I had 2 titles for this thread, decided just to use them both
Oh Happy Day is a great song that was used in a great movie about the world's greatest racing horse winning the triple crown - Secretariat. Big Red still has the fastest times ever recorded for all three races, records still standing after 47 years.
Movie clip:
Secretariat - "O Happy Day " - YouTube
Original by Edwin Hawkins Singers:
NEW * Oh Happy Day Edwin Hawkins Singers {Stereo} - YouTube
When I heard this rendition in the movie, I imagined the lead singer as a male. Turns out it is a female lead singer with slightly deep voice. Doesn't matter, it's a great song.
Secretariat has 1000s of descendants which include two Triple Crown winners, Justify in 2015 and American Pharoah in 2018.
Here's one of the latest, a cute little filly named HOPE. She looks a lot like her great great great great Grandpa.
So do we have some HOPE in this pandemic? Looks like we do. Brace yourself, there's an "I told you so coming"
Back in the first week of July, when cases were surging here in Florida and panic was being spread, I posted two threads about herd immunity threshold possibly being lower than you might think. Based on work by Nobel Laureate Michael Levitt of Stanford and new research studies showing that large percentages of populations have T cell immunity from the virus, I calculated that new cases in Florida would peak and then start going down before the end of July. I calculated that when Florida reached about 350,000 confirmed positive tests that this would happen. Here are the two threads:
Don't Worry Be Happy Stay Safe
We may reach herd immunity sooner than you think
So, when did Florida's new case rate start to trend downward? July 18
When did Florida reach total of 350,000 confirmed positive tests? July 19
Not too shabby don't you think?
Maybe I am just lucky. Or maybe more people should pay attention. I have gotten a lot of pushback on this low herd immunity threshold idea (not my idea, see Levitt's work) I get called a desperate downplayer, deaths will be on my hands, a paid troll, and get wishes that I enjoy my ventilator all because I tend to pop the panic bubble with science.
Michael Levitt and his team at Stanford started analyzing covid 19 data from the start, including China and the cruise ship Diamond Princess. The Diamond Princess was the perfect floating laboratory for a pandemic. Super high density, restaurants, gyms, bars, pools, stores, common areas etc. When epidemiologists tested everyone on the boat, they found that 20% were infected, about half of these were asymptomatic. They were looking at disease vectors, and since only 20% were infected, they concluded that the ships shared HVAC system did not spread the disease through fine aerosols.
Levitt saw something different. In country after country, regardless of mitigation efforts, when cases reached from 15% to 25% of population (adding in untested but assumed asymptomatics) that the disease seemed to burn out. Cases and deaths went up quickly to a peak and then began to fall in what is called a gompertz curve. Levitt saw that this disease was not exponential, did not infect everyone even in non lockdown countries, and seemed to hit a wall. We can see that this "wall" is holding in many places like Sweden, New York, Italy where there has been no spike of new cases. Many places that were not hard hit at first, like Japan, Phillipines, Australia etc are now seeing a surge of new cases,
Several newer studies on T cells are confirming that there is evidence of that wall existing in 50% to 80% of the population. T cells have memory from previous exposure to common cold coronaviruses and can produce antibodies that work against covid 19. T cell memory of SARS, a previous coronavirus, are still valid after 17 years, so this is a long lasting effect. This is also good news for certain types of vaccines.
T cells found in COVID-19 patients ‘bode well’ for long-term immunity | Science | AAAS
Some of the pushback I have seen on a low herd immunity thresholds are:
1. I don't want to be part of the herd. You don't need to be, when cases reach certain percentage level they start to fall. You don't have to be part of that percentage
2. I heard about people being re-infected. These were faulty tests, they saw dead virus fragments and registered as positive. The CDC currently states that there are no known re-infection cases.
3. Not everybody tested has antibodies. Again, some faulty tests looking for wrong antibodies or not calibrated correctly. Read this article from NY Times (link goes to Times of India because NYT is under subscription firewall, same exact article)
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...w/77194515.cms
4. Antibodies don't last. This is true, one study I saw said they were still robust after 3 months but doesn't matter, your T cells are like elephants and never forget, they can produce antibodies at will.
5. What if coronavirus mutates? Thankfully, coronaviruses don't mutate a lot, at least in ways that matter for immunity responses. The flu mutates a lot and new strains develop, which is why we need new vaccines every year. T cell immunity for SARS is still good after 17 years.
So it's good news that cases are trending down now, deaths will probably start dropping in a few weeks because of lag factor. Florida Emergency room visits for CLI (covid like illness) are also trending downward so that's good news as well.
Does this means you should let down your guard? Nope, I plan to continue my modified Howard Hughes lifestyle till end of September. The herd immunity threshold is geographic, the threshold appears to have been reached in Florida hotspot counties but The Villages has had low cases and deaths so far, so keep being safe.
The $64,000 question. Is it going to come back? Hard to say at this point. In places where herd immunity threshold has been reached, it will be hard for virus to gain a foothold, not enough available hosts to create a large outbreak. Today we are seeing surges of cases in places like Japan and Phillippines that previously thought they had it beat. Phillippines has had a very strict lockdown for months and is most mask compliant country in the world.
As a twitter pal says "virus is gonna virus" no matter what we do.
Thank God or Nature for T cells. Some studies I have read theorize that some of the coronaviruses that cause the common cold were actually pandemics 100s of years ago when we didn't know anything about viruses or vaccines. Our immune systems and T cells adapted and beat them down so that nowadays they are just a nuisance called common colds.