Quote:
Originally Posted by GoodLife
Lets start with your opening statement.
The problem with this is that there is no reason to believe that herd immunity to COVID-19 can be achieved, at all. Some people have recovered and become infected again
That's old news, and proven false by recent studies. They have found that the people who tested "positive" again just had fragments of dead virus in their system, which fooled the test. Here's just one of many.
Scientists from the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied 285 Covid-19 survivors who had tested positive for the coronavirus after their illness had apparently resolved, as indicated by a previous negative test result. The so-called re-positive patients weren’t found to have spread any lingering infection, and virus samples collected from them couldn’t be grown in culture, indicating the patients were shedding non-infectious or dead virus particles.
All the latest studies show that almost everyone who recovers from covid 19 develops antibodies to the disease. Antibodies to SARS were found to be good for 2 years. (one reason it never came back) Then you have the t-cell immunes, who fight off the virus with their immune system. You have to test specifically for T-cell immunity, as it does not show up in an antibody test.
New York and Florida are very similar in size, population, and population density. New York has one huge city, while Florida has 3 medium size cities that add up to one NYC.
The purpose in comparing the two in deaths and cases is not about saying who did a better job. When you look at the comparison in new cases, and how New York had a huge amount that peaked and then has fallen to very low numbers, without a spike in new cases, you wonder why this is. The only thing I can conclude from that data is that NY has achieved a high enough level of immunity that the virus has run out of easy targets. Florida has not attained this level yet, so we got a spike after protests and reopening.
NYC was hit first, seeded heavily from European travelers. By the time they locked down it was too far gone. They had s few hundred confirmed cases and probably several thousand asymptomatics and very mild cases that spread the virus all over the city. Basically, they ran a herd immunity test case without knowing it.
|
This article from MIT is only a few days old and supports what I stated about the possibility that herd immunity might not be achievable.
From the article:
How long does immunity to covid-19 last after infection? We really have no idea yet. There have been sporadic reports of some people in the world coming down with covid-19 twice, and so far it’s unclear why. It’s well documented that other coronavirus infections confer only temporary immunity, sometimes lasting no more than a few months. Covid-19 may follow the same pattern, but it’s too early to tell.
Our biggest questions yet about immunity to covid-19 | MIT Technology Review