Gaining natural immunity from a disease this fatal, especially to large swaths of the population is 1.) unethical 2.) too disruptive (if you completely lack ethics).
Unnatural immunity is probably going to take too long for most folks (at best 12 months for a vaccine?!), but you still don't get it do you? That's all nice and well to say but so so utterly misses the point, unless you have in mind to kill off a gigantic percentage of the population because everything completely collapses. EVERYTHING.
Please take a piece of tape across your sink drain and poke a needle sized hole through it. Now start running your faucet at the tiniest of trickle, doubling the flow rate every 20 seconds to model exponential growth. For the first couple minutes the sink will be able to drain. And then it won't, and then it will build up until the tape fails. Now the water is cases of COVID-19, and the new drain is the capability of our medical system to treat patients through the course of the disease. When the tape fails, all the water, all the people currently sick, are dying at a vastly higher rate, say 10-50x worse, and the faucet is going now at fire hydrant levels.
I don't think anyone, even SK or Singapore, will be able to maintain a police of complete quarantine, so it's all a matter of how slowly can the disease spread and whether we can keep the daily cases below a level that our entire infrastructure can handle, with the most obvious weak point being hospital beds with oxygen delivery.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/
Will you please provide evidence of these statements? Cite examples? And your qualifications?
Glad Jonas Salk did not believe in letting natural immunity do the job. I was around and kicking back when that really mattered.
Polio bad, bad, bad... Just a reminder for those with no sense of...
BTY my uncle did work with Dr. Salk. Even a brief film about it.
Film reveals Pittsburgh's polio stories | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Polio bad, bad, bad... Just a reminder for those with no sense of...
BTY my uncle did work with Dr. Salk. Even a brief film about it.
Film reveals Pittsburgh's polio stories | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Last edited:
As much as I want to believe that's an effective solution (SK/Singapore's responses), it's only sustainable for so long. There's an unhappy medium to strike, somewhere.
FWIW, I work in a different field of biotechnology (cancer diagnostics), and our lab, among others, are essentially shutting down our research and discussing how we can join the effort to support other labs whom have technical expertise in the field of virology (being bench monkeys with our well-equipped labs) and/or help staff our clinical laboratories to help run screening tests.
Last edited:
Unfortunately, those who have rigid viewpoints despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary are never convinced, in my experience. The cogent arguments and responses expressed here may hopefully resonate with those who still have an open mind.
“One’s opinion should only be as strong as one’s knowledge on the matter.”
― Eric Hirzel
“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”
― Benjamin Franklin
“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.”
― Isaac Asimov
“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”
― Thomas Paine, The American Crisis
“One’s opinion should only be as strong as one’s knowledge on the matter.”
― Eric Hirzel
“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”
― Benjamin Franklin
“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.”
― Isaac Asimov
“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”
― Thomas Paine, The American Crisis
For sure. I was essentially posting because of my own longheld perceptions of a communist government wrt China. Especially compared to my own governments initial lackadaisical response. (Dutch CDC giving cruise ship passengers from an infected cruise ship a handshake and a coffee...before they sent these people untested on their merry way).
Essentially underestimating China's government and overestimating our Dutch government.
Ah! Okay, Bas, and agree entirely -- my response was probably more a reaction to a few of my friends/family who thought, "if only the rest of the world followed the same track as SK/Singapore/Taiwan, we'd have licked the disease already."
And as a point of complete sincerity, since a lot of us are liable to get sick over the coming months, I am personally wishing you all the best. We are a giant global family.
And as a point of complete sincerity, since a lot of us are liable to get sick over the coming months, I am personally wishing you all the best. We are a giant global family.
@KatieandDad : Base honeman answered why your wrong, but you have a Boris's train late :
please read this which is an answer you missed certainly about immunity. The problem first is containment to avoid the most possible mix up and mutations :The Biology and Immunology Corner
PHYSICAL distanciation works and helps at many level as you can read in this link. Just hope for you no having beloved people infected because you spray such ideas !
Last edited:
Graph theory suggests COVID-19 might be a ‘small world’ after all | ZDNet
Anyone have thoughts on this? Seems to me they are completely ignoring the fact that draconian measures were taken to stop the spread....
Anyone have thoughts on this? Seems to me they are completely ignoring the fact that draconian measures were taken to stop the spread....
did he say after they close their frontiers : YouTube
Seems we are not "naturally" immune cause the virus is new (even if close of virus family known by our bodies), but the body is strong enough to fight against this virus is what eventually he said?
We know for some weeks now than 88% of the infected people will recover without further complications ! Problems is the 12% left, some will die due to age, pathology, pneumonia, etc ! Lethal rate is between 1.8 to 2.2 % , epidemiology model is corrected everyday ! I don't know about the flu but I'm sure it's less than this number ???
I believe if the guy is a nobel, the newspapper eventually made a typo when rewritting his talk cause naturally can be understood in different way ?????
Seems we are not "naturally" immune cause the virus is new (even if close of virus family known by our bodies), but the body is strong enough to fight against this virus is what eventually he said?
We know for some weeks now than 88% of the infected people will recover without further complications ! Problems is the 12% left, some will die due to age, pathology, pneumonia, etc ! Lethal rate is between 1.8 to 2.2 % , epidemiology model is corrected everyday ! I don't know about the flu but I'm sure it's less than this number ???
I believe if the guy is a nobel, the newspapper eventually made a typo when rewritting his talk cause naturally can be understood in different way ?????
Last edited:
I don't think they're too contradictory of one another, to be honest. Exponential and power law curves are still population-based approximations for what is an ensemble of local events.
We do interact with a small group of people daily, at least most of us. Depending on the infection mechanism and population dynamics (in one's house vs on a crowded subway), we'll walk up or down the "random interconnection" to "nearest neighbor" axis. The draconian measures push the population towards the nearest of nearest neighbor end of the axis.
Restaurants and other places that could produce "crowd" are closed from "the beginning".
In these days restaurants are donating their stocks to charity organizations.
Lots of fish are unsold, because of the closed restaurants, so also fishing along the coasts is going to close.
The only shops that are open are the food ( grocery, bread and those for the cannibal people ) ones, the tobacco and the beauty shop for self-hygiene. Some artisans are allowed to stay in their shop. No hair salons, no bicycle shops.
Regarding Levitt's statements regarding slowing rate, he is mostly referring to China, and also states:
"You don't hug every person you meet on the street now, and you'll avoid meeting face to face with someone that has a cold, like we did. The more you adhere, the more you can keep infection in check. So, under these circumstances, a carrier will only infect 1.5 (vs. previous number of 2.2) people every three days and the rate will keep going down".
Context: more people have COVID-19, but each "only" might infect 1.5 people every 3 days. Individual infection rate may go down, but total numbers increase.
Levitt is also self-isolating, so he understands the need for the disruption of transmission:
North York MP self-isolating after possible coronavirus exposure | Toronto.com
See also:
Lower death rate estimates for coronavirus provide glimmer of hope - STAT
scroll down for the bar graph:
Coronavirus Cases: Statistics and Charts - Worldometer
Coronavirus death rate: The latest estimate, explained - Vox
"You don't hug every person you meet on the street now, and you'll avoid meeting face to face with someone that has a cold, like we did. The more you adhere, the more you can keep infection in check. So, under these circumstances, a carrier will only infect 1.5 (vs. previous number of 2.2) people every three days and the rate will keep going down".
Context: more people have COVID-19, but each "only" might infect 1.5 people every 3 days. Individual infection rate may go down, but total numbers increase.
Levitt is also self-isolating, so he understands the need for the disruption of transmission:
North York MP self-isolating after possible coronavirus exposure | Toronto.com
See also:
Lower death rate estimates for coronavirus provide glimmer of hope - STAT
scroll down for the bar graph:
Coronavirus Cases: Statistics and Charts - Worldometer
Coronavirus death rate: The latest estimate, explained - Vox
Last edited:
The Levitt and STAT articles do add some nuance. Good to read. Bottom line still is to flatten the curve. Italy is proof of that.
Which certainly implies that the number of infected is not 31.000 as it stands at the moment but rather 200.000.
And I wanted to add... it is downright scary.
Last edited:
- Status
- Not open for further replies.