaterial – most people I’ve seen wearing masks in public have them pulled down so as not to interfere with being able to talk on their phone. Frankly you might as well assume that a large percentage of the data on mask wearing will be bs anyway – people will go along with the measures only as long as it doesn’t inconvenience them.
Behavioral disparities matter, but they are not conclusive. A controlled study from the 80s established that masks only work in a limited frame of reference (i.e. time and space) in a controlled environment with trained personnel (i.e. medical staff in surgical centers), and over all actually increased infections. From a recent Danish study, the performance in the general population is worse, where masks were observed to have no effect in over 90% of the population, and with a flip of the coin in the remaining sample.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1853618/
Postoperative wound infections and surgical face masks: a controlled study
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817
Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub5/full
Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses
I trust the data coming from medical professionals and I agree with your point on that. However I still maintain that mask use among the general public is impossible to verify and probably useless as a guide. People don’t want to be ‘mask shamed’ so will lie about wearing them properly. Hopefully lessons may be learned for the future but who knows.
I’m curious where people are wearing masks “properly”. They certainly are not doing so in my area.
Nor in mine. Looking at the statistics it would seem that the health professionals are the only ones wearing masks properly and even then, with limited results. Washing hands regularly and avoiding touching your face is probably still a better preventative than wearing masks.
As for “Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers” : I didn’t even have to read this, because the main reason for most wearing of masks is not to protect those wearing masks, but to stop outgoing viruses. Most non-N95 masks are more effective at blocking outgoing visuses than incoming viruses. Viruses leaving people’s faces are mostly riding droplets of saliva or mucus that are easy for masks to catch. If these droplets are not caught quickly, they evaporate down to smaller particles that more easily pass through non-N95 masks. And, it is important to wear masks even without symptoms, because of asymptomatic infections and because people who do get symptoms become contagious before they get symptoms.
How effective is a cloth mask that has been worn for 4 hours and is completely soaked through?
“The restrictive mandates suppressed and delayed transmission in vulnerable populations.”
That’s good. The delay will give the vulnerable populations time to find treatments and vaccines that will lower the danger posed by the Wuhan virus, such as death, and long-term adverse health effects.
The longer one can stay uninfected, the better, especially in the case of the Wuhan virus, where we are now able to treat the disease early with therapeutics and now with vaccines and that will prevent much of the long-term damage that might have been done had we just allowed everyone to get themselves infected and let the disease run its course through the body.
It’s obvious that the longer the Wuhan virus stays in the body, the more damage it does.
I worry about the long-term health effects of the Wuhan virus on the children. I saw yesterday where a toddler had died of complications from the Wuhan virus. Inflammation. The story of this virus is still to be told.
We have the medications to get on top of this disease, but we don’t have the political will or the knowledge to apply these fixes. The assumtion is if you don’t feel sick from the Wuhan virus, that it is not harming you. I think that is not the case at all.
We should not encourage infection without a remedy for the infection. Letting the virus run its course in the body, any body, is the wrong way to go. And it’s not necessary medically. Treat early, and often, and everybody, is the solution.
Physical isolation in context reduced infection durably. Masks promote a false confidence. There are early treatments since the beginning of 2020 that have been observed in trials and practice globally to reduce hospitalizations and deaths by 80 to 90%.
“if you don’t feel sick from the Wuhan virus, that it is not harming you. I think that is not the case at all”
That is true for all viruses. There is no evidence that this is a greater risk from Sars-CoV-2, but rather that the socialization and publishcation of risk has changed. That is true for vaccines, too, which prime the immune system, but are not magical elixirs, and are known to cause inflammatory responses, reduced viability, and even death.
The partial, often ineffective (e.g. placebo effect backed by intuitive science) restrictive mandates including masks, flattened the curve and prolonged exposure. There are only two durable ways to handle viral spread: physical isolation and innate, acquired, or inoculated immunity. Early, inexpensive, low-risk treatments have been available, often denied or stigmatized (i.e. press, politicians, experts, social platforms, steering/search engines) to complement natural immune response, not unlike a vaccine that primes the immune system.
My experience in dealing with the public since the start is that now everyone seems to think wearing a mask prevents the disease and they have stopped doing all the other things that help stop the spread.
First wave, early April, about 30 k daily cases, about 2100 daily deaths.
2nd wave, about 300k daily cases, a 1000 percent increase! About 3000 daily deaths, only a 50 percent increase.
The 2nd wave is a wave of…
Massively more flawed tests.
More real cases.
More refined political process to subsidize blameing deaths on Cov19.
More real deaths.
Government refusal to use inexpensive and even free preventives – HCQ, Invertim, Sunshine and fresh air.
All of these are orthogonal, so feel free to place your own numbers.
In New Jersey USA where I live was infect early on . It’s densely populated. You would expect disease progression would in an advance state. The mortality curve here looks very different from the USA overall-attached. The second wave is a small bump. The transmission rate has hovered around 1.0
The USA overall can be awfully misleading because the disease did not hit the entire country at once. There are a lot of places that either had a shortened 1st wave (like CA) or never got a 1st wave (the Dakotas) that are getting their first true wave now.
Invalid testing methods.
In short, respiratory viruses will pretty much do what they will do and the third chimpanzee is hard pressed to do much about them. However the one strategy that few tried was to maximize exposure during the low transmission time of the year when inoculating dose of the virus is lower and consequently the risk of severe disease is less.
It is pretty clear that mask mandates have increased infection and death rates.
Macks have certainly not decreased either. There is no reason why they should since they have high leakage and ineffective filtration. This is an airborne virus, not a droplet virus.
In addition. I think that masks give people a false sense of security so they abandon some of the actions they would normally take in protecting themselves from those with obvious symptoms. Kind of like being told the pair of kids water wings you were given would save you just before being thrown overboard when the Titanic was sinking.
No it isn’t clear at all. Mask wearing has been a complete joke – most people I’ve seen have them pulled down either below the nose or, more usually, below the mouth. Just because someone tells you that they wear a mask does not mean that they are wearing it as it’s supposed to be worn. Frankly the data on mask wearing isn’t fit for purpose.
It certainly seems so. If the data are correct, there’s no way this could only be droplet-spreading. No. Way.
“It is pretty clear that mask mandates have increased infection and death rates.”
It’s not clear to me.
If that’s the case, someone ought to tell the nurses and doctors their masks are ineffective and even dangerous.
I think I will continue to wear my mask (N95) as long as nurses and doctors wear theirs. I think a little common sense is called for here.
I had a lengthy discussion with a RN friend on masks. She told me about their process in getting fitted for masks (once or twice a year IIRC) – essentially they require 100% elimination of any air getting in or out around the edges of the mask. Any air in or out effectively nullifies the mask’s effectiveness. All air must go through the N95 material.
According to the CDC’s summary of previous studies on mask usage by the public (link not handy at the moment) this is part of the reason that masks seem to have about 0 effectiveness in slowing the spread, and sometimes increase spread due to people ignoring other precautions while they wear the masks.
I note that this does not mean any given individual does not get protection – if they wear them correctly. But on a country-wide scale, those cases are unmeasurably small.
The epidemological studies and tracing efforts have shown most group spreader events are now in the household and/or larger family settings. The government has no business regulating normal behavior or what goes on in homes and family settings and social interactions.
The mask problem was known by Fauci from the beginning. that only proper training and fitting of mask wear with eye shileds would lower transmission. This is not realistic in the general public and most especially with adolescents and children. The whole public mask mandates are bad f&$%ing joke on the public in my Expert opinion. They only make sense in clinical care settings and in trained nursing home settings where care providers, workers, and clinicians have certifications and training, and the proper PPE (N95s or PAPRS).
N95 can work. Hopefully, you are following sterilization and discard protocols for the mask. No more than 3 sterilizations because the methods to properly sterilize break down the weave and then the mask isn’t any better than the clothe ones most people wear.
Doctors and Nurses working in saturated SARS CoV-2 environments also wear gowns and face shields along with that mask.
There is a procedure to test if it is airborne. Do you have any referenced articles that demonstrate they tested via that procedure?
I don’t have the link, but in an observational study in medical centers discovered that viable viruses were not discovered in or near an infected patient’s bed, but in their rest room, implying fecal spread.
Herd immunity depends on the strength of a multitude individual immune systems. Individual immune systems are stronger in summer. Why? Sunshine = Vitamin D. Could it be a simple as that?
Certainly doesn’t hurt. And then there is the report out of Israel about UV LED’s at 285 nm which kill 99.9% of Wuhan virus in less than 30 seconds.
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/tel-aviv-research-999-percent-of-covid-19-germs-dead-in-30-seconds-with-uv-leds-653315
More and more I am leaning towards individual immune systems as the reason for the difference in severity and death. I personally know two individuals in their mid 40’s that stay physically fit and “eat right”. They both had pretty nasty symptoms with COVID. I also am aware of several older friends who got COVID and had only mild symptoms. The genes have it.
I’m in my 50’s, diabetes and vit d deficiency and somewhat unfit – I had mild flu-like symptoms (wasn’t flu) and was over it in a few days. You may have a point.
Very clearly the elderly are far more vulnerable. A few antedotal stories are not indicative.
The chart at the top of this article is missing a title. Is this a chart of worldwide deaths/day or a region?
Just meant as an ambiguous illustration of the topic, not a data point.
But since you care, it’s the UK.
OK, thanks. I’ve been staring at far too many coronabollocks charts lately. 😉
3 nations never received mass BCG innoculation, nor ever had extensive exposure to this type of SARS before:
Belgium
Italy
U.S.
Compare this with East Asian nations that are adjacent to China where they received BCG and had previous exposure to disease ridden China. Taiwan, Singapore, Japan ..etc.
Bacillus Calmette–Guérin vaccine is a vaccine primarily used against tuberculosis.
? Sounds like further study is warranted.
Let’s take a few sparsely populated states in the northern Rockies or northern plains as an example. It is perhaps easier to see what is going on in such sparsely populated places. When this “second wave” got started (3rd week of August), it just happened to coincide with the start of the college/university year and just happened to be most concentrated in the counties with universities and colleges. The start of the school year represented a “mixing” of the population, which makes it look somewhat more homogeneous in a number of ways, and greatly increase R0.
We ran perhaps 15,000 tests per week here, first as PCR saliva tests for the most part, and then, supposedly a two step procedure (antigen -> PCR). Students are gregarious and break all rules, even the ones that are completely ineffective. Within 11 weeks we not only dominated the entire state in “cases” but there was a blinking red light at the CDC identifying us as a huge problem. Students travelled all over spreading things to the smallest towns. This had to be a template for what went on nationwide, but is more difficult to spot in urban areas.
Students got sent home early (I would like to say that I helped this through letters I sent early nov., but no one actually listens to me), and the epidemic died away. For the past two or three weeks we have been in the neighborhood of 12-15 cases a day. Students are returning and the number of test are rising, and so are the cases. We are rising into the range of 30 cases per day. I expect a full-blown epidemic here once more by early February.
It is apparent that the second wave was real, but frankly there is plenty of evidence that a lot of the epidemic was false. Lots of false positives (even the supplier of PCR kits admits to 1% — and nothing they claim is necessarily credible). There were also false negatives which enabled the virus to get through any testing regime. And this was apparently so because our health officials paid no attention to the possibility of false negatives.
I could go on. Why bother?
How many times does it have to be said that a positive test is ___NOT___ a “case”! This misuse of language is a prime cause of the hysteria.
Sorry for my naif point of view and poor English of my writing.
I think there are other questions before the one you asked yourself:
1) Why, every year, there no flu during Summer?
2) Why, every year, there is flu on mid seasons?
3) Can a flu virus be the same in two o more years?
You don’t need to apologize for asking those questions.
Re 1: Influenza and Influenza Like viruses circulate year round. During the warm months the number of cases falls to a average baseline and we don’t worry about it.
Re 2: All Infectious Respiratory Viruses have a Minimum Infectious Dose to initiate an infection. Being indoors most of the time late fall, winter and early spring allows the build up of viral in the indoor atmosphere and makes it more likely you will come into contact with a Minimum Infectious Dose
Re 3: Influenza Viruses are RNA viruses and mutate more rapidly than DNA viruses. What that means is can see new strains of the various human Influenza viruses on a yearly basis.
If you look at the latest India numbers you will become madder than than he’ll. The cdc/nih still refuse to discuss early treatment.
See the latest evms.edu/covidcare
Dr Cory who has testified before Congress left the U of Wisconsin because he could not treat patients as he felt best
Dr Marick recommends Ivermectin now but can not prescribe at university.
The whole health system needs the shit kicked out of it.
Have a lot of support info support info organized on parler to share.
But guess what…
I was shawdow banned first back in 2008, getting really pissed…
How do you intend to share it now that Parler is gone?
For now I am hoping they get a court injunction. I realy do not want to learn another system
Hoping it comes back. Do not want to learn another system
This is one of the major problems. For reasons that may be venal or petty internecine political the FDA/CDC/NIH will NOT accept anything as an ‘effective outpatient therapeutic’. They are wedded to the idea that viral infections cannot be treated therefore anyone saying that they can is by definition a charlatan.
This is a strange attitude as research is showing that RNA viruses that hijack the ribosomes can be stopped simply by ensuring a high level of intra-cellular zinc. This can be achieved by giving the patient a zinc ionophore that assists zinc across the cell walls into the cells. The best known of these is hydroxychloroquine because it was mentioned by president Trump and immediately developed severe side effects. However, there are many more plant flavinoids such as quercetin, resveratrol, and EGCG (from green tea) even quinine. Health food shops actually sell zinc plus quercetin for immune health. Clinical trials have now shown that the zinc/zinc ionophore/antibiotic regiment works as an outpatient therapeutic. Similar success has been shown for ‘off label use’ of ivermectin in outpatients and early hospitalized patients. All this was reported at a senate hearing. The only attendee against these therapeutic approaches was someone who had never treated patients.
The current medical approach to the SARS-CoV-2 ‘pandemic’ is to send people home to get worse with at most an acetaminophen (paracetamol) for palliative care from their families (and to infect the family). When the patients get worse with inability to breathe and cytokine storms they are taken into hospital for palliative care slowly progressing to ICU – hoping on the way that the patient’s adaptive immune system will overcome the virus.
Health authorities (pressured by the talking head celebrity of those among them) have completely convinced the politicians that the ONLY way to stop the pandemic is vaccination, which just happens to make the medical establishment extremely rich. Now of course the virus is mutating as RNA viruses do and simple vaccines can be unexpectedly bypassed by small changes in the virus. So having put everyone’s eggs in the vaccine basket politicians are now having to say that the vaccine may not work and we will continue quarantining people that are well. If the health authorities would accept that there are successful therapeutics for RNA virus infections, and support their use at the initial stage of infection on outpatients, then the ‘pandemic’ could be stopped in a month.
Indeed, it would be so simple and cheap to raise Herd Immunity by telling everyone to be sufficient in Vitamin D, zinc, and selenium and drink green tea or take the zinc with quercetin; that the fact it hasn’t been done raises the concern that there are those who want the pandemic to continue. This concern is reinforced by the misuse of the unreliable PCR testing and the deliberately and unacceptably poor medical metrology and statistics which are mawkishly and garishly misrepresented to the public.
Am I right in thinking that most of the treatments suggested increase the subjects ability to resist the virus rather than a way of attacking the virus itself?
Yes and no, Mr. Page. Treatments do both; they attack the virus and increase resistance, depending on the specific treatment. Treatments help the infected survive the infection.
The virus will NEVER be eradicated. There will NEVER be vaccines for every virus strain/mutation. There will ALWAYS be some infections/cases for some virus or other.
That is why treatments are more important than prevention. Prevention cannot, will not be successful. Look at the numbers. If they reveal anything, it is that prevention by whatever methods has been an enormous flop. That is painfully obvious. Nobody can deny it.
Treatments can and do work. Maybe not every time for every case, but HCQ, ivermectin, green tea, zinc, Vit D and other medicines have had some positive effect in saving lives. They make you better able to fend off the infection.
“and simple vaccines can be unexpectedly bypassed by small changes in the virus.”
Yes and no. It all depends on where those changes occur on the protein coat of the virus.
Here is Dr Cory Senate testimoney from Dec
An important video. Of course, the information therein will be ignored by those orchestrating this ‘pandemic’.
All we have to do to know that lockdowns and masks are not effective measures is to look at places like California and New York where the lockdowns and public mask mandates were never relaxed, yet Cal and New York the virus is surging just like in Arizona and other places.
The key is not the weather so much, but whether people (families) a forced inside closed heated/air conditioned spaces.