DaveS

I am going to put another theory out there - a variation on herd immunity. Maybe some people are just not susceptible to this virus, or at least need a much greater exposure to become infected. Is it not possible that most of the people that are going to be infected have now been so? It would still leave a lot of people that have not been infected and that do not have antibodies. It could change if new variants come along, but it could be that the current ones have run their course with this last wave.

jmastron

These are great hopes/thoughts, but there were similar thoughts/claims made back in April and in August. I think a key is that various levels of herd immunity work *with* other mitigations -- i.e. if 40% of people can't or won't distance/wear masks/etc, at some point most of *those* people have gotten it and the numbers go down. But as the other 60% who have been distancing/etc start to relax and reduce their mitigation (or as it's reduced for them -- fewer no-contact options for things, less enforcement of masking, brought back to the office, etc), that's a huge pool to fuel a next wave. And that's without considering variants that might reduce prior immunity or spread differently -- but also without considering vaccinations that bring immunity to more and more of that 60% also each day. March and April will tell us a lot.

GUWonder

Behavior changes when confronted by noticing a surge of deaths from a cause .

Behavior changes when there is hope on the horizon to avoid a noticed cause of deaths by "doubling down" for just long enough to reach that hope point or by taking additional risks because "hope is on the horizon".

In the case of the former, a surge in reported death counts for Covid-19 does induce behavior change in at least part.

In the case of the latter, the hope point may be that of getting vaccinated.

Given this virus' initial site of infection generally and given how the immune system's largest component is the mucosal immune system, it should be pretty much expected that some people are just less susceptible to this virus because of their mucosal immune system while others would be way more susceptible to initial infection because of their mucosal immune system. Mucous membranes matter.

"Is it not possible that most of the people that are going to be infected have now been so? " Well, some social circles are slower to be subject to cross-cutting cleavages with other social circles than others while other social circles are much faster to be subject to cross-cutting cleavages with other social circles. That difference in speed of social circles being exposed to other social circles means that "natural herd immunity" has been much slower to come about than its proponents have been assuming repeatedly in places that have de facto stuck with that "natural herd immunity" approach for this virus. The spread of a communicable pathogen is not uniform within communities or across all communities in a given country because some social circles are slower to be exposed than others. This is a factor in why there are "waves" in cases, hospitalizations and deaths for this.

NewbieRunner

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56153600

fransknorge

Some research by Natixis, a French multinational financial services firm specialized in asset & wealth management, corporate & investment banking, insurance and payments (so not exactly a bunch of extremists of Health and Safety), concludes that the choice of Europe to not do a ZeroCovid strategy from spring 2020 is not understandable and a mistake. They conclude the economy of every country doing a ZeroCovid strategy is in a much better shape than the European one.

https://www.research.natixis.com/Sit...%3D?from=email

lobo411

Ya, I don't know anything about how other cultures handle New Year's. Is it a big deal in Africa, for example? Anyway, I also look forward to hearing more from Rutherford.

Japan is an interesting case. We really have no idea how widespread covid was, or still is, because they have been doing practically no testing. It's possible that because their population is really healthy, there were points in time where covid was widespread but not impactful enough to result in mass hospitalization. Even today, Japan has a really low positivity rate but also a really low testing rate. As of Saturday, Japan does 0.4 tests per 1000. The US does 2.77 tests per thousand. And the UK does almost 8 tests per 1000.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN29K0AM

freedom2020

There are at least 3 interactive variables: human behaviors, virus mutations and vaccine effect. There are also at least 3 interactive layers in human behaviors: government policies, official media and social media, and individual reactions to policies. Is that so difficult to acknowledge that we don't have much knowledge, in any of these variables?

PanAmWT

Japan and Taiwan are probably the top two countries in masking pre-pandemic. In my 40 years of monthly-bimonthly trips to East Asia, I have seen far more people wearing mask on their subways than in China or Hong Kong, all low case countries with wide acceptance of masking.

Rutherford nearly every time mentioned that Bay Area, regardless of which phase of the waves, consistently performed better than Southern California because of policy and masking.

freedom2020

Why SoCal is worse than Florida? Isn't policy more restrictive in SoCal?

These kinds of "piece meal" isolated facts are more misleading than bloody lies, because it looks right on the face value.

stimpy

Where do you get the data that there is a global recession in cases? There are still a lot of deaths and still a whole lot of people in intensive care. I don't see any drops in the countries that I follow. Like France for instance.

Without investigating, I might assume that there is only a recession in reported cases, but not in actual infections.

freedom2020

However, all of these mask wearing countries have almost zero social distancing, even right now. When required, it's 1 meter rather than 6 ft. That's a huge difference. Most social activities can be safely resumed with 1 meter social distancing with little or no modifications, but impossible with 6 ft requirement, as it triples space requirement per person. For example, it's not difficult to maintain 1 meter between students in a typical classroom in US. But you have to split a class into 2 or 3 to achieve 6 ft distancing.

alex67500

France decided not to lock down completely, and have been pretty much flat at a high level for a while (although the south east and north east are having big flare-ups now). The UK has been on a strong downward trend for 4 weeks now, after a massive spike in Jan. If you only look at one country you won't see a decrease because in this case it's an outlier. I follow both France and the UK and the contrast is big.

I also see the weekly report from the Economist, and indeed North America and Europe are on steep downward trends.

Regarding ICU and death numbers, they lag between 3 and 6 weeks behind case variations.

stimpy

France didn't do another full lockdown, but all bars, restaurants, cinemas, etc have been closed for months. And mask wearing is quite compulsory.

And as for reporting lags, don't ICU cases happen within a week of infection in serious cases? If they are not in decline now, then perhaps there is a problem with case reporting.

alex67500

One of the main factors for France is schools have remained open, which in turn keeps the number of interactions high. Kids might not show symptoms too often, but they do transmit it. UK schools have been open only 1 day in all of 2021.

What I've noticed (through empirical observation, by no means scientific) is that it looks like a spike of cases is followed roughly 10-12 days later by a spike of hospitalisations, then followed by a spike in deaths at around the same time lag again. We're observing it in the UK right now. Cases are decreasing less fast than last week so I expect hospitalisation rates to follow that trend next week. Unless the vaccine starts showing positive effects, which I hope will be the case.

stimpy

I don't think we can say with any confidence that schools have anything to do with it. Schools are open in Florida and cases are rapidly declining. Ditto in many other places.