> Based on these data, it is plausible to hypothesize that pre-existing cross-reactive HCoV CD4+ T cell memory in some donors could be a contributing factor to variations in COVID-19 patient disease outcomes, but this is at present highly speculative
The section Direct evidence of reactivity to HCoV epitopes homologous to SARS-CoV-2 epitopes [1]:
> we designed a peptide pool encompassing peptides homologous to CD4-R30 epitopes, derived from HCoV-229E, HCoV-NL63, HCoV-OC43, HCoV-HKU1 and several other HCoVs (see Methods), for a total of 129 HCoV homologs (HCoV-R129; table S2). Similarly, we synthesized a pool that encompassed peptides homologous to the SARS-CoV-2 CD4-S31 epitope pool, consisting of potential epitopes derived from other HCoVs, for a total of 124 HCoV homologs (HCoV-S124; table S3).
The "speculation" disclaimer, IMHO, is based on the assumption that the designed peptide pools invoke responses similar to their viral homologs. I have no issue with the "direct evidence" heading as this research makes an important step in demonstrating cross-reactivity.
Teasing out the degree of protection this cross-reactivity provides in real-world populations is a much harder problem.
> We demonstrate a range of pre-existing memory CD4+ T cells that are cross-reactive with comparable affinity to SARS-CoV-2 and the common cold coronaviruses HCoV-OC43, HCoV-229E, HCoV-NL63, or HCoV-HKU1. Thus, variegated T cell memory to coronaviruses that cause the common cold may underlie at least some of the extensive heterogeneity observed in COVID-19 disease.
Could we just start deliberately spreading these weaker cold viruses then?
vikramkr 1359 days ago [-]
Maybe, but thats basically developing a new vaccine, and in the time it takes to test that out and make sure it's safe and effective, we'd already have other vaccines on the market that might be more likely to be effective. Theres also the risk of antibody dependent enhancement where a competing immune effect makes the disease worse if previously infected with a different strain as seen in the dengue family
anoncake 1359 days ago [-]
Not really. There is no need to develop a vaccine, the unmodified common cold virus is harmless enough. And we know its effects.
makomk 1359 days ago [-]
Infection with at least some of those "common cold" human coronaviruses seems to have much the same effects on kids and the elderly (and maybe everyone else too) as Covid-19. At least part of the reason we're not seeing a huge pandemic of those is that lots of people already have immunity, but that also makes infecting people with them less useful - the people who already have immunity to those aren't likely to develop new immunity, and the people who don't presumably won't necessarily develop immunity that crosses over to Covid-19.
(Unfortunately, since common cold research is a lot less big, glamourous and high-profile than Covid-19, I don't think we know a huge amount for sure about the other human coronaviruses - and what we do know isn't exactly front-page headline news.)
tossAfterUsing 1358 days ago [-]
I read earlier in the year... early in the news about the outbreak, a skeptical view that suggested the reason for this 'epidemic' had something to do with the relatively new ability to apply fast genetic testing to a 'fairly common cold'
edit to remove the phrases: "pandemic" & "new normal"
alkonaut 1359 days ago [-]
Doctors can’t do that ethically, but people could spread it among themselves. It’s the chickenpox-party solution. I don’t think it’s practical though given how easy it is to confuse another Coronavirus for Covid symptoms.
vikramkr 1359 days ago [-]
Deploying a coronavirus to immunize against covid is a vaccine by definition and deciding to not call it a vaccine as a matter of syntax doesn't make the ADE risk go away
anoncake 1358 days ago [-]
Call it a vaccine or not, common cold virus don't have to be developed because they already exist.
vikramkr 1358 days ago [-]
vaccines against COVID have already been developed. They already exist. Designing them took a couple of weeks. What takes time is testing them to make sure they are safe and effective. The cold causing coronaviruses would also have to be tested for safety and efficacy in an application of preventing COVID-19. That's what the bulk of "developing" a COVID vaccine means in our modern context - testing through clinical trials. The first RNA vaccine against COVID "existed" a week after SARS-COV-2 was sequenced, and vaccines that use parts of the virus itself "existed" basically immediately after SARS-COV-2 started existing. Using the cold virus is actually a harder problem scientifically since you're using a different strain of virus to protect against SARS-COV-2 epitopes - the mechanism and safety profile is harder to predict and evaluate.
anoncake 1358 days ago [-]
Of course we don't yet know how effective it is. But how don't we know its safety profile? Why should a cold virus be more dangerous just because we use it as a vaccine, especially if we spread it the "usual" way as opposed to injecting it?
coronadisaster 1359 days ago [-]
I didnt know there was a date set for an upcoming covid-19 vaccine
1359 days ago [-]
BeatLeJuce 1359 days ago [-]
There isn't, but some of the proposed vaccines are entering (or very close to entering) phase 3, while this proposed inocculation by common corona viruses would have to start at phase 1, thus being much slower.
djsumdog 1359 days ago [-]
It's silly to think we're going to have a safe vaccine on the market any time soon. It'd probably be safer to give everyone coronavirus common cold viruses if it can build an immunity.
..and Immune Enhancement Syndrome one of the serious consequences of the SARS1 and MERS vaccines that never made it past their trials.
There are a lot of factors to immunity beyond antibodies. Traditional vaccines are either close viruses in the animal world (horsepox for smallpox) or heat treated inactivated virus (flu). We know they produce anitbodies, but there are hundreds of other parts of our immune system (complement system, inane, etc.) that might interact and form memory as well.
Vaccines come out of bad places; from eras where hundreds if not thousands of people were going blind, dying or getting paralyzed by disease. It was easier to just test things on people back then too, and a lot of them died (Chinese were inoculating people with actual smallpox 300 years before Jenner discovered making a vaccine from Cowpox/horsepox).
In the 1970s, the Swing Flu vaccine was a disaster. Sure millions of people got the vaccine and were fine, but 3,000 people developed Guillain-Barre syndrome. Some still have trouble walking or smiling (see the 60 Minutes documentary from that era)
Vaccines need a lot of testing. I do not understand why we're trusting the man who gave us Windows 95 to lead the Gates/Gavi alliance responsible for giving us a "safe" vaccine in less than a year. That's insane.
SpicyLemonZest 1359 days ago [-]
The problem is that, at least in some populations, these viruses are only moderately less dangerous than COVID-19. There are recorded nursing home outbreaks (e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095096/) where a common cold coronavirus killed 5-8% of residents.
partyboat1586 1359 days ago [-]
Without wanting to sound disrespectful to those affected 5-8% is pretty good for a care home.
SpicyLemonZest 1359 days ago [-]
It is, unfortunately, but it's probably bad enough that it's not something a government could deliberately do.
ithkuil 1359 days ago [-]
Would it make sense to skip those age groups? We still have social distancing in place; if we try to protect those people from sars-cov-2 they will also be protected by other milder variants we nurse in the wider population.
On a similar note: when a vaccine gets developed, does it make more sense to vaccinate those age groups (on the grounds that it will protect the most vulnerables) or to vaccinate everybody else (on the grounds that the vaccines may not be 100% safe and thus it may be safer for those age groups to benefit from the herd immunity)?
raxxorrax 1359 days ago [-]
You cannot deliberately infect people of any age group anyway. I would skip it and doesn't sound more convincing than measles parties.
gridlockd 1359 days ago [-]
You mean you can't "ethically" infect people? I disagree, it just comes down to risk. Many vaccines and medications have rare but potentially severe side-effects, but we administer them anyway due to risk versus reward.
Let's say you have a 5% chance of dying from COVID-19, a 10% chance of contracting it, but only a 0.05% chance of dying from some harmless coronavirus that would reduce your chance of dying from COVID-19 by half. It would be irrational not to deliberately contract the harmless coronavirus.
The problem is just that we don't know all these variables, especially for a given individual.
raxxorrax 1359 days ago [-]
A potential COVID vaccine is an example. I doubt you could ethically instruct people to get a shot for such a health experiment. You can require them to get one to use certain services, but bodily autonomy has precedence in my opinion. That is even more relevant for living pathogens.
Being together with other humans is always a health risk if you want to look at it like that. While it might be incredible stupid to not take the lesser risk, you cannot force people to be rational.
mola 1359 days ago [-]
The problem with measles parties is that measles cause long term damage and not the delibirate infection.
If mild common cold can make you immune to covid19, delibirate infections may be a much more efficient way to achieve herd immunity than a propiatary vaccine.
ithkuil 1359 days ago [-]
Is the fact that the vaccine is "proprietary" relevant to the efficacy? Would a non proprietary vaccine be ok?
mola 1358 days ago [-]
Of course, less money (no patents, etc), less interests and less non relevant choices being made (e.g buying endless supply of quinine because something)
.
Heck if actual mild cold could cause mass immunity, the cold virus is it's own distribution mechanism. No need for all the syringes and other logistics.
Of course this is all hand waving, but the point is we shouldn't automatically think that a man made vaccine is a much better solution.
ithkuil 1356 days ago [-]
> we shouldn't automatically think
Ah yes, we surely shouldn't automatically about anything. We should use reason and data.
mola 1355 days ago [-]
We should, we don't.
There are great forces working on making you think certain ways by emphasizing certain data, and push messages that promote certain reason making.
The more money is at stake the greater force is applied. The last few years have proven what a devastating effect it had on our ability to discuss and think reasonably about anything.
SpicyLemonZest 1359 days ago [-]
I'd assume the goal of a population-wide infection program would be to end social distancing. Otherwise it's not clear what the point would be.
Vaccine deployment won't eradicate the virus immediately, so the most at-risk populations will likely need to be personally vaccinated before they can safely stop social distancing.
onetimemanytime 1359 days ago [-]
Maybe, but at some point, moving your hand will kill you. You don't see 500 years olds walking around
numpad0 1359 days ago [-]
> give everyone coronavirus common cold viruses if it can build an immunity.
> Edward Jenner, FRS FRCPE[1] (17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823) was an English physician and scientist who was the pioneer of smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine.[2][3]
> It'd probably be safer to give everyone coronavirus common cold viruses if it can build an immunity.
I'm still a little scared by the Moderna vaccine because the mechanism for RNA vaccines is so new, and this one's being rushed out. Give a choice between that an a month of common colds, I'd take the colds.
vikramkr 1359 days ago [-]
giving everyone a cold virus is a vaccine by definition. It's a biological preparation to provide active acquired immunity. Trying to make up artificial distinctions between this and that doesn't make giving everyone the cold not a vaccine or any safer - the procedure doesn't care what you name it, a vaccine is a vaccine and a vaccine must be tested b for safety and efficacy
snowwrestler 1359 days ago [-]
It's not like we stopped vaccine development in the 1970s. The HPV vaccine came out in 2006 and by all evidence so far is very safe.
rotterdamdev 1359 days ago [-]
New research suggests it's more harm than good, with all the side effects, and your chance to get HPV if you do not live a promiscuous life.
mlyle 1359 days ago [-]
> It's silly to think we're going to have a safe vaccine on the market any time soon. It'd probably be safer to give everyone coronavirus common cold viruses if it can build an immunity.
I'd say that there's a 70% chance that there's millions of doses available for North America by late January of a >50% efficacy vaccine with a high production rate from that point.
There are so many different vaccine efforts now, and so many of them producing at risk. Some will work. It's just a question of how high the efficacy is and the duration of protection.
> ..and Immune Enhancement Syndrome one of the serious consequences of the SARS1 and MERS vaccines that never made it past their trials.
A lot of us were worried about antibody dependent enhancement. But we've had basically no evidence that this is a significant concern: successful treatment with convalescent plasma, successful challenge tests with vaccines in animal models, successful monoclonal antibody therapies in animal tests, etc, all point the other way.
> Sure millions of people got the vaccine and were fine, but 3,000 people developed Guillain-Barre syndrome.
And this wasn't a good trade, because the vaccine probably saved a lot fewer than 3,000 lives. But at this point, you'd save a whole lot of lives even with a vaccine that bad. (And we're not going quite that quick that time around and we have somewhat better tools to prevent bad outcomes).
> I do not understand why we're trusting the man who gave us Windows 95 to lead the Gates/Gavi alliance responsible for giving us a "safe" vaccine in less than a year.
??? Now you've gone completely off the rails. Gavi's primary role is as a purchaser of vaccines and not in development. The couple dozen vaccine development efforts worldwide are what we can expect to yield a vaccine.
djsumdog 1358 days ago [-]
> Now you've gone completely off the rails. Gavi's primary role is as a purchaser of vaccines and not in development.
Both Gavi and the Gates Foundation are intended to create "healthy markets" for vaccines. Gates didn't design Windows 95 either; he was a business and marketing guy promoting it. It's not the development that's the issue, it's the fact that these alliances are profit motivated and vaccines have been a loosing bet for years due to the incredibly amount of research funding needed to bring one to market.
Their motives for rushing a vaccine to market right now are not altruistic. They want to prove they can bring vaccines for novel viruses to the market quickly. It could work, but it could also be a disaster. The fact that this is an 'emergency' allows them to avoid a lot of regulations, and even liability if the trials end up making people sick or killing them.
mola 1359 days ago [-]
Vaccines of a new untested technology that manipulates rna that are rushed to market.
Yeah, good last resort, not first.
mlyle 1359 days ago [-]
The mRNA vaccines are just a couple of the dozen+ credible vaccine efforts. They may win the race, they may not..
raducu 1359 days ago [-]
If I understand correctly, the mRNA vaccines have the added benefit that there are no existing antibodies that destroy the modified virus, like the adenovirus vaccines.
Sure, the Oxford vaccine uses an adenovirus that is not present in humans outside Africa, but when they try to make a second vaccine, based on the same adenovirus, people who took the COVID-19 vaccine might not be protected.
So while not tested, mRNA might be a much better bet for the future, because we will be able to develop vaccines much faster and not have to search for a new virus vector each time a new vaccine is developed.
mlyle 1358 days ago [-]
mRNA would be a nice capability to have, if it doesn't kill people or cause excessive side effects.
It looks like the side effects from mRNA vaccines are bigger than a typical vaccination. It's starting to look like mRNA vaccines may not be the vaccine you'd want in the long term based on this alone. The question is, do they create high severity side effects that preclude using them in the short term? We're about to learn...
There's a lot of other efforts; adenovirus vectors, attenuated efforts, non-replicating virus efforts. Of course, the adenovirus vectors are of concern because if immunity wears off, you can't necessarily give someone a booster a couple years later.
el_benhameen 1359 days ago [-]
My kids are ahead of the curve. They've been doing that for years.
snowwrestler 1359 days ago [-]
Good joke, but since we're talking about kids... there is obviously more to Covid-19 heterogeneity than previous exposure to coronaviruses, since very young children are least likely to experience serious illness, but are also least likely to have a lot of exposure to other coronaviruses.
w0utert 1359 days ago [-]
One of the theories is that the density of the ACE2 receptor the virus binds to, is somehow correlated with testosterone levels, which is very low for young children, and low for women compared to men. This would provide an explanation why severe cases are extremely rare in young children, and comparatively high for men vs. women.
greesil 1359 days ago [-]
I really would like to see some data if parents of younger children fare better than others in the same age range.
RhysU 1359 days ago [-]
It's like (cue Jurassic Park music) life finds a way.
CyanLite4 1359 days ago [-]
Many of those like OC43 and NL63 are extremely deadly to the elderly and have been known to have around 5-8% mortality in nursing homes.
For everyone else, we should have a vaccine in the next 2-3 months.
epmaybe 1359 days ago [-]
I really doubt that we will have a vaccine for the general population in 2-3mo. No vaccine manufacturer that I know of is even expecting phase 3 results until the end of this year at the earliest. And then you have to start using supply for first responders, healthcare workers, etc. and then move to gen. pop.
I can only see this as being a disaster. Vaccines need very careful testing before administering them to millions of people.
lern_too_spel 1359 days ago [-]
Who said anything about administering the vaccines before they are tested? Governments and philanthropists are pouring money into vaccine production to have doses ready immediately in case the tests go well. If the tests don't go well, they will not be administered.
kalleboo 1359 days ago [-]
You won't learn about long-term side effects in 6 months of testing.
The accelerated testing should still make them safe enough to administer to the risk groups where the risk of catching the virus is higher than the risk of the vaccine.
dragontamer 1359 days ago [-]
The #1 group who needs the vaccine more than anyone else is a group of young, extremely healthy, low-risk individuals. Paramedics, nurses, doctors. The "front-line" to the COVID19.
Even before the "at risk" population gets the vaccine, nurses and doctors (who will be treating the at-risk population) need to first be immunized... otherwise the nurses/doctors risk spreading the virus to the at-risk population.
Fauci was very careful to say that this isn't any decision he will make on the matter. But it is extremely likely that nurses / doctors will get the first dose of vaccines.
sroussey 1359 days ago [-]
No one is testing at-risk groups. Early trials are with health young people.
You don’t put sick 80yo people into early trials, even these accelerated ones.
enjo 1359 days ago [-]
Every phase three trial is testing at risk groups.
sroussey 1358 days ago [-]
Not many of those happening yet. And no results yet.
lern_too_spel 1358 days ago [-]
There are 6 vaccines undergoing phase 3 trials at the moment. There are no results yet because this is the final stage.
whatshisface 1359 days ago [-]
How can you decide who is at what risk from the vaccine with only an accelerated test?
PakG1 1359 days ago [-]
The worst part is that anti-vaxxers would be able to say, "See??? I was right!!!! You're all idiots!!!!!!"
__blockcipher__ 1359 days ago [-]
Saying “vaccines are safe” is like saying “drugs are safe”. Without qualification it’s a lie. Drugs tested to be safe are safe. Vaccines tested to be safe are safe.
The problem with the whole anti-anti-vaxxer thing is that any nuance gets lost. I’ve been called an antivaxxer (on the internet) for stating that I don’t want to take a poorly tested vaccine candidate.
Personally I am not afraid of SARS-CoV-2, for someone in my risk category the risk of bad outcomes is vanishingly low. Whereas a rushed out novel vaccine - which by definition cannot be tested for long term effects - is much more risky, personally.
BTW, because both the mortality and unproven (and imo nonexistent) “long term impacts” of COVID-19 are so dramatically overblown, the threshold for “this vaccine is safe” will be very loose IMO. Especially simce you can argue that the societal benefit of the vaccine means it’s worth more risk than the risk of COVID infection.
Fortunately, most of the US is practically begging for a vaccine and will take it as soon as available, so at least we’ll have great data. (Provided negative reactions aren’t suppressed as censored the way legitimate scientific papers have been)
cycomanic 1359 days ago [-]
> Saying “vaccines are safe” is like saying “drugs are safe”. Without qualification it’s a lie. Drugs tested to be safe are safe. Vaccines tested to be safe are safe.
> The problem with the whole anti-anti-vaxxer thing is that any nuance gets lost. I’ve been called an antivaxxer (on the internet) for stating that I don’t want to take a poorly tested vaccine candidate.
> Personally I am not afraid of SARS-CoV-2, for someone in my risk category the risk of bad outcomes is vanishingly low. Whereas a rushed out novel vaccine - which by definition cannot be tested for long term effects - is much more risky, personally.
> BTW, because both the mortality and unproven (and imo nonexistent) “long term impacts” of COVID-19 are so dramatically overblown, the threshold for “this vaccine is safe” will be very loose IMO. Especially simce you can argue that the societal benefit of the vaccine means it’s worth more risk than the risk of COVID infection.
It's statements like this and the one above why you get called an antivaxxer i suspect. Both the mortality rate and the long term impacts of COVID19 are both real and have not been overblown, there is a lot of evidence out there, but you just need to talk to any medical professional who has worked in the hospitals that treated patients to hear how bad this virus is. But it sounds like you have made up your mind already even though you say they are unproven (which they are not) , so you I guess you're making this assessments based on idiology not evidence.
iateanapple 1359 days ago [-]
> Both the mortality rate and the long term impacts of COVID19 are both real and have not been overblown
The mortality rate for healthy people is incredibly low.
For example Singapore has had ~54,000 cases with a death count of only 27 since it was mostly young healthy people who got it.
Likewise there has been basically no excess deaths in many European countries for <65 years olds.
This is not at all how the media is treating covid.
PakG1 1359 days ago [-]
The mortality rate may be low over the long run. But certainly over the short run, it was very very high. It is not a normal thing for city morgues to run out of room such that they need to truck in refrigeration units to hold dead bodies. This has happened in multiple American cities. That cannot be called a low rate by any stretch of the imagination, unless taking an average over a very long length of time.
iateanapple 1359 days ago [-]
> But certainly over the short run, it was very very high
Was it very very high in the <65 not obese, not diabetic group?
We know it is dangerous to the old and some cities did a horrendous job of looking after their elderly.
anoncake 1359 days ago [-]
Where "a very long length of time" = "more than a couple of weeks"?
henrikschroder 1359 days ago [-]
> But certainly over the short run, it was very very high.
So what? If you're alive now, if you survived the initial wave of the virus, the risk to you, now, of getting the virus is much less than it was back in March.
And if you're trying to figure out if the risk of the vaccine is worth it to you later this year, you have to weigh it against the risk of dying from covid-19 at that point in time, not what the risk of dying from it was back in March.
peter422 1359 days ago [-]
What about the countries that did have a lot of excess deaths in the 25-44 and 45-64 age ranges? Like the US for example?
You are just picking and choosing random data points to make very broad statements.
henrikschroder 1359 days ago [-]
Since it's highly unlikely that the lethality of the virus depends on which continent it's on, a more likely explanation is that people in the US are more likely to belong to any of the risk groups by being obese or by having diabetes.
The total number of covid-19 dead that were younger than 45 in the countries that EuroMOMO covers is in the low thousands, while the total number of covid-19 dead is in the low hundreds of thousands. That's two magnitudes lower risk compared to the general lethality.
Every individual has to do their own risk analysis, and see if they belong to any of the risk groups for covid-19, because that changes the individual equation.
wbl 1359 days ago [-]
Or the US bungled the response leading to massive infection rates.
__blockcipher__ 1358 days ago [-]
That doesn't affect mortality, except that the more a country gets infected the better mortality will look since susceptibility to infection just happens to correlate to susceptibility to severely bad outcome
iateanapple 1359 days ago [-]
> You are just picking and choosing random data points to make very broad statements.
Is the data random? Would it really cluster like that across countries?
I don’t think your statement makes a lot of sense.
__blockcipher__ 1358 days ago [-]
> It's statements like this and the one above why you get called an antivaxxer i suspect. Both the mortality rate and the long term impacts of COVID19 are both real and have not been overblown, there is a lot of evidence out there, but you just need to talk to any medical professional who has worked in the hospitals that treated patients to hear how bad this virus is. But it sounds like you have made up your mind already even though you say they are unproven (which they are not) , so you I guess you're making this assessments based on idiology not evidence.
On the contrary, those talking of "lifelong complications" and "long haulers" are ideologically motivated. I have looked at the actual research, as well as thought deeply from a more theoretical standpoint, and have found the risks to be entirely overblown, particularly with respect to my risk category.
henrikschroder 1359 days ago [-]
> Both the mortality rate and the long term impacts of COVID19 are both real
If you're a healthy adult, your risk of dying or being affected by any long-term effects of the virus is about two magnitudes less than the risk for people who are 70+ or have any of the comorbidities.
I am a healthy adult, I am neither obese nor a diabetic, I don't smoke, I don't belong to any of the risk groups. For me, the risk of dying of covid-19 is in the ballpark of 1:100000, and decreasing, because we're getting better and better at treating the disease. If I catch the virus, I am overwhelmingly likely to suffer as much as I would of a common cold.
Those are the numbers that any vaccine has to beat in order for me to consider getting it. Provably beat. I'd rather wait until you and a couple of million people have had the vaccine before even thinking about getting it, thank you very much.
chimprich 1359 days ago [-]
It's not the death rate that's worrying for most age groups, it's the health effects.
It's strangely difficult to get up-to-date information about hospitalisation rates but early estimates from the Chinese data suggest it's 4.25% for people in their 40s[0].
If you get hospitalised (or even if you don't) you have a significant chance of long-term health problems.
I don't know if that estimate has come down since we've not had to rely on filtered China data but a 1-in-20 chance of hospitalisation seems worrying enough for individuals and a huge problem for society if you let the virus get out of control.
> or being affected by any long-term effects of the virus is about two magnitudes less than the risk for people who are 70+
Total number of confirmed cases for people in their 40's: 13687. Of those, 282 ended up in the ICU, and 44 ended up dead.
Since the number of actual cases is higher than the confirmed cases, the 2% hospitalization rate the above numbers result in is an upper bound.
And since the number of actual cases is probably at least a magnitude higher than the confirmed cases, the hospitalization rate for people in their 40's is probably somewhere around 0.2%. That's 1-in-500, not 1-in-20.
Scroll down to "riskgrupper", and you can see that for men between 40 and 59, 22% were diabetic, 31% suffered high blood pressure, and 11% had some kind of chronic lung disease, for example.
So if you don't belong to any of these risk groups, the risk of you suffering long-term health problems from the virus is even lower than 1-in-500.
chimprich 1359 days ago [-]
> confirmed cases for people in their 40's: 13687. Of those, 282 ended up in the ICU
I can't understand the language (Swedish, presumably), but the ICU percentage is not the hospitalisation rate. Rather more people than need ICU are being hospitalised.
If 2% are needing ICU treatment, 4.6% needing oxygen in hospital sounds plausible if not an underestimate.
> And since the number of actual cases is probably at least a magnitude higher than the confirmed cases
That (probably) isn't true, or at least is not confirmed. I would expect most symptomatic cases to be tested now, and estimates of asymptomatic cases vary but seem to hover around 40%.
> So if you don't belong to any of these risk groups
Being male is also a risk group. If you're a man, most stats look worse compared to women at a ratio of about 2-1.
henrikschroder 1358 days ago [-]
> Rather more people than need ICU are being hospitalised.
True, but being in an ICU in Sweden also doesn't mean you're necessarily hooked up to a ventilator. You'll be hooked up to the machine that goes bing, and you'll probably be hooked up to oxygen. It's a pretty iffy proxy measurement for the amount of people who will suffer long-term health effects, but it's probably in the same ballpark. And we haven't quantified the severity of those health effects. For some it means getting winded more easily for up to a year after being sick, and for others it means having to amputate a limb because you developed a blood clot while in a ventilator coma. One of these is not like the other.
>> And since the number of actual cases is probably at least a magnitude higher than the confirmed cases
> That (probably) isn't true, or at least is not confirmed. I would expect most symptomatic cases to be tested now
Ok, doing the numbers for July for Sweden which is when testing finally reached acceptable levels:
10487 new confirmed cases.
62 new ICU patients.
Assuming the age distribution is the same as for the full period, people in their 40's make up 16.7% of the cases and 11.2% of the ICU patients. That's 1751 cases and 7 of the ICU patients, which results in a hospitalization rate of 0.4%.
That's a lot closer to my estimates than yours.
> Being male is also a risk group. If you're a man, most stats look worse compared to women at a ratio of about 2-1.
Fair enough, and it's actually 3-1 for Sweden. Still, that doesn't bring the number anywhere near 1-in-20. 1-in-100, tops.
CloudNetworking 1359 days ago [-]
> Personally I am not afraid of SARS-CoV-2, for someone in my risk category the risk of bad outcomes is vanishingly low. Whereas a rushed out novel vaccine - which by definition cannot be tested for long term effects - is much more risky, personally.
Do you have data to support these two claims?
Edit: I am not sure why I have been downvoted for requesting support data regarding two quite strong claims. Someone, even if it's not the downvoter, care to explain?
This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk if in ... four years the vaccine is showing side effects
I suppose you will call me an anti-vaxxer but why would a company want to avoid liability if its products were safe? Note that they will gladly take all the profits.
CloudNetworking 1359 days ago [-]
No, seriously, do you have any data to support your claims that it is riskier to get the vaccine than to get infected by the virus in the wild?
goatinaboat 1359 days ago [-]
No, seriously, do you have any data to support your claims that it is riskier to get the vaccine
Since I don't have a crystal ball to see 4 years into the future, when this executive predicts the negative side effects will emerge, presumably based on experience with other vaccines, no. By all means, volunteer to be amongst the first to test it, and be sure to let HN know.
Perhaps you could provide some data on how normal it is for companies to disclaim liability before a product is even launched?
CloudNetworking 1359 days ago [-]
So you don't have any data to make those claims as if they were facts. Thank you.
gnusty_gnurc 1359 days ago [-]
Nice casuistry you got there.
The fact is that you don’t have any evidence that the vaccine doesn’t have side effects four years out and that’s precisely the point the OP is trying to make.
CloudNetworking 1358 days ago [-]
> Nice casuistry you got there.
No, he's the one making claims without supporting data or evidence.
He said, textually:
(About the virus)
"for someone in my risk category the risk of bad outcomes is vanishingly low"
(About the vaccine)
"Whereas a rushed out novel vaccine - which by definition cannot be tested for long term effects - is much more risky, personally"
You can tell he's passing opinions as facts the moment he feels guilty and adds "personally".
The fact that we don't know if there could be long term side effects with the vaccine doesn't mean it is not a calculated risk. The fact that we haven't waited for 4 years doesn't mean the scientists behind it do not fully understand how the vaccine works and what are the potential risks. It's not a blind gamble.
That's why I think it is important, if you're in for a serious discussion and not for anti-vaxxer histrionic propaganda, to make sure we support wild claims with strong evidence.
gnusty_gnurc 1358 days ago [-]
Clearly, a company looking to evade responsibility of long-term effects is an admission there is a non-negligible risk. And weighed against personal risk, at least in the US, it makes sense for a lot of people to not even take the long-term gamble to potentially save an 85-year-old.
Maybe tons of people if not the majority don’t care or would happily take the vaccine - let them!
But it seems far too short-sighted to discount all the people that wouldn’t want to take an incredibly quickly developed vaccine (with debated and unproven benefit - does it provide immunity? how long?) for a disease that seems mild for most people.
This is much less clear cut than you’re letting on, while being obstinate about data which we don’t have.
ChicagoDave 1359 days ago [-]
Yeah then explain all of the people with months long symptoms like reduced lung capacity, fogginess, loss of hair, weakness, headaches, and all of these symptoms rotate and coalesce in variant ways. This is reported in otherwise healthy 20-50 year olds that haven't been able to shake the consequences of catching the virus.
You throw IMO around like it matters what your opinion is to the rest of the world. I'll take empirical evidence, known post-virus complications, and scientific research over you opinion any day.
There are all kinds of horror stories one can imagine from a new type of vaccine like the Moderna one, but enough humans won't need it to balance out the risk of those that do.
There's no good answer. We either vaccinate or we let millions of people suffer and die. It's not a good choice...but it's one we have to make.
I'm moderately high risk and if all goes well with the trials and there are no significant mutations that the vaccine can't address, I'll be first in line.
I think in all of this, the number one fear is a mutation like the 1918 flu. It went from killing very young and very old to killing everyone. From a V to a W. Covid-19 is mostly a hook pointing at the very old. Let's hope it stays that way.
tux1968 1359 days ago [-]
The worst part would be the negative effects visited upon the people taking the unproven vaccine.
SpicyLemonZest 1359 days ago [-]
We won't have enough supply for the general population, but ramping up the supply of a cold virus inoculation would run into mostly the same challenges.
__blockcipher__ 1359 days ago [-]
It should theoretically be a lot more scalable to just culture en masse. Since you’re not doing any modifications.
Altho if they required testing of the culture to ensure no mutation that would slow things down
vibrio 1359 days ago [-]
Growing wild-type coronavirus is easier than making the current vaccine approaches? How/Why?
As someone familiar with virology and cGMPs, I don’t see how that is the case.
__blockcipher__ 1358 days ago [-]
My thinking is that culturing massive amounts is incredibly scalable since there's no need to inactivate or perform other steps to render the virus safe. You're just culturing a fuckton of virus in a medium like agar.
nicoburns 1359 days ago [-]
> ramping up the supply of a cold virus inoculation would run into mostly the same challenges
If you can let people actually catch the virus, then can't you avoid a lot of the vaccine production by letting people spread it to each other?
paganel 1358 days ago [-]
> I really doubt that we will have a vaccine for the general population in 2-3mo.
Even so, the logistics I think will add another extra year (at least for the "Western" countries, which I'm pretty sure will forget about the "equality for all humans" mantra and will scramble to get first in line). For the roughly 3.4-5 billion people that we need to vaccinate in order to begin to get herd immunity I honestly think we're looking at a 3-5 year timeframe (at least).
cco 1359 days ago [-]
> For everyone else, we should have a vaccine in the next 2-3 months.
This is a naive question, but to my knowledge there has never been a widely successful and safe vaccine developed for a coronavirus, am I wrong? People have been talking vaccine, but I've always thought that coronavirus, i.e. common cold family, has been nearly impossible to nail down with a vaccine.
You seem a lot more confident so I must be in the wrong here.
vibrio 1359 days ago [-]
I think this is an economic barrier more than a scientific one (not that the science is trivial). MERS is too sporadic. SARS burnt out to quickly to substantially test anything clinically, and if you look at the scientifc literature, interest in SARS dropped pretty quickly. I’m general neither industry or investors or government funding has that much interest in Infectious disease (vs cancer for instance). Pandemic preparedness was a horrible business plan.
cycomanic 1359 days ago [-]
AFAIK there has never been much of an effort, because it is not a high priority vaccine. Based that all vaccinations can have a side effect, why would you develop a vaccine for it. And for the other SARS I suspect they were to quickly contained by other means to warrant development of a vaccine.
usrusr 1359 days ago [-]
Vaccinating away a single cause of common cold out of many causes would seem almost pointless. I'd take it as a given that lack of seriously trying has been playing a major role in that lack of success.
auspex 1358 days ago [-]
Also we have a coronavirus vaccine for pets and livestock that you can buy today.
raxxorrax 1359 days ago [-]
My bet is 2-3 month + a year for broadest applications, some experimental ones might be available sooner.
mke 1359 days ago [-]
Why not just test everyone for t-cell reactivity to SARS-CoV-2? The general population already has broad coronavirus exposure. If your test reveals no immune reaction, you are clearly a candidate for extended quarantine. If you have an immune reaction, now what? More study needed. Can you be safely exposed? Something must explain the rampant asymptomatic carrier rate.
m3kw9 1359 days ago [-]
We don’t know which viruses can also enhance the virus severity.
1359 days ago [-]
andrewseanryan 1358 days ago [-]
As a simple problem solving thought experiment, I’ve been saying the same thing (purposeful infection with a cold virus). It’s not likely to be an outcome that we would want to use, but from my laymen perspective it sounds much easier than creating a vaccine (the cold virus already exists). But of course testing would have to take place and it could actually make things worse.
While the solution has not yet been identified 100%, we should be looking at everything. That is just good problem solving.
sjg007 1359 days ago [-]
We already are.
blargmaster33 1359 days ago [-]
GOD NO! The Covid vaccine market will be a bananza! Billions will be made!!
phendrenad2 1359 days ago [-]
So basically this is saying that previous exposure to various versions of the common cold can lead to some covid resistance?
verdverm 1359 days ago [-]
Yes, we know this has been happening for 10,000s of years. The question now is to what extent, with SARS-CoV-2, is this the case based on a number of factors. It's a fundamental concept in epidemiology that hasn't been talked about enough. That is, pre-existing ability to fight off foreign cells because they body saw something close to it before. I think the obsession with the word "novel" has played a role in the public's perception.
I'd expect geography to be a significant factor based on how viruses propagate on Earth
jjtheblunt 1359 days ago [-]
or geography updated to account for proximities just a flight away?
verdverm 1359 days ago [-]
Yes, it's far more complex today than just the ~2 decades since SARS-Cov-1.
I'm wondering in cities with high volume airports saw it back in Jan/Feb here in the states.
jjtheblunt 1358 days ago [-]
I wonder the same.
wittyreference 1359 days ago [-]
> It's a fundamental concept in epidemiology that hasn't been talked about enough.
Dunning-Kruger in action.
verdverm 1359 days ago [-]
Mind viruses appear to be much more toxic to the species, and spread faster by multiple orders of magnitude.
wittyreference 1359 days ago [-]
I meant that cross-reactivity of acquired immune responses across coronaviruses is a topic that is constantly discussed in a wide swath of the literature on covid. Infectious disease isn't even my area of specialization and I see it on at least a weekly basis - I can only assume the actual epi and inf. disease lit tackles it more thoroughly.
You're confusing "I'm not hearing about it in the pop media I consume" with "it's not being widely discussed by everyone in the field."
Which is what happens when you try to evaluate a whole swath of experts in a topic you're not an expert in. Dunning-Kruger in action.
dang 1359 days ago [-]
Ok, but this comment is vastly better than your GP comment. From this one we can actually learn something. What you posted upthread was just a supercilious putdown. I understand the intense frustration of seeing people be wrong on the internet, but in the future, if you'd please post like this rather than like that, we'd be grateful.
verdverm 1359 days ago [-]
Agreed, was not referring to the researchers, rather those getting informed by the pop media. I've heard people dismissing this known process as an impossibility
ithkuil 1359 days ago [-]
The tricky thing is that while we humans do tend to seek out expert opinion on things we don't know, we also have a fundamental arrive to "understand" things.
A big part of the job of a doctor is to find a way to explain things to their patient in a way that is tailored for them. Being too technical you won't get the point across; being to vague may be interpreted as you're grasping at straws, and being too condescending is more and more problematic in our modern societies with mass education. To a poorly educated person from the early 20 century, it was no big deal to just trust the doctor to do their doctory thing and talk in their doctory way. Them being condescending and confident was in character.
A century later, the society is quite different. Most people received a nominally far better education than in the past, and grew up in a culture where everybody can become whatever they want, after all it's just a matter of educating yourself and hard work.
Understanding is withing reach. "Perhaps we don't need to depend on those condescending twats in their white coats looking down on us!".
At the same time, the vastness of knowledge gathered makes it so hard to actually master it. Being a proper member of the scientific community requires more and more education and team work and institution to coordinate all that.
This provides a barrier to entry to all people who are interested in understanding the whys and the hows.
As mentioned earlier, most people seek answers. For the answers to be trustworthy they either have to come from a trustworthy authority or they have to make sense (or better, a combination of the two).
But trust in scientific authorities has been eroded over time by egregious failings (real or perceived) of white coats acting in bad faith, doing the bids of whoever provides for their salary, be it big tabacco, big pharma, food industries, etc. When that happened it resonated with the good old human fear of the unknown and mysterious and was fertile ground for the Hollywood persona of the white coat of dubious morality or at least gullible nerd.
On the other hand trust in political authority is, well, political, thus fueling the search for alternative explanations when the official ones have politically connotations that go against one's own identity.
It also helps that nowadays circulating information offers far less friction than in the past. You can easily devote that half hour to chime in with your deep insights about topics you ultimately have no clue about, like what I'm doing here right now.
somewhereoutth 1359 days ago [-]
This virus is novel. The whole human population is immunologically naive to it. We don't know what affect it will have on us. Suppression/eradication is the only way forward.
guscost 1359 days ago [-]
> The whole human population is immunologically naive to it.
This study provides direct evidence that the “novel factor” is not as important as was previously thought. Maybe no-one has cleared a virus exactly like this one before (we can’t be sure), but it is looking more and more like many people have pre-existing immune responses that can clear this one.
> Suppression/eradication is the only way forward.
You may end up being right, but to me this is sounding less and less like a scientific conclusion, and more and more like a religious creed.
joe_the_user 1359 days ago [-]
You may end up being right, but to me this is sounding less and less like a scientific conclusion, and more and more like a religious creed.
The way to say is ..."the only way we can count on" is eradication. Sure, keep working on the other approaches but relying on them is foolish.
SpicyLemonZest 1359 days ago [-]
That leaves open the question of whether we can indeed count on eradication. There are reasonable arguments that we can certainly. But there are also reasonable arguments that we can't, and I've seen a concerning number of people who won't listen to that second set of arguments. I'd guess about half of my friends refuse to acknowledge the possibility of not eradicating the virus, and I feel like I sense a similar proportion in most discussion forums.
makomk 1359 days ago [-]
I think the media is partly to blame here. For example, here in the UK a whole bunch of experts have been warning that the virus will be with us for decades - and the British press spun this not as a debunking of eradication, but of the idea that we could carry out a "significant return to normality" by Christmas.
somewhereoutth 1358 days ago [-]
The problem is that the second set of arguments lead to policy responses that end up killing large numbers of people. See Sweden.
twic 1358 days ago [-]
Believing eradication is possible if it isn't will also end up killing large numbers of people.
sroussey 1359 days ago [-]
Suppression, then a long decade of elimination.
__blockcipher__ 1359 days ago [-]
Nobody credible thinks eradication is possible, because we would have to eliminate it from the extensive animal reservoirs. What, are we going to genocide every pangolin, bat, and housecat in existence?
abainbridge 1359 days ago [-]
Is there evidence that more than one person caught it from an animal? I haven't heard of any. I expect that is the kind of thing one can learn from genetic sequencing of the virus - ie when a new strain is seen that has multiple genetic differences from any previous sample from humans, that would be evidence for re-infection from an animal species were the virus had been circulating for a while.
__blockcipher__ 1358 days ago [-]
It literally came from an animal originally. That's what zoonotic means.
> The targeted organism must not have a non-human reservoir (or, in the case of animal diseases, the infection reservoir must be an easily identifiable species, as in the case of rinderpest), and/or amplify in the environment. This implies that sufficient information on the life cycle and transmission dynamics is available at the time an eradication initiative is programmed.
^ This is why we can never eradicate it. There's a couple of other requirements. For example we could eventually pass this check:
> An efficient and practical intervention (such as a vaccine or antibiotic) must be available to interrupt transmission of the infective agent.
eanzenberg 1359 days ago [-]
Meow?
zaroth 1359 days ago [-]
I don’t know, SARS-CoV-2 may be the most well adapted and widespread potentially deadly human infection in the world right now. If any possible endpoint, “suppression/eradication” seems the least likely.
__blockcipher__ 1359 days ago [-]
This. SARS-2 is a great spreader but a poor killer. (See: SARS-2’a early course interferon-mediated immunosuppression which probably explains the presence of pre-symptomatic spread). Worst possible candidate for suppression.
And eradication is literally impossible. It just shows how little these people know. It’s a zoonotic virus with abundant animal reservoirs, a high reproduction rate and pre-symptomatic spread. Even with a vaccine it fails the zoonotic requirement.
It’s endemic and here to stay. Anyone paying attention has known that from the start. I’ve personally been saying this for months and I’m just a deterministic algorithm operating on fixed-length groups of bits called blocks.
somewhereoutth 1358 days ago [-]
Eradication has been achieved in New Zealand. Much of East Asia is also close. Before anyone says 'people need to travel' - no they don't. It would be entirely feasible to operate a total human barrier, with goods being quarantined before passing the barrier.
True, another spillover from animal reservoirs is likely, either this virus or a similar one. Early warning with prompt response will be needed to control another outbreak. Immediately shutting down all international air travel would be a first action. Imagine if the next spillover is with a virus that is deadly as SARS-1 but as transmissible as SARS-2.
nradov 1358 days ago [-]
Nothing you have described is even remotely feasible. I don't think you understand how the worldwide supply chain works. Plus it is impossible to deal with conflict zones and failed states.
__blockcipher__ 1358 days ago [-]
> Eradication has been achieved in New Zealand.
This isn't quite true, but even if I accept that as true, you haven't addressed the problem that this is a zoonotic virus. There are abundant animal reservoirs that will never go away.
> Imagine if the next spillover is with a virus that is deadly as SARS-1 but as transmissible as SARS-2.
I used to say exactly that, until realizing that a virus as deadly as SARS-1 will never spread as well as SARS-2. Granted, if this hypothetical virus had SARS-1 lethality with SARS-2 incubation period, it would do a lot "better" than SARS-2.
Anyway, having thought deeply about this - and I'm sure you will strongly disagree here - even a SARS-1 danger virus with SARS-2 spread, I would be against (a) obviously eradication since I've already discussed why eradication is impossible, but more importantly: (b) I'm against trying to contain highly infectious respiratory viruses period.
somewhereoutth 1359 days ago [-]
It is not a scientific conclusion, but a policy statement that takes into account the best science that we can get at this moment, and then defines what should be done to minimise the damage this virus will cause.
At its heart is the understanding that controlling the virus is the single most important thing right now - that this is a total war. This policy can only work, however, in societies with effective governance and a strong social fabric.
guscost 1358 days ago [-]
> At its heart is the understanding that controlling the virus is the single most important thing right now
You misspelled “belief”.
somewhereoutth 1356 days ago [-]
Apparently this is killing 1000 Americans a day?? I'm not sure what your threshold is...
guscost 1342 days ago [-]
This stuff is difficult to talk about because most people are not used to clinical reasoning about health outcomes. There are essentially priorities to balance between the COVID group and the other 8000 dying every day. And between the extra people dying right now and the extra people who will die ten years from now, and so on. There’s no way to just point to some “threshold” where you wouldn’t still have to make triage decisions all the time.
mistrial9 1359 days ago [-]
..request to change word "religious" to non-equivalent "statements without supporting evidence" .. good?
folli 1359 days ago [-]
The paper's point is that part of the population is not immunologically naive to it. Which partially explains the variance in symptoms.
__blockcipher__ 1359 days ago [-]
It’s technically novel but highly structurally and functionally similar to SARS-1. Someone who got SARS-1 17 years ago has t cells that react to SARS-2 today.
Similarly, but less strongly, exposure to other human CoVs produces t cell cross reactivity.
The “suppression/eradication” is just dogma. BTW eradicating SARS-2 is impossible. It’s zoonotic in origin. Viruses with abundant animal reservoirs can never be feasibly eradicated. Please do some reading on this it’s basic stuff.
nradov 1359 days ago [-]
There is no plausible way to eradicate the virus. It is now endemic in the worldwide human population (plus some animal reservoirs). Even a vaccine won't change that reality.
danybittel 1359 days ago [-]
But why are the elderly more susceptible? Shouldn't the probability of exposure by higher, the older you get? Wasn't that the reason the Spanish flu killed more younger people?
nxpnsv 1359 days ago [-]
Are elderly more susceptible to infection or adverse outcome once infected? In the latter case we still can see worse stats for the elderly.
lambdaba 1359 days ago [-]
Age isn't the factor, it's just a proxy for immune system dysfunction brought on by diabetes / metabolic syndrome etc.
jhrmnn 1359 days ago [-]
The response of the immune system to the virus and its mode of operation (deadliness) may be entirely unrelated. The T cells may react to some parts of the virus protein, other parts may be related to its effect in the body once infected.
grumple 1359 days ago [-]
Immunity might only last for a few years. Older people probably get less exposure To recent viruses and have generally weaker bodies.
malwarebytess 1359 days ago [-]
Something on the order of 40% of viruses that cause "colds" are corona viruses.
sroussey 1359 days ago [-]
Around 4 coronaviruses cause colds in humans. Out of hundreds. But they are commonly distributed and cause more than their fair share of infections.
LordHumungous 1359 days ago [-]
How can I get infected with one of those other Coronaviruses?
__blockcipher__ 1359 days ago [-]
Exchange bodily fluids with as many young people as possible. AFAIK there’s no way to be able to get voluntary exposure in a lab. Which is lame, imagine getting a precise dose of cultured $HCOV.
OC43 has like a 9% nursing home fatality rate tho (which is kind of a hint that SARS-2 isn’t too special as far as mortality is concerned)
Anyway if you have kids you have probably already been exposed to one of these CoVs at some point. The TL;DR is the more you do real life stuff the more likely you are to have exposure. Add it to the long list of externalities due to lockdown. Natural spread of pathogens is a good thing and not to be feared.
avancemos 1359 days ago [-]
From the abstract: "We demonstrate a range of pre-existing memory CD4+ T cells that are cross-reactive with comparable affinity to SARS-CoV-2 and the common cold coronaviruses HCoV-OC43, HCoV-229E, HCoV-NL63, or HCoV-HKU1."
1. Populations may naturally have a head start towards herd immunity from COVID.
2. Sweden could be really close in that regard; their current super low daily mortality and declining cases may point towards herd immunity.
tapland 1359 days ago [-]
I wouldn't call it "super low" mortality when the average for the past month since the large drop is still 25x that of Denmark (i.e. nearly our neighbors montly totals per day), when it should be more like 2x based on population sizes (and Denmark being denser populated on top of that).
trianglem 1359 days ago [-]
What are you talking about? Sweden has a much higher death rate when compared to its neighbors.
alkonaut 1359 days ago [-]
The interesting observation is the relation between the highest death rate (100/day) and current very low death rate of zero to a couple per day 2. This is without significant change in policy, mask use etc.
It’s hard to measure behavior but nothing suggests people have less contact now than in March (more contact is more likely, but on the other hand it’s now more contact outdoors compared to spring).
dariosalvi78 1359 days ago [-]
Writing from Sweden: people were scared in March, now they're relaxing. We'll see what happens in autumn when everyone is back to work and spends their time indoor
Lewton 1359 days ago [-]
I think big parts of Sweden might be hitting "herd immunity" relative to the measures that are currently in place.
It doesn't mean that they're hitting herd immunity in an "everything back to normal world". But it's still good news
Have they announced anything about when they're planning to ease restrictions?
alkonaut 1359 days ago [-]
Yes looks like it at least.
There isn’t much talk about easing but I suspect the visitor restrictions on elderly homes might be lifted as soon as possibly since 6 months without being able to visit is a long time. Also the 50 person event restriction is being reviewed. It’s a bit inconsistent to allow 100 people in a restaurant or bus but not 51 people in Sweden’s largest football stadium that seats 50k...
Spectators for kids sportS outdoors also becomes allowed I hope. Having parents watch a children’s game outdoors, for example.
General easing of the last restrictions would be e.g allowing full stadiums for sports and concerts but that is not going to happen this year. The authorities recommend working from home for the rest of the year so that gives some indication about other restrictions. Travel recommendations are easing now but obviously change quickly.
Never mind COVID-19, that country picker that jankily reorders when you select something has to be eradicated.
albroland 1358 days ago [-]
OWID's UI/UX is definitely not my favorite (try to highlight a particular country's line in a graph) but their worldwide data quality appears to be the best right now compared to alternatives.
Lewton 1359 days ago [-]
No? Relative to Denmark and Norway, they’re doing as bad as ever? (X4-x8 amount of daily deaths per capita)
albroland 1358 days ago [-]
Current daily deaths in Sweden are averaging about 4 per day continuing to trend towards 0, vs the 0 or 1 per day in Denmark or Norway. If you're trying to argue that 0.38 per capita vs 0.05 per capita is relevant when the gross numbers are so low I'm not sure what to tell you to convince you otherwise.
I'm not sure how you make a meaningful statistical difference between them at this point when the numbers are approaching rounding errors.
tapland 1357 days ago [-]
You look over a longer period of time. Like 25x Denmark for the past month, where that includes a delay of up to 28 days for a death to be reported, and only a few days delay in Denmark.
raverbashing 1359 days ago [-]
The usual way to assess herd immunity is by antibody testing
I don't think Sweden got to 10% infection in the pop. at the moment (avg. for Spain is 5% and 15% on the heaviest hit cities)
alkonaut 1359 days ago [-]
That was the usual way at least, I doubt that will be seen as the way post Covid. If we learned anything it’s that it doesn’t paint a full picture.
I also doubt Sweden has 10% infection (As measured by serological tests) but most larger cities probably do. Where that puts immunity no one knows. It seems to be enough (for now, with mitigations in place).
anoncake 1359 days ago [-]
The very article contradicts you.
raverbashing 1359 days ago [-]
I see, yes, the t-cell assessments are new but while we don't have accurate values for those countries we have to rely on the antibody testing.
(Not to mention this whole t-cell story is being used by negationists and "skeptics" to deny the actual mortality of the virus)
dariosalvi78 1359 days ago [-]
A Swedish study has found that for X people with confirmed infection that have antibodies, another same amount have t-cells and no antibodies.
1359 days ago [-]
DangerousPie 1359 days ago [-]
What's up with the editorialised title, which clearly overstates the conclusions of the paper?
peter_retief 1359 days ago [-]
Does this imply that the COVID-19 virus will morph into the common cold virus?
Mvandenbergh 1359 days ago [-]
There's some speculation that OC43 was actually responsible for the very bad 1889 "Russian Flu" and that there's nothing particularly special about SARS-CoV-2 except that there's no widespread exposure to it.
vibrio 1359 days ago [-]
No. Mo more than a tiger will morph into a house cat.
RalfWausE 1359 days ago [-]
Well, with a few hundred to thousand generations and a bit selective breeding i see no real problems here... just ask Fido about his wolf-great-great-great-(and so on)-grandfather ;-)
vibrio 1359 days ago [-]
Yes, many things are theoretically possible. In relative terms Coronavirus isnt that mutagenic. Every year for many years millions of people get seasonal coronaviruses there hasn’t been a “morph” (whatever that means). The SARS and SARS/CoV-2 crossovers did come from somewhere and it was bats which are REALLY good at being virus incubators. We are not. I guess in the environment we all are now in I’d prefer a message not be spread of a seasonal cold turning into a deadly respiratory disease based on such an apparently unlikely hypothetical. Or Let’s worry about things like swine and avian flus, which are orders of magnitude better at “morphing” yet much of the population still refuses to vaccinate annually.
vibrio 1359 days ago [-]
Just realized I got the original morph direction wrong. Please pardon.
The "common cold" is a blanket term for several viruses that cause similar symptoms. My understanding is that most are rhinoviruses. A mild influenza virus will also give "cold" symptoms. And, as talked about here, there are a handful of coronaviruses as well.
It currently appears that Covid-19 is more dangerous than other circulating coronaviruses, but it is important to keep in mind that the "common cold" can already kill people in vulnerable groups. It is possible that the biggest issue with Covid-19 is that it is novel. No one has much immunity to it, so it spreads rapidly and causes worse symptoms than it might if we had more latent resistance.
So, once enough people have been exposed to the virus, it might result in it being no worse for the general population than any other bad flu. That doesn't mean that it won't kill people, but it won't spread as easily, and people who do get it might have better immune responses. So, in the long run, without a vaccine, it will probably just fizzle out, eventually. However, that will either take many years (if ever) or a lot of deaths.
armada651 1359 days ago [-]
This would also explain why the anti-body tests have proved so unreliable. A lot of people already have reactive anti-bodies without being exposed.
__blockcipher__ 1359 days ago [-]
Reactive t cells, not antibodies.
blargmaster33 1359 days ago [-]
C19study
TDS is killing people
rotterdamdev 1359 days ago [-]
If vaccines do not give about 100 weeks of immunity, this thing is here to stay. Enjoy your lowered life expectancy.
> Based on these data, it is plausible to hypothesize that pre-existing cross-reactive HCoV CD4+ T cell memory in some donors could be a contributing factor to variations in COVID-19 patient disease outcomes, but this is at present highly speculative
Also I recommend to read this: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/covid-19-...
> we designed a peptide pool encompassing peptides homologous to CD4-R30 epitopes, derived from HCoV-229E, HCoV-NL63, HCoV-OC43, HCoV-HKU1 and several other HCoVs (see Methods), for a total of 129 HCoV homologs (HCoV-R129; table S2). Similarly, we synthesized a pool that encompassed peptides homologous to the SARS-CoV-2 CD4-S31 epitope pool, consisting of potential epitopes derived from other HCoVs, for a total of 124 HCoV homologs (HCoV-S124; table S3).
The "speculation" disclaimer, IMHO, is based on the assumption that the designed peptide pools invoke responses similar to their viral homologs. I have no issue with the "direct evidence" heading as this research makes an important step in demonstrating cross-reactivity.
Teasing out the degree of protection this cross-reactivity provides in real-world populations is a much harder problem.
[1] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/08/04/scie...
Could we just start deliberately spreading these weaker cold viruses then?
(Unfortunately, since common cold research is a lot less big, glamourous and high-profile than Covid-19, I don't think we know a huge amount for sure about the other human coronaviruses - and what we do know isn't exactly front-page headline news.)
edit to remove the phrases: "pandemic" & "new normal"
..and Immune Enhancement Syndrome one of the serious consequences of the SARS1 and MERS vaccines that never made it past their trials.
There are a lot of factors to immunity beyond antibodies. Traditional vaccines are either close viruses in the animal world (horsepox for smallpox) or heat treated inactivated virus (flu). We know they produce anitbodies, but there are hundreds of other parts of our immune system (complement system, inane, etc.) that might interact and form memory as well.
Vaccines come out of bad places; from eras where hundreds if not thousands of people were going blind, dying or getting paralyzed by disease. It was easier to just test things on people back then too, and a lot of them died (Chinese were inoculating people with actual smallpox 300 years before Jenner discovered making a vaccine from Cowpox/horsepox).
In the 1970s, the Swing Flu vaccine was a disaster. Sure millions of people got the vaccine and were fine, but 3,000 people developed Guillain-Barre syndrome. Some still have trouble walking or smiling (see the 60 Minutes documentary from that era)
Vaccines need a lot of testing. I do not understand why we're trusting the man who gave us Windows 95 to lead the Gates/Gavi alliance responsible for giving us a "safe" vaccine in less than a year. That's insane.
On a similar note: when a vaccine gets developed, does it make more sense to vaccinate those age groups (on the grounds that it will protect the most vulnerables) or to vaccinate everybody else (on the grounds that the vaccines may not be 100% safe and thus it may be safer for those age groups to benefit from the herd immunity)?
Let's say you have a 5% chance of dying from COVID-19, a 10% chance of contracting it, but only a 0.05% chance of dying from some harmless coronavirus that would reduce your chance of dying from COVID-19 by half. It would be irrational not to deliberately contract the harmless coronavirus.
The problem is just that we don't know all these variables, especially for a given individual.
Being together with other humans is always a health risk if you want to look at it like that. While it might be incredible stupid to not take the lesser risk, you cannot force people to be rational.
If mild common cold can make you immune to covid19, delibirate infections may be a much more efficient way to achieve herd immunity than a propiatary vaccine.
Of course this is all hand waving, but the point is we shouldn't automatically think that a man made vaccine is a much better solution.
Ah yes, we surely shouldn't automatically about anything. We should use reason and data.
The more money is at stake the greater force is applied. The last few years have proven what a devastating effect it had on our ability to discuss and think reasonably about anything.
Vaccine deployment won't eradicate the virus immediately, so the most at-risk populations will likely need to be personally vaccinated before they can safely stop social distancing.
> Edward Jenner, FRS FRCPE[1] (17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823) was an English physician and scientist who was the pioneer of smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine.[2][3]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Jenner
I'm still a little scared by the Moderna vaccine because the mechanism for RNA vaccines is so new, and this one's being rushed out. Give a choice between that an a month of common colds, I'd take the colds.
I'd say that there's a 70% chance that there's millions of doses available for North America by late January of a >50% efficacy vaccine with a high production rate from that point.
There are so many different vaccine efforts now, and so many of them producing at risk. Some will work. It's just a question of how high the efficacy is and the duration of protection.
> ..and Immune Enhancement Syndrome one of the serious consequences of the SARS1 and MERS vaccines that never made it past their trials.
A lot of us were worried about antibody dependent enhancement. But we've had basically no evidence that this is a significant concern: successful treatment with convalescent plasma, successful challenge tests with vaccines in animal models, successful monoclonal antibody therapies in animal tests, etc, all point the other way.
> Sure millions of people got the vaccine and were fine, but 3,000 people developed Guillain-Barre syndrome.
And this wasn't a good trade, because the vaccine probably saved a lot fewer than 3,000 lives. But at this point, you'd save a whole lot of lives even with a vaccine that bad. (And we're not going quite that quick that time around and we have somewhat better tools to prevent bad outcomes).
> I do not understand why we're trusting the man who gave us Windows 95 to lead the Gates/Gavi alliance responsible for giving us a "safe" vaccine in less than a year.
??? Now you've gone completely off the rails. Gavi's primary role is as a purchaser of vaccines and not in development. The couple dozen vaccine development efforts worldwide are what we can expect to yield a vaccine.
Both Gavi and the Gates Foundation are intended to create "healthy markets" for vaccines. Gates didn't design Windows 95 either; he was a business and marketing guy promoting it. It's not the development that's the issue, it's the fact that these alliances are profit motivated and vaccines have been a loosing bet for years due to the incredibly amount of research funding needed to bring one to market.
Their motives for rushing a vaccine to market right now are not altruistic. They want to prove they can bring vaccines for novel viruses to the market quickly. It could work, but it could also be a disaster. The fact that this is an 'emergency' allows them to avoid a lot of regulations, and even liability if the trials end up making people sick or killing them.
Yeah, good last resort, not first.
Sure, the Oxford vaccine uses an adenovirus that is not present in humans outside Africa, but when they try to make a second vaccine, based on the same adenovirus, people who took the COVID-19 vaccine might not be protected.
So while not tested, mRNA might be a much better bet for the future, because we will be able to develop vaccines much faster and not have to search for a new virus vector each time a new vaccine is developed.
It looks like the side effects from mRNA vaccines are bigger than a typical vaccination. It's starting to look like mRNA vaccines may not be the vaccine you'd want in the long term based on this alone. The question is, do they create high severity side effects that preclude using them in the short term? We're about to learn...
There's a lot of other efforts; adenovirus vectors, attenuated efforts, non-replicating virus efforts. Of course, the adenovirus vectors are of concern because if immunity wears off, you can't necessarily give someone a booster a couple years later.
For everyone else, we should have a vaccine in the next 2-3 months.
AstraZenica also to provide 300 million doses starting in October. https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/05/21/trump-administrati...
The accelerated testing should still make them safe enough to administer to the risk groups where the risk of catching the virus is higher than the risk of the vaccine.
Even before the "at risk" population gets the vaccine, nurses and doctors (who will be treating the at-risk population) need to first be immunized... otherwise the nurses/doctors risk spreading the virus to the at-risk population.
Fauci was very careful to say that this isn't any decision he will make on the matter. But it is extremely likely that nurses / doctors will get the first dose of vaccines.
You don’t put sick 80yo people into early trials, even these accelerated ones.
The problem with the whole anti-anti-vaxxer thing is that any nuance gets lost. I’ve been called an antivaxxer (on the internet) for stating that I don’t want to take a poorly tested vaccine candidate.
Personally I am not afraid of SARS-CoV-2, for someone in my risk category the risk of bad outcomes is vanishingly low. Whereas a rushed out novel vaccine - which by definition cannot be tested for long term effects - is much more risky, personally.
BTW, because both the mortality and unproven (and imo nonexistent) “long term impacts” of COVID-19 are so dramatically overblown, the threshold for “this vaccine is safe” will be very loose IMO. Especially simce you can argue that the societal benefit of the vaccine means it’s worth more risk than the risk of COVID infection.
Fortunately, most of the US is practically begging for a vaccine and will take it as soon as available, so at least we’ll have great data. (Provided negative reactions aren’t suppressed as censored the way legitimate scientific papers have been)
> The problem with the whole anti-anti-vaxxer thing is that any nuance gets lost. I’ve been called an antivaxxer (on the internet) for stating that I don’t want to take a poorly tested vaccine candidate.
> Personally I am not afraid of SARS-CoV-2, for someone in my risk category the risk of bad outcomes is vanishingly low. Whereas a rushed out novel vaccine - which by definition cannot be tested for long term effects - is much more risky, personally.
> BTW, because both the mortality and unproven (and imo nonexistent) “long term impacts” of COVID-19 are so dramatically overblown, the threshold for “this vaccine is safe” will be very loose IMO. Especially simce you can argue that the societal benefit of the vaccine means it’s worth more risk than the risk of COVID infection.
It's statements like this and the one above why you get called an antivaxxer i suspect. Both the mortality rate and the long term impacts of COVID19 are both real and have not been overblown, there is a lot of evidence out there, but you just need to talk to any medical professional who has worked in the hospitals that treated patients to hear how bad this virus is. But it sounds like you have made up your mind already even though you say they are unproven (which they are not) , so you I guess you're making this assessments based on idiology not evidence.
The mortality rate for healthy people is incredibly low.
For example Singapore has had ~54,000 cases with a death count of only 27 since it was mostly young healthy people who got it.
Likewise there has been basically no excess deaths in many European countries for <65 years olds.
This is not at all how the media is treating covid.
Was it very very high in the <65 not obese, not diabetic group?
We know it is dangerous to the old and some cities did a horrendous job of looking after their elderly.
So what? If you're alive now, if you survived the initial wave of the virus, the risk to you, now, of getting the virus is much less than it was back in March.
And if you're trying to figure out if the risk of the vaccine is worth it to you later this year, you have to weigh it against the risk of dying from covid-19 at that point in time, not what the risk of dying from it was back in March.
You are just picking and choosing random data points to make very broad statements.
Check the number of deaths by age group at EuroMOMO: https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
The total number of covid-19 dead that were younger than 45 in the countries that EuroMOMO covers is in the low thousands, while the total number of covid-19 dead is in the low hundreds of thousands. That's two magnitudes lower risk compared to the general lethality.
Every individual has to do their own risk analysis, and see if they belong to any of the risk groups for covid-19, because that changes the individual equation.
Is the data random? Would it really cluster like that across countries?
I don’t think your statement makes a lot of sense.
On the contrary, those talking of "lifelong complications" and "long haulers" are ideologically motivated. I have looked at the actual research, as well as thought deeply from a more theoretical standpoint, and have found the risks to be entirely overblown, particularly with respect to my risk category.
If you're a healthy adult, your risk of dying or being affected by any long-term effects of the virus is about two magnitudes less than the risk for people who are 70+ or have any of the comorbidities.
I am a healthy adult, I am neither obese nor a diabetic, I don't smoke, I don't belong to any of the risk groups. For me, the risk of dying of covid-19 is in the ballpark of 1:100000, and decreasing, because we're getting better and better at treating the disease. If I catch the virus, I am overwhelmingly likely to suffer as much as I would of a common cold.
Those are the numbers that any vaccine has to beat in order for me to consider getting it. Provably beat. I'd rather wait until you and a couple of million people have had the vaccine before even thinking about getting it, thank you very much.
It's strangely difficult to get up-to-date information about hospitalisation rates but early estimates from the Chinese data suggest it's 4.25% for people in their 40s[0].
If you get hospitalised (or even if you don't) you have a significant chance of long-term health problems.
I don't know if that estimate has come down since we've not had to rely on filtered China data but a 1-in-20 chance of hospitalisation seems worrying enough for individuals and a huge problem for society if you let the virus get out of control.
> or being affected by any long-term effects of the virus is about two magnitudes less than the risk for people who are 70+
What data are you basing this on?
[0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
Here's data for Sweden:
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6...
Total number of confirmed cases for people in their 40's: 13687. Of those, 282 ended up in the ICU, and 44 ended up dead.
Since the number of actual cases is higher than the confirmed cases, the 2% hospitalization rate the above numbers result in is an upper bound.
And since the number of actual cases is probably at least a magnitude higher than the confirmed cases, the hospitalization rate for people in their 40's is probably somewhere around 0.2%. That's 1-in-500, not 1-in-20.
Note that these numbers completely ignore risk factors. There's also this page with data about risk factors for patients in Sweden: https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/corona-i-intensivvarden/
Scroll down to "riskgrupper", and you can see that for men between 40 and 59, 22% were diabetic, 31% suffered high blood pressure, and 11% had some kind of chronic lung disease, for example.
So if you don't belong to any of these risk groups, the risk of you suffering long-term health problems from the virus is even lower than 1-in-500.
I can't understand the language (Swedish, presumably), but the ICU percentage is not the hospitalisation rate. Rather more people than need ICU are being hospitalised.
If 2% are needing ICU treatment, 4.6% needing oxygen in hospital sounds plausible if not an underestimate.
> And since the number of actual cases is probably at least a magnitude higher than the confirmed cases
That (probably) isn't true, or at least is not confirmed. I would expect most symptomatic cases to be tested now, and estimates of asymptomatic cases vary but seem to hover around 40%.
> So if you don't belong to any of these risk groups
Being male is also a risk group. If you're a man, most stats look worse compared to women at a ratio of about 2-1.
True, but being in an ICU in Sweden also doesn't mean you're necessarily hooked up to a ventilator. You'll be hooked up to the machine that goes bing, and you'll probably be hooked up to oxygen. It's a pretty iffy proxy measurement for the amount of people who will suffer long-term health effects, but it's probably in the same ballpark. And we haven't quantified the severity of those health effects. For some it means getting winded more easily for up to a year after being sick, and for others it means having to amputate a limb because you developed a blood clot while in a ventilator coma. One of these is not like the other.
>> And since the number of actual cases is probably at least a magnitude higher than the confirmed cases
> That (probably) isn't true, or at least is not confirmed. I would expect most symptomatic cases to be tested now
Ok, doing the numbers for July for Sweden which is when testing finally reached acceptable levels:
10487 new confirmed cases.
62 new ICU patients.
Assuming the age distribution is the same as for the full period, people in their 40's make up 16.7% of the cases and 11.2% of the ICU patients. That's 1751 cases and 7 of the ICU patients, which results in a hospitalization rate of 0.4%.
That's a lot closer to my estimates than yours.
> Being male is also a risk group. If you're a man, most stats look worse compared to women at a ratio of about 2-1.
Fair enough, and it's actually 3-1 for Sweden. Still, that doesn't bring the number anywhere near 1-in-20. 1-in-100, tops.
Do you have data to support these two claims?
Edit: I am not sure why I have been downvoted for requesting support data regarding two quite strong claims. Someone, even if it's not the downvoter, care to explain?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-astrazeneca-results-vacci...
This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk if in ... four years the vaccine is showing side effects
I suppose you will call me an anti-vaxxer but why would a company want to avoid liability if its products were safe? Note that they will gladly take all the profits.
Since I don't have a crystal ball to see 4 years into the future, when this executive predicts the negative side effects will emerge, presumably based on experience with other vaccines, no. By all means, volunteer to be amongst the first to test it, and be sure to let HN know.
Perhaps you could provide some data on how normal it is for companies to disclaim liability before a product is even launched?
The fact is that you don’t have any evidence that the vaccine doesn’t have side effects four years out and that’s precisely the point the OP is trying to make.
No, he's the one making claims without supporting data or evidence.
He said, textually:
(About the virus) "for someone in my risk category the risk of bad outcomes is vanishingly low"
(About the vaccine) "Whereas a rushed out novel vaccine - which by definition cannot be tested for long term effects - is much more risky, personally"
You can tell he's passing opinions as facts the moment he feels guilty and adds "personally".
The fact that we don't know if there could be long term side effects with the vaccine doesn't mean it is not a calculated risk. The fact that we haven't waited for 4 years doesn't mean the scientists behind it do not fully understand how the vaccine works and what are the potential risks. It's not a blind gamble.
That's why I think it is important, if you're in for a serious discussion and not for anti-vaxxer histrionic propaganda, to make sure we support wild claims with strong evidence.
Maybe tons of people if not the majority don’t care or would happily take the vaccine - let them!
But it seems far too short-sighted to discount all the people that wouldn’t want to take an incredibly quickly developed vaccine (with debated and unproven benefit - does it provide immunity? how long?) for a disease that seems mild for most people.
This is much less clear cut than you’re letting on, while being obstinate about data which we don’t have.
You throw IMO around like it matters what your opinion is to the rest of the world. I'll take empirical evidence, known post-virus complications, and scientific research over you opinion any day.
There are all kinds of horror stories one can imagine from a new type of vaccine like the Moderna one, but enough humans won't need it to balance out the risk of those that do.
There's no good answer. We either vaccinate or we let millions of people suffer and die. It's not a good choice...but it's one we have to make.
I'm moderately high risk and if all goes well with the trials and there are no significant mutations that the vaccine can't address, I'll be first in line.
I think in all of this, the number one fear is a mutation like the 1918 flu. It went from killing very young and very old to killing everyone. From a V to a W. Covid-19 is mostly a hook pointing at the very old. Let's hope it stays that way.
Altho if they required testing of the culture to ensure no mutation that would slow things down
If you can let people actually catch the virus, then can't you avoid a lot of the vaccine production by letting people spread it to each other?
Even so, the logistics I think will add another extra year (at least for the "Western" countries, which I'm pretty sure will forget about the "equality for all humans" mantra and will scramble to get first in line). For the roughly 3.4-5 billion people that we need to vaccinate in order to begin to get herd immunity I honestly think we're looking at a 3-5 year timeframe (at least).
This is a naive question, but to my knowledge there has never been a widely successful and safe vaccine developed for a coronavirus, am I wrong? People have been talking vaccine, but I've always thought that coronavirus, i.e. common cold family, has been nearly impossible to nail down with a vaccine.
You seem a lot more confident so I must be in the wrong here.
While the solution has not yet been identified 100%, we should be looking at everything. That is just good problem solving.
I'd expect geography to be a significant factor based on how viruses propagate on Earth
I'm wondering in cities with high volume airports saw it back in Jan/Feb here in the states.
Dunning-Kruger in action.
You're confusing "I'm not hearing about it in the pop media I consume" with "it's not being widely discussed by everyone in the field."
Which is what happens when you try to evaluate a whole swath of experts in a topic you're not an expert in. Dunning-Kruger in action.
A big part of the job of a doctor is to find a way to explain things to their patient in a way that is tailored for them. Being too technical you won't get the point across; being to vague may be interpreted as you're grasping at straws, and being too condescending is more and more problematic in our modern societies with mass education. To a poorly educated person from the early 20 century, it was no big deal to just trust the doctor to do their doctory thing and talk in their doctory way. Them being condescending and confident was in character.
A century later, the society is quite different. Most people received a nominally far better education than in the past, and grew up in a culture where everybody can become whatever they want, after all it's just a matter of educating yourself and hard work.
Understanding is withing reach. "Perhaps we don't need to depend on those condescending twats in their white coats looking down on us!".
At the same time, the vastness of knowledge gathered makes it so hard to actually master it. Being a proper member of the scientific community requires more and more education and team work and institution to coordinate all that.
This provides a barrier to entry to all people who are interested in understanding the whys and the hows.
As mentioned earlier, most people seek answers. For the answers to be trustworthy they either have to come from a trustworthy authority or they have to make sense (or better, a combination of the two).
But trust in scientific authorities has been eroded over time by egregious failings (real or perceived) of white coats acting in bad faith, doing the bids of whoever provides for their salary, be it big tabacco, big pharma, food industries, etc. When that happened it resonated with the good old human fear of the unknown and mysterious and was fertile ground for the Hollywood persona of the white coat of dubious morality or at least gullible nerd.
On the other hand trust in political authority is, well, political, thus fueling the search for alternative explanations when the official ones have politically connotations that go against one's own identity.
It also helps that nowadays circulating information offers far less friction than in the past. You can easily devote that half hour to chime in with your deep insights about topics you ultimately have no clue about, like what I'm doing here right now.
This study provides direct evidence that the “novel factor” is not as important as was previously thought. Maybe no-one has cleared a virus exactly like this one before (we can’t be sure), but it is looking more and more like many people have pre-existing immune responses that can clear this one.
> Suppression/eradication is the only way forward.
You may end up being right, but to me this is sounding less and less like a scientific conclusion, and more and more like a religious creed.
The way to say is ..."the only way we can count on" is eradication. Sure, keep working on the other approaches but relying on them is foolish.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7095063/
As for what that means for eradication:
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_dise...
> The targeted organism must not have a non-human reservoir (or, in the case of animal diseases, the infection reservoir must be an easily identifiable species, as in the case of rinderpest), and/or amplify in the environment. This implies that sufficient information on the life cycle and transmission dynamics is available at the time an eradication initiative is programmed.
^ This is why we can never eradicate it. There's a couple of other requirements. For example we could eventually pass this check:
> An efficient and practical intervention (such as a vaccine or antibiotic) must be available to interrupt transmission of the infective agent.
And eradication is literally impossible. It just shows how little these people know. It’s a zoonotic virus with abundant animal reservoirs, a high reproduction rate and pre-symptomatic spread. Even with a vaccine it fails the zoonotic requirement.
It’s endemic and here to stay. Anyone paying attention has known that from the start. I’ve personally been saying this for months and I’m just a deterministic algorithm operating on fixed-length groups of bits called blocks.
True, another spillover from animal reservoirs is likely, either this virus or a similar one. Early warning with prompt response will be needed to control another outbreak. Immediately shutting down all international air travel would be a first action. Imagine if the next spillover is with a virus that is deadly as SARS-1 but as transmissible as SARS-2.
This isn't quite true, but even if I accept that as true, you haven't addressed the problem that this is a zoonotic virus. There are abundant animal reservoirs that will never go away.
> Imagine if the next spillover is with a virus that is deadly as SARS-1 but as transmissible as SARS-2.
I used to say exactly that, until realizing that a virus as deadly as SARS-1 will never spread as well as SARS-2. Granted, if this hypothetical virus had SARS-1 lethality with SARS-2 incubation period, it would do a lot "better" than SARS-2.
Anyway, having thought deeply about this - and I'm sure you will strongly disagree here - even a SARS-1 danger virus with SARS-2 spread, I would be against (a) obviously eradication since I've already discussed why eradication is impossible, but more importantly: (b) I'm against trying to contain highly infectious respiratory viruses period.
At its heart is the understanding that controlling the virus is the single most important thing right now - that this is a total war. This policy can only work, however, in societies with effective governance and a strong social fabric.
You misspelled “belief”.
Similarly, but less strongly, exposure to other human CoVs produces t cell cross reactivity.
The “suppression/eradication” is just dogma. BTW eradicating SARS-2 is impossible. It’s zoonotic in origin. Viruses with abundant animal reservoirs can never be feasibly eradicated. Please do some reading on this it’s basic stuff.
OC43 has like a 9% nursing home fatality rate tho (which is kind of a hint that SARS-2 isn’t too special as far as mortality is concerned)
Anyway if you have kids you have probably already been exposed to one of these CoVs at some point. The TL;DR is the more you do real life stuff the more likely you are to have exposure. Add it to the long list of externalities due to lockdown. Natural spread of pathogens is a good thing and not to be feared.
1. Populations may naturally have a head start towards herd immunity from COVID. 2. Sweden could be really close in that regard; their current super low daily mortality and declining cases may point towards herd immunity.
It’s hard to measure behavior but nothing suggests people have less contact now than in March (more contact is more likely, but on the other hand it’s now more contact outdoors compared to spring).
It doesn't mean that they're hitting herd immunity in an "everything back to normal world". But it's still good news
Have they announced anything about when they're planning to ease restrictions?
There isn’t much talk about easing but I suspect the visitor restrictions on elderly homes might be lifted as soon as possibly since 6 months without being able to visit is a long time. Also the 50 person event restriction is being reviewed. It’s a bit inconsistent to allow 100 people in a restaurant or bus but not 51 people in Sweden’s largest football stadium that seats 50k...
Spectators for kids sportS outdoors also becomes allowed I hope. Having parents watch a children’s game outdoors, for example.
General easing of the last restrictions would be e.g allowing full stadiums for sports and concerts but that is not going to happen this year. The authorities recommend working from home for the rest of the year so that gives some indication about other restrictions. Travel recommendations are easing now but obviously change quickly.
they are presently doing about as well as all their immediate neighbors for per-capita deaths: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS...
Reference: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS... (graph basically looks identical between per capita or raw, pick your poison).
I'm not sure how you make a meaningful statistical difference between them at this point when the numbers are approaching rounding errors.
I don't think Sweden got to 10% infection in the pop. at the moment (avg. for Spain is 5% and 15% on the heaviest hit cities)
I also doubt Sweden has 10% infection (As measured by serological tests) but most larger cities probably do. Where that puts immunity no one knows. It seems to be enough (for now, with mitigations in place).
(Not to mention this whole t-cell story is being used by negationists and "skeptics" to deny the actual mortality of the virus)
The "common cold" is a blanket term for several viruses that cause similar symptoms. My understanding is that most are rhinoviruses. A mild influenza virus will also give "cold" symptoms. And, as talked about here, there are a handful of coronaviruses as well.
It currently appears that Covid-19 is more dangerous than other circulating coronaviruses, but it is important to keep in mind that the "common cold" can already kill people in vulnerable groups. It is possible that the biggest issue with Covid-19 is that it is novel. No one has much immunity to it, so it spreads rapidly and causes worse symptoms than it might if we had more latent resistance.
So, once enough people have been exposed to the virus, it might result in it being no worse for the general population than any other bad flu. That doesn't mean that it won't kill people, but it won't spread as easily, and people who do get it might have better immune responses. So, in the long run, without a vaccine, it will probably just fizzle out, eventually. However, that will either take many years (if ever) or a lot of deaths.
TDS is killing people