Latest Coronavirus - Yikes

#90,452
#90,452
evillawyer said:
So in other words you got nothing.

Like I said, I'm just looking for reputable scientists, based on evidence, saying that the precipitous drop we've seen in the US in 2021 is primarily explained by the fact that a significantly large portion of the US population has immunity (either by vaccine or prior infection or otherwise). No one is arguing that some portion of the population having some form of immunity is not A FACTOR, but I'm looking for someone claiming the drop is primarily explained by such immunity.

So please provide.
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Primarily explained now is your standard - yesterday you claimed immunity has no explanatory power. Even the article you posted today discusses it's explanatory power as do countless other articles posted here.

You claim behavior changes primarily explain the drop but have provided no scientists making that exact claim - just that it could be one of the factors.
 
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#90,453
#90,453
evillawyer said:
The seroprevalence data does not support his extrapolation about the number of people who have been infected.
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as you noted yourself the antibody testing has not been done with random sampling and is a poor tool for extrapolation so drawing conclusions to the larger population (which you are doing) is problematic.
 
#90,454
#90,454
volinbham said:
as you noted yourself the antibody testing has not been done with random sampling and is a poor tool for extrapolation so drawing conclusions to the larger population (which you are doing) is problematic.
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But the fact that there's a self-selection bias for seroprevalence testing would INFLATE the number of those that appear to have the antibodies. Even with those inflated numbers, it doesn't indicate that over 100 million have immunity through a prior infection.
 
#90,455
#90,455
volinbham said:
Primarily explained now is your standard - yesterday you claimed immunity has no explanatory power. Even the article you posted today discusses it's explanatory power as do countless other articles posted here.

You claim behavior changes primarily explain the drop but have provided no scientists making that exact claim - just that it could be one of the factors.
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If your claim is that by "herd immunity" we really don't mean herd immunity in any robust sense and we really don't mean that immunity acquired by prior infection is really what's doing the primary work driving the lower numbers, you're not making a very interesting argument. I've accepted from the get-go that prior infections was A FACTOR. I'm challenging whether it is the primary factor.
 
#90,456
#90,456
evillawyer said:
But the fact that there's a self-selection bias for seroprevalence testing would INFLATE the number of those that appear to have the antibodies. Even with those inflated numbers, it doesn't indicate that over 100 million have immunity through a prior infection.
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not true - the bias could go in either direction and the false negatives are the more common type error with the tests
 
#90,457
#90,457
evillawyer said:
If your claim is that by "herd immunity" we really don't mean herd immunity in any robust sense and we really don't mean that immunity acquired by prior infection is really what's doing the primary work driving the lower numbers, you're not making a very interesting argument. I've accepted from the get-go that prior infections was A FACTOR. I'm challenging whether it is the primary factor.
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if you actually considered anything I've posted rather than simply look for things that support your argument you'd see I've argued the primary (not the only) explanatory factor in the drop in cases is the total acquired immunity to date. That is not true herd immunity (which I've never claimed) but the practical effects are considerably lower new cases than we would other wise see. In otherwords, the drop is being driven by the immunity within the population. We have not achieved herd immunity where spread would be near zero but we are significantly along the path so that spread is much more difficult than it was in the Summer/Fall regardless of other factors involved.

The behavioral explanation doesn't have more explanatory power given that driving people inside increases close proximity thus should increase spread. Mask wearing behavior is virtually unchanged. While some geographic areas are locked down, others have been opening.

Using the CDC #s of undetected cases shows roughly double your lowball estimate of 100 million. Even if we are at a compromise of 50% of the population with some immunity that drives the infection rate down considerably.
 
#90,458
#90,458
volinbham said:
not true - the bias could go in either direction and the false negatives are the more common type error with the tests
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How many people who have never felt sick are walking into a doctor's office during a pandemic and asking for a blood test for which they will need to in all likelihood pay for out of their pocket? Come on man!

Almost everyone I know who's gotten one got one because they were curious if that head cold, or cough, or whatever from April 2020 was COVID.
 
#90,459
#90,459
evillawyer said:
How many people who have never felt sick are walking into a doctor's office during a pandemic and asking for a blood test for which they will need to in all likelihood pay for out of their pocket? Come on man!

Almost everyone I know who's gotten one got one because they were curious if that head cold, or cough, or whatever from April 2020 was COVID.
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because of the high # of asymptomatic cases I can see many people seeking the test - I would. It would be great to know if you already had it.

NYC has made it widely availlable which is why you see so many tests done there. Free - walk in testing all over NYC. That is rare and makes comparing rates across the country impossible since the sampling is not controlled. Another reason using NYC as your data point is problematic

So trying to calculate population immunity based on antibody tests is problematic and that's before you add the false negative issue.

Antibody Testing - Coronavirus
 
#90,460
#90,460
Nobody knows for sure how many people are immune so we'll never settle on an exact number but the evidence appears to point towards quite a few being immune because other explanations just don't hold up. I'll also add another factor that hasn't been discussed recently here:

Don't think (like we were told initially) that no one had immunity prior to Jan 2020 last year. That was bunk. There is evidence that quite a few had immunity either through their blood type or through a previous coronavirus infection, particularly "snotty nosed" little kids.
With all the asymptomatic cases, there had to be a lot of natural immunity. Had to
 
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#90,462
#90,462
Sea Ray said:
Nobody knows for sure how many people are immune so we'll never settle on an exact number but the evidence appears to point towards quite a few being immune because other explanations just don't hold up. I'll also add another factor that hasn't been discussed recently here:

Don't think (like we were told initially) that no one had immunity prior to Jan 2020 last year. That was bunk. There is evidence that quite a few had immunity either through their blood type or through a previous coronavirus infection, particularly "snotty nosed" little kids.
With all the asymptomatic cases, there had to be a lot of natural immunity. Had to
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Or it hit well before January 2020. Think about it- if China is telling us their first detected case was in Wuhan in November 2019, and knowing that Wuhan is a global manufacturing hub with lots of business travel in and out, and if this virus is as infectious as we keep being told, there is no way the thing wasn't in the US and around the world within the next month. I would guess an absolute load of people had this thing well before we were told it 'arrived', symptoms or not.
 
#90,463
#90,463
Sea Ray said:
Nobody knows for sure how many people are immune so we'll never settle on an exact number but the evidence appears to point towards quite a few being immune because other explanations just don't hold up. I'll also add another factor that hasn't been discussed recently here:

Don't think (like we were told initially) that no one had immunity prior to Jan 2020 last year. That was bunk. There is evidence that quite a few had immunity either through their blood type or through a previous coronavirus infection, particularly "snotty nosed" little kids.
With all the asymptomatic cases, there had to be a lot of natural immunity. Had to
Click to expand...

My SWAG is we're about 50% - still significant enough to put us on a downward path.

The other factor is we are probably getting really close to herd immunity in some populations (eg. 20-30 year olds who have been out socializing the whole time) and far in other (people who've isolated themselves). As a result even as we get really close or at HI we'll still see some spikes as the isolated re-enter society (presuming they haven't been vaccinated).

Throughout this discussion we see shifting units of analysis from boroughs in a large city to the entire globe.
 
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#90,464
#90,464
Chattanooga region still seeing effects of COVID-19 surge with high death totals in February
Here's some more stupidity afoot.
Hamilton County continues to test fewer people than at any point in the past seven months, when such data became available. The county is averaging fewer than 700 new tests a day in the past week.
Around 11.5% of new tests are coming back positive in the county, a rate higher than the 5% threshold advised by health experts that would signify community control of the virus.
Due to its high test positivity rate and sustained average of 23 daily cases per 100,000 residents in the past two weeks, The New York Times rates Hamilton County as "an extremely high risk level" for COVID-19 transmission.
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So it doesn't matter that our hospitalizations are the lowest they've been in months, death rate has fallen off a cliff, and we have tens of thousands of residents vaccinated. Because people aren't getting tested as much that is pushing up the positivity rate so that means this is still a death trap. This is idiocy. The reason you get tested is because you think you're sick or have been exposed. Less people are getting tested because less people are getting sick or being exposed. In an ideal world the positivity rate would be close to 100% and the number of tests would be very low. But if that happened the NYT would say our county is basically Chernobyl. The flip side of this is all of us that aren't sick could pile into the testing centers, waste time and resources to drive down an arbitrary number, and declare ourselves free of Covid.
 
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#90,465
#90,465
Testing has been overstated through all this. You really don't want everybody getting tested. The tests have a 1% false positive rate which is great. But if you are testing so much you have only 5% positive, you are looking at a high false positive rate. Testing should have always been limited to symptomatic or those with close, sustained contact.
 
#90,466
#90,466
Weezy said:
Testing has been overstated through all this. You really don't want everybody getting tested. The tests have a 1% false positive rate which is great. But if you are testing so much you have only 5% positive, you are looking at a high false positive rate. Testing should have always been limited to symptomatic or those with close, sustained contact.
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Honestly I would like to see a large group of people flood the testing centers with negative cases and drive this number under 1% just to see what the coronabros would say. If Hamilton county tripled the number of people getting tested and those people knew they weren't infected you could drive the number well under what is "safe". It's stupid. It wouldn't prove anything you didn't already know.
 
#90,467
#90,467
DancingOutlaw said:
Chattanooga region still seeing effects of COVID-19 surge with high death totals in February
Here's some more stupidity afoot.

So it doesn't matter that our hospitalizations are the lowest they've been in months, death rate has fallen off a cliff, and we have tens of thousands of residents vaccinated. Because people aren't getting tested as much that is pushing up the positivity rate so that means this is still a death trap. This is idiocy. The reason you get tested is because you think you're sick or have been exposed. Less people are getting tested because less people are getting sick or being exposed. In an ideal world the positivity rate would be close to 100% and the number of tests would be very low. But if that happened the NYT would say our county is basically Chernobyl. The flip side of this is all of us that aren't sick could pile into the testing centers, waste time and resources to drive down an arbitrary number, and declare ourselves free of Covid.
Click to expand...

It does point to the problem of comparing across geographic areas and/or different time periods using differing testing regimes.

If you have a target infection rate as shown by testing then you need a consistent testing regime (eg. random sample with roughly same sample size each time) to rule out changes in testing regime as reasons for changes in findings.
 
#90,468
#90,468
DancingOutlaw said:
Chattanooga region still seeing effects of COVID-19 surge with high death totals in February
Here's some more stupidity afoot.

So it doesn't matter that our hospitalizations are the lowest they've been in months, death rate has fallen off a cliff, and we have tens of thousands of residents vaccinated. Because people aren't getting tested as much that is pushing up the positivity rate so that means this is still a death trap. This is idiocy. The reason you get tested is because you think you're sick or have been exposed. Less people are getting tested because less people are getting sick or being exposed. In an ideal world the positivity rate would be close to 100% and the number of tests would be very low. But if that happened the NYT would say our county is basically Chernobyl. The flip side of this is all of us that aren't sick could pile into the testing centers, waste time and resources to drive down an arbitrary number, and declare ourselves free of Covid.
Click to expand...
It's probably a lot of the same 700 people being tested. Many of who are positive and looking for the negatives they need to reenter society.
 
#90,469
#90,469
volinbham said:
It does point to the problem of comparing across geographic areas and/or different time periods using differing testing regimes.

If you have a target infection rate as shown by testing then you need a consistent testing regime (eg. random sample with roughly same sample size each time) to rule out changes in testing regime as reasons for changes in findings.
Click to expand...
The testing is a terrible measurement because it's not randomized or involuntary. If you were randomly sampling the county and getting an 11% hit rate that would be something. But you have testing for people who either think they're sick, have been exposed, or have to do it for work. And from that group 88% show nothing. We have something like 1k active cases in the county right now with a population around 370k. An 11% positive rate is useless. There aren't 40k people sick right now, and we know that because there are only 19 people from our county in the hospital. But 19 people is close to the ~2% of active cases we would expect to see hospitalized. It's just whack a mole at this point, they will jump from number to number as long as they can to tell use we're all dead and need to stay safe. It's starting to remind me of The Village.
 
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#90,470
#90,470
DancingOutlaw said:
The testing is a terrible measurement because it's not randomized or involuntary. If you were randomly sampling the county and getting an 11% hit rate that would be something. But you have testing for people who either think they're sick, have been exposed, or have to do it for work. And from that group 88% show nothing. We have something like 1k active cases in the county right now with a population around 370k. An 11% positive rate is useless. There aren't 40k people sick right now, and we know that because there are only 19 people from our county in the hospital. But 19 people is close to the ~2% of active cases we would expect to see hospitalized. It's just whack a mole at this point, they will jump from number to number as long as they can to tell use we're all dead and need to stay safe. It's starting to remind me of The Village.
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Yep. If the 11% is presumably new cases then it takes less than 10 of these weeks like this and 100% of the population has it.
 
#90,471
#90,471
evillawyer said:
If he wants to argue herd immunity, he needs to explain outer Queens and Brooklyn, which continue to get beat like a Butch Jones-led team, even though they've been smacked throughout the pandemic. Those neighborhoods, if any, should be showing signs of herd immunity, and they haven't yet.
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Maybe it’s because they locked down. Ever think of that?
 
#90,474
#90,474
LouderVol said:
So many of us have been saying the medicine, which doesnt even work, is worse than the disease.
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And like I've said all along, wait til we start seeing studies on delayed treatments for things as a result of this...I would bet the fatalities and damage from that alone will absolutely dwarf deaths from 'the virus'.
 
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