Yes. Everything else is alarming but that's just "It's a big world."
I think people are worried because it's clearly not going to work like measles immunity, but I'm just glad that it's also very clearly not going to work like immunity from a common cold.
I agree with Heebie's second paragraph, but I think this also suggests that pinning your flag to "herd immunity" as a solution is wrong headed, and we will definitely need a vaccine, or more exactly a method for creating updated vaccines at regular intervals if we want to get out from under this thing.
This is the 89-year-old Dutch woman with a rare form of bone marrow cancer? Seems rather overdetermined.
Yeah, I hope it helps neutralize the White House's new fumblings toward the "infect everybody" concept, which are terrifying.
Herd immunity isn't terrifying because immunity might not last. It's terrifying because of all the dead people it would take to achieve it.
6 is correct. There's plenty to be freaked out about on the first pass through the population.
With Trump declaring himself immune, it would be a shame if this report causes people erroneously believe the president is taking reckless risks. They might choose to not vote for him based on a false premise.
Or maybe the discipline of statistics isn't all it's cracked up to be. Didja every think of that?
6: No, but availability bias might let it nudge the discourse the right way.
Herd immunity is terrifying because of all the dead people it would take to achieve it and because immunity might not last. It's like an equal opportunity terror
I guess although the reinfections seem like huge outliers at the moment, if immunity wears off after, say, 10 years it could still mean future pandemics.
We have an interconnected world, large areas of horrible poverty with the associated lack of sanitation and health care, a rapidly changing climate, worsening global efforts to cooperate on disease-related issues, and growing distrust for basic decency.
We're going to have future pandemics.
This isn't us failing in a huge crisis. This is us racking our nuts with the bats during spring training.
The moral of the story is that if the Republican Party controls the White House during a time of pandemic we will fail, that in the medium run we can probably do nothing to stop the Republican Party from controlling the White House for about half of the time, and that it has yet to be seen if the Democratic Party can do better given the inevitable resistance by nuts with and without visible guns.
15: Eh, the US has a relatively high fraction of selfish assholes who wouldn't wear a mask in a pandemic unless threatened with jail time. That's a problem regardless.
But it also has at least some people who might be a bit better about mask wearing if we had had clearer examples and more consistent messaging. Beyond that, a better social safety net would have made it easier for people to self-isolate and get medical care when they needed it, and the federal government actively made things worse in the early weeks of the pandemic, seizing medical supplies meant for states. I'm not often accused of being overly optimistic but I think it's reasonable to hope that a Democratic administration would have been better about that stuff, at least.
It's a reasonable hope. Not a certainty.
There have been ~23 documented cases of reinfection. The vast majority were people who had a very mild case or no symptoms the first time around and had a mild case the second time.
I personally think there are a lot more than that but there isn't enough testing/study capacity, just based on reading the COVID-positive subreddit - people have reported testing positive, testing negative after recovering and then getting sick again a couple of months on when a household member got sick for the first time. I don't think these are relapses, just because there are also plenty of people describing relapses and plenty of people describing what they say is reinfection but is pretty clearly a relapse.
But if we're not seeing tons and tons of reinfections in the next couple of months, I think it's likely that reinfection will stay pretty rare or else usually so mild that people aren't getting tested when they get reinfected. It's quite possible that lots of people are getting reinfected but having such minor symptoms that they don't realize they're sick - no one is going to race off to get a covid test if they get a tiny sore throat for twelve hours.
There have been ~23 documented cases of reinfection. The vast majority were people who had a very mild case or no symptoms the first time around and had a mild case the second time.
I personally think there are a lot more than that but there isn't enough testing/study capacity, just based on reading the COVID-positive subreddit - people have reported testing positive, testing negative after recovering and then getting sick again a couple of months on when a household member got sick for the first time. I don't think these are relapses, just because there are also plenty of people describing relapses and plenty of people describing what they say is reinfection but is pretty clearly a relapse.
But if we're not seeing tons and tons of reinfections in the next couple of months, I think it's likely that reinfection will stay pretty rare or else usually so mild that people aren't getting tested when they get reinfected. It's quite possible that lots of people are getting reinfected but having such minor symptoms that they don't realize they're sick - no one is going to race off to get a covid test if they get a tiny sore throat for twelve hours.
I had a sore throat about a quarter of the days since March. This isn't uncommon for me.
13. They found an antibiotic resistant strain of Yersinia pestis a couple of years ago. They managed to contain it this time. We have to be lucky all the time; the bacillus only needs to be lucky once.
There are not enough new antibiotics in the pipeline.
Wait, there's plenty of proof that Democratic administrations do better than Republican ones. There was this awesome graphic just recently.
Sacramento County has made testing free and easy and now I do pretty much run off to get tested every time I have a lingering sore throat. I went this morning 'cause I have a small cough. The testing is underutilized, so I don't feel bad about it.
This isn't us failing in a huge crisis. This is us racking our nuts with the bats during spring training.
I have totally misunderstood the how the cross-species Covid transmission event came to be.
It's complex. We're "racking our nuts with the bats during spring training;" but those effects may still be mitigated by "inevitable resistance by nuts with and without visible guns."
So we wear the masks on our nuts to hide our guns from the bats?
Usually I don't take this side of things, but I think it's crazy to say that Democrats might have done just as badly with Covid. Trump specifically canceled several things that automatically would have made things a bit better. Trump has also been very effective in doing things that increased the spread. For that matter he's still doing it. A Democratic administration that did the same would already have been put to death. Of course most people will never believe any of that, but who could blame them really?
I don't say they might have done as badly. I was (and am) worried that people will deliberately undermine reasonable responses resulting in a worse result.
More to the point, with no stimulus, things would have been worse. There's never going to be a stimulus with a Democratic president and even one Republican-controlled house of Congress.
29- I don't understand why you are worried. I can guarantee they will do that.
30- I think the Republicans would support a stimulus. They just have to be motivated. Make sure they know they will be dragged from their houses or cars and killed if they don't.
31.1 is exactly right.
I'm going to concern troll 31.2 -- or is it not concern trolling but tone policing if I believe what I'm saying: violence isn't the answer for the side that has way fewer guns and the threat of violence, while mostly a joke (fantasy?) from our side is deadly serious from the other side. I know the right wing gang members pretending to be militias aren't reading this site, so I'm really reacting more to a hypothetical habit of speaking rather than the particular speech act.
32 Thank you Charley. You are of course correct. I apologize for giving in to my worse nature. I'd promise to stop, but I can't it is too much fun.
The thing is, I'm not calling for or endorsing violence, exactly. I think if the need for relief gets severe enough the violence happens automatically regardless of anyone's endorsement. I'll admit the idea has a certain appeal, but I am aware that the actuality would be terrible.
Also, I have to say I don't think it has much to do with sides. In practice Democrats are probably at least equally likely to get pulled out of their houses or cars and killed. (I feel like Nancy Pelosi's recent interview with Wolf Blitzer should be considered as evidence. By the way, my sympathy was for her.)
Biltzer is is the first tranche by anyone's reckoning.
[channels Puritan ancestors] We must forswear because it is too much fun.
Speaking of violence, my sister and her whole family were just exposed by a neighbor who, after being exposed, sent her kids to school and to play with other kids while waiting for test results, which results turned out to be positive.
(Presidential in case somebody's car starts on fire.)
I think there's a reasonably good argument that the ruling class's fear of violent reprisals has been an important factor in the implementation of a lot of progressive change in the United States. That said, I still don't like it when people casually talk about resorting to violence, especially revolutionary violence, but that's probably because I have tenure, own a home, and know that revolutions aren't generally good for the Jews.
37. With damn few exceptions, revolutions aren't good for anyone.
36: That's been the annoying thing throughout. Do you remember back in March, when people were positive and told to quarantine, but decided to attend their local school rally anyway? If you're waiting for test results, it's because you might be infected... please act like it. Grr.
That actually turned out to be less of an objectively pro-arson situation. The results that were positive were the people who exposed the people who potentially exposed my sister. Kids confused things.
No one has recovered from COVID-19 and lived a full year. We know squat. Right now, reinfection is rare, but will it be rare in one year, three years, five years? Assholes are talking about "herd immunity", usually meaning "YOU get sick and hope you don't die". Vile and stupid people, both, are taking them seriously.
Personally, I don't worry about reinfection. I worry about getting infected, but when I look at the long term, it makes a lot of sense to keep an eye on the reinfection rate. I remember when COVID-19 started hitting the red states, and they all argued that it was only a blue state problem, at least until it became a red state problem. Then they argued that it didn't kill people in red states, at least until it started killing people in red states.
Diseases spread exponentially, and the immune system, for all we now know about it, is a mystery. Let's hope the reinfection rate stays low, but let's not channel Donald Trump and claim that the reinfection problem is completely under control.
(Consider chickenpox. Reinfection is rare, but possible, especially if you only get a mild case. Most COVID-19 cases are mild. They seem to confer some level of immunity, but how many of them induce long term immunity and for how long? Let's check the reinfection rate for all the COVID-19 survivors who got it back in 2015. We know squat.)