Posted on 04/27/2020 6:20:58 PM PDT by RomanSoldier19
Sweden's ambassador to the U.S. believes the country's controversial strategy of imposing only limited restrictions — and not locking down the country — is bearing success, with the capital, Stockholm, on course to reach herd immunity in the next few weeks.
"About 30% of people in Stockholm have reached a level of immunity," Karin Ulrika Olofsdotter told NPR. "We could reach herd immunity in the capital as early as next month."
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Are these the same scientists who predicted millions dead in the US alone?
I understand the doubtful ness in your tone. That being said herd immunity is inversely related to R0 and that has been known for 100 years with no dispute. Disputing that seems silly. The discussion should be more around what R0 is for CV - that is the unknown.
“I never would have dreamed so many Americans on the right were cowards“
Our forefathers fought for our independence with a smallpox epidemic in progress. Now look at us.......people should value their freedom much more than they do.
The amount of blood that has been spillled, to ensure our freedom, is immense. We say “but if it saves just one life.....”. Freedom costs much much more than covid could ever take.
Stop the madness. We are Americans, and a free people. Americans do not wither in the face of a threat......at least that is what history has shown, until now.
Great post.
my mother said the greatest generation won those wars and beat the depressor because everybody was poor that she knew and had it tough growing up. They were used to hard times so those times were just a little harder than usual
there’s a scene from Rocky IV, yes a silly but fun movie, where he wants to fight this monster of a guy who killed his friend in the ring.
and adrian says “for that you’re willing to risk everything?”
he looks around at the furniture and the house and all of the fancy things in it and says “Adrian this ain’t everything”
He was right.
Dang right
Wait a minute...if having the COVID virus does NOT prevent you from getting it a second time, how are the Swedes figuring on “herd immunity”? Those who got it could get it again.
And I didn’t know all that until recently. I’m going to be 52 in May so maybe the past few years.
I wanted money and a beautiful car and this and that. And it’s not wrong to want those things.
But it ain’t everything. If you’re not free it ain’t worth anything at all.
It’s been subject to a lot of revision, as has everything else.
Well, they are blue eyed and blonde...
OK, to be clear, your source for the theory that the CCP Virus is as infectious as the measles, is you?
And you base this on your own hunch that Sweden is lying about the results of their serology testing, or that they somehow don’t have people with the math skills who can extrapolate to the general population? I only took one year of Statistics (we called it sadistics) after 2nd year calculus, and it pretty much broke my brain so I’m not pretending to be able to do that math myself. Asking on the chance that you can, and have.
Let me be very clear: I do not believe that Covid-19 is as infectious as measles. Its biology does not support that; it spreads through the respiratory route, meaning through direct contact with infected mucous or with droplets expelled through coughs and sneezes. Measles owes its high infectivity to the fact that it transmits through an aerosol route and virus can remain airborne for up to 2 hours.
The issue is that there are models (based on the GIGO principle) that are coming up with astronomical numbers of asymptomatic infections that neither fit the biology of the mode of transmission nor the mathematics of the spread of disease. Or the serological testing which is also coming up with an inflated number that cannot be reconciled with either biology or mathematics. I know from experience that antibodies vary in specificity, so my main question is, are those positive results truly Covid-19, or are they ordinary coronavirus infections--since this is still cold season, and it is far more likely that people would contract an ordinary cold than they would Covid-19. The only way those inflated numbers could be accurate would be if the infectivity of Covid-19 is greater than that of measles.
The spread of any disease follows a basic growth curve, which is a sigmoidal curve described by an exponential function. I'm going to have to play around with some numbers to determine what the R0 would have to be for the inflated models to be accurate. At an R0 of 2.5 (which I have been using for my calculations), the growth of active cases has matched the calculated values until April 1, when growth of cases dropped below the mathematical predictions.
Looking forward to your results. Like I said, I cried uncle after the first year of statistics in undergraduate school.
[Every one of those “estimates” that millions of people have already had Covid-19 can only be true if Covid-19 is several times more contagious than measles. The evidence is that Covid-19 has an R0 of around 2-4, more in line with other cold viruses and not even close to measles. So the claim that Sweden is close to achieving herd immunity is not true. ]
I agree that the Fearpers are irritating and incredibly frustrating.
But, if you want to see over the top panic and doom, just browse Facebook. It’s sad how so many so-called Americans can be manipulated by fear so easily.
If antibodies that you make don’t work in the future, a vaccine never will either.
Exactly.
Yes. That is quite true.
I probably haven't had any more training in statistics than you. However, I did share an office with a statistician and assisted her a lot with the statistical analyses. That is, I would explain to her the medical/biological significance of the statistical tests she was running, and this helped her to determine the best kind of test to apply to the data. In turn, she would explain what, exactly, the statistics were showing.
Anyway, I am still doing the background research to guide my new number crunching. The best data I have seen alluded to would be the Diamond Princess study, but I still need more details on it.
Herd immunity is a function of how contagious the virus is, or the R0 number. It is not a fixed number.
For diphtheria, which has an R0 of 6 or 7, herd immunity is reached when 83-86% of the population is immune. For measles, in which the R0 is between 12 and 18, herd immunity is reached when 92-95% of the population is immune.
In the case of Covid-19, if it is really as contagious as some of these recent reports claim, then its R0 value is higher than that of measles, and greater than 95% population immunity would be needed to contain it. In other words, just about everyone has to catch it before herd immunity would kick in.
Oh, I'm a scientist. I have worked in this field for large chunks of my career.
Most estimate R0 to be similar to flu...have there been studies trying to estimate R0?
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