Herd immunity by April?

Florida has reached more than 50% of B.1.1.7 among new cases, but is NOT seeing a surge in overall number of cases. Much the opposite, the numbers keep dropping. Factors include hotter/wetter weather (both decrease transmission), natural immunity, and vaccinations. It is estimated that either through natural infection or vaccination or both, 40% of Floridians are now immune to the ancestral strain of the SARS-CoV-2, and the B.1.1.7 although more infectious and more lethal, is fully susceptible to antibodies produced by previous disease or vaccination. It is looking like in the fight between vaccines and variants, we're winning and we may NOT have a fourth wave! Great news! Still worthy of being vigilant because the other two variants going around, B.1.351 and especially P.1, are less susceptible to the ancestral and vaccine antibodies, but it is indeed looking good, given that Florida is the state with the most B.1.1.7 so if it isn't causing a surge there, maybe it won't cause one, anywhere.

 

Back in late September 2020, Senator/Dr. Rand Paul believed New Yorkers have developed enough community immunity to beat the pandemic.

Well, according to the following dates/figures, HE WAS WRONG/FOOLISH!

OCT 1ST, 2020

NY's cumulative Covid19 cases; 494,785
Daily cases 7 day moving average; 1,090
NY's number of Covid19 deaths; 33,266
NY's Active number Covid19 cases; 65,935
Daily deaths 7 day moving average; 10


MAR 11th, 2021

NY's cumulative Covid19 cases; 1,759,610
Daily cases 7 day moving average; 7,190
NY's number of Covid19 deaths; 48,950
NY's Active number of Covid19 cases; 852,433
Daily deaths 7 day moving average; 91

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/new-york/

 

In other words, much like with every other virus that has hit the planet.

Immunity is built and vaccines address some strains, but not all.

 

Quote: Herd immunity was here months ago in certain locations

Do you like to hear yourself talk?

There are how many locations in the U.S, how many cities, towns, villages, hamlets, households?

In my location/5 sqare miles, there are approx. 30 inhabitants, thus, if 18/60% were infected with the virus, did my location achieved herd immunity?

IF YES, then I'm quite certain that since the beginning of the pademic, at least one location in the U.S. has achieved herd immunity.

 

By April?????

 

Trumpism put a bullet to the head of herd immunity.

 

Oh boy, this post and this thread haven't aged well, have them? Didn't I tell you that what the "good doctor" was saying was bogus? But you didn't believe me because you thought he was a "recognized expert." So much for that, huh? Like I said, the end of the pandemic has been predicted over and over by politicians and "experts" alike... and the virus keeps throwing us curve balls. I told you, let's wait and see. Indeed, we waited, and we saw; we're in the middle of another surge brought about by a variant, exactly like I told you.

This is when you say "sorry CenterField that I doubted you; you were absolutely right."

You're welcome.

 

You were 200% right!

Best answer from the natural herd immunity believers; Some locations have achieved herd immunity.

Well, of course! There are how many locations in the U.S.?

 

Well he got us out of Afghanistan didn't he?

 

Not to forget, with the Delta's propensity to re-infect, I doubt that there is ANY location in the US that has achieved natural herd immunity.

 

Nothing bogus the vaccines work agains the variants.

 

Really? Your (and your "good doctor"'s) assertion was that herd immunity would have happened by April. We're in August. Question: has herd immunity happened? Yes or no?

Why do people here have so much trouble acknowledging it when they are wrong? Unreal...

 

For heard immunity you have to download the audio version of the vaccine.

 

Herd immunity by April relied upon two things. Our not having new and much more virulent strains mutate into existence and MUCH more importantly PEOPLE BEING WILLING TO BE VACCINATED. That literally thousands of people would be inexplicably suicidal is not something I think any rational person could predict nor figure out how to rationally deal with.

 

LOL, and yes, but people need to download it using the 5G network. The unfortunate side effect is that this will allow George Soros to activate the microchip Bill Gates placed inside the vaccine. Once the chip is activated, people will then be turned into liberal transgenders. There is one way to avoid it, though, and it's better than wearing a tinfoil hat. People need to mask up; this will prevent George Soros from using the facial recognition software he uploaded to the Israeli satellites, which is how he knows how to activate the specific microchips assigned to each person.

So, proponents of herd immunity, start by masking up! That's the way to defeat all those libruls.

 

Oh well, I did predict it at the time, didn't I? And I'm a quite rational person. I've been saying over and over for longer than one year that herd immunity would be defeated by the refusal of significant chunks of the population to get vaccinated, and by the fact that the Third World people who do want the vaccine can't get it, which would result in new and worse variants that would then come back to bite that same population of vaccine decliners here. When the first epidemiologists optimistically pointed to the herd immunity goal, I said "long shot, we are unlikely to achieve the rates of vaccination needed for it."

Like I said, the Johns Hopkins "expert" who isn't much of one regarding this particular opinion of his (I debunked everything he said on this - not that he can't be competent in other issues; just this time he made a huge mistake) was extremely misinformed in his Ivory Tower. He quoted specifically the case of Manaus, Brazil, as a great example of herd immunity... ignoring how they were already being decimated by the P.1 (now called Gamma) variant even before he committed this blunder - and this was something I was already mentioning here even before Makary made his prediction, complete with links to epidemiology papers published by those who looked into the Manaus situation. It's quite mind-boggling that Makary was oblivious to that.

No, herd immunity by April was already looking more likely than not as not possible and this was already clear when he made his prediction. The variants of concern had already popped up. Delta was first identified on October 5th, 2020, or actually earlier (10/5/2020 was the date when its genome was first uploaded to GISAID; which logically means that it was circulating already at least since August 2020 - one freaking year ago).

The "good doctor" was just hopelessly unaware of the real issues. Frankly, I trust much better my own expertise. This may be arrogant to say, but I'm rarely wrong about this, which is not surprising given that this is what I've been doing for a living for the last 41 years.

And by the way the medical school I work for is just as prestigious as Johns Hopkins. The OP's mistake was that he thought that a named source - Dr. Makary from Johns Hopkins - would be NECESSARILY more correct than an anonymous source - someone who calls himself CenterField in an Internet political forum.

Well, not necessarily so, because in my non-online life I *do* possess the credentials and the expertise... which I fully realize people here don't need to accept at face value given that I can't prove it - or I should say, I can, as I could easily link to my faculty page on my medical school's website, but I am not foolish enough to do it. So I can but I won't. Defeating the anonymous nature of this site would completely prevent my continuous participation here, and would expose me to all sorts of problems such as threats or fake negative profile reviews and even fake Medical Board complaints from "enemies" here (I can think of a couple here who seem to hate my guts, given how many time I've debunked their ridiculous claims), all of which I've actually seen happening to less prudent colleagues over the years in various forums.

So of course I'm not an idiot to disclose here my real name and real credentials... but believe me, I know better than Dr. Makary from Johns Hopkins.

So the issue is, can expertise from an anonymous Internet user be trusted above the alleged expertise of named sources?

99.9%, probably not as the Internet is full of armchair experts. But the 0.1% where it can, do exist. Over my 6,000 plus posts here on the topics of virology, immunology, and epidemiology associated with the SARS-CoV-2, anybody willing to pay attention is likely to correctly conclude that the level of expertise I display is incompatible with what lay people can obtain from online sources. These days Wikipedia has a lot, but the problem with a lay person trying to fake some expertise from reading Wikipedia or WebMD is that inevitably the person will misfire given that lay people can read stuff but often won't get all the fine points right, and will get lost in the midst of the relative order of magnitude of the various pieces of information.

So a lay person can hear about and read about CRISP-Cas9 for example, but won't most of the time even know exactly why some of these letters are capitalized and some aren't... a specific example I've actually used on this forum to point to how someone else claiming expertise on this was not a real expert (capitalized it wrong)... LOL, much less, will be able to understand the info in context (thus the ridiculous conspiracy theories that the vaccines are gene therapy and change the human DNA).

The sheer fact that one can't usually find me in error in any of these details, should be enough of a hint of real expertise. Not that I'm infallible... I've made mistakes and even, other members here have pointed them out to me, but one, it's rare, and two, those capable of pointing to my mistakes are almost always those who ALSO posses scientific expertise (yes, there are a few of us here who do).

 

By the way, vaccines "working" against variants, even when they do, doesn't necessarily make of the situation an example of herd immunity. If a vaccine avoids hospitalizations and death (which is good enough for the public health purpose of decreasing the tragedy associated with this pandemic) so one can rightfully say that the vaccine is "working", but if the vaccine doesn't prevent infections and the passing of the virus onto others included the vaccinated, then that doesn't fall into the definition of herd immunity.

Do you want a clear example? We have no situation of herd immunity to the influenza virus whatsoever (nobody in his/her right mind would suppose the presence of herd immunity against the influenza virus), however the flu shot does significantly prevent hospitalization and death therefore it can be said to "work." Recipients of the flu shot often still catch and transmit the flu but have themselves a milder version of the illness. So the vaccine works... but it doesn't foster herd immunity.

 

Has nothing to do with the variant. The vaccines protects against the variants. We don't have herd immunity because Biden failed to get enough people vaccinated, we're getting there, I didn't set a date for it.

 

You're just plain wrong. Even if we vaccinated 100% of people, an utterly impossible number, we would still not have herd immunity since the new variants are able to reinfect people and infect the vaccinated. Why is it so hard for you to understand this?

Herd immunity is when the virus has nowhere to go, due to naturally-acquired immunity + vaccination-acquired immunity. If despite vaccination and the natural disease, these variants can still infect people, then there is no herd immunity.

And it's rich that you blame Biden when it's mostly the Trump followers who don't want to get vaccinated.

It's not a Biden distribution problem. There's plenty of vaccine everywhere. Walk into any Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, Ingles, Publix, etc., and you can have a vaccine with not even the need for an appointment. So distribution was fine. The feds purchasing the vaccines was fine. So no Biden's fault. It's an acceptance problem, and it doesn't come mostly from Biden supporters. Duh!

Look, you just say "the vaccines protect against the variants" completely ignoring the data, right? Do you have any expertise in virology, immunology, and epidemiology? Nope.

Yeah, they "work" against the variants by avoiding hospitalization and death but they don't prevent 100% of infections and infectiousness.

Did you actually read post #217?

Tell me, is there herd immunity against the influenza virus? Yes or no? Hint: No.
Does the flu vaccine work against the influenza virus in its different strains? Hint: Yes (although just like for the SARS-CoV-2, imperfectly, and preventing hospitalization and death rather than infection).

Do you understand the difference, now?

Let me guess: you don't. Why am I not surprised?

 

No, no I don't. The advantage of anonymity isn't just that you won't be harassed, It's that we're all equal here. What you say stands or falls on its own merits here. I have as much inherent clout as you, which is to say, none.

And I can ask the question which you are avoiding with all this malarkey, WHY are people avoiding a safe, free and life-saving vaccine protecting them from a deadly disease? It seems utterly insane to me.

 

The vaccines work against the varients, Herd immunity is not 100% and that a virus no longer exist. Vaccines are not some magic invisible shield, so impermeable body membrane they boost your own bodies ability to fight a virus once it does enter your body so you are either asymptomatic or have a very mild case as your body fights it off. It remains that almost ALL those in the hospitals were not vaccinated. And it was Biden who set his own goals and failed to meet them. And it is not just Trump followers in fact one study I say last week showed the those with phd's are one of the top groups not getting vaccinated


https://www.outkick.com/both-the-mo...ucated-are-least-likely-to-get-covid-vaccine/



Hmm..........which voters are more likely at each end of that chart?

But so what? Biden knew there were Trump supporters out there, but HE set the goal and HE is in charge.

 

Do you actually think YOU can teach ME how vaccines work, and the difference between infection and disease? LOL.
Anyway, you don't really understand the concept of herd immunity.
You can prevent 100% of *disease* and still not have herd immunity.
Look, you have shown that you're incapable of comprehending this simple concept, so I won't insist. You do you and you keep believing in whatever misinformed ideas you have of herd immunity. I can't send you epidemiology training so my hope that you'll understand is very small at this point therefore I'll stop trying to teach you the right way to see this.

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So, 23.9% of PhDs are vaccine-hesitant and you assume they are Biden voters, huh? What about the other 76.1% of PhDs???
Do you think that all doctoral level people support Biden?
For your information, just look at another category of doctoral degree holders, medical doctors: most are conservative.

You are showing stats that don't depict the whole picture, in order to twist reality to your views and goals.
But just as much as you show this misleading stat that makes you conclude that less than one fourth of PhDs can't have a sizable number of Trump supporters, and you say "Hmm.. which voters are more likely at each end of the chart?", you should instead look at a survey that ACTUALLY looks at vaccine attitude by political affiliation, and then you will see with NO POSSIBLE DOUBT that GOP voters represent a MUCH bigger chunk of those who don't want the vaccine, than Democratic Party voters.

For example, read this:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/05/partisan-divide-vaccinations-491947

Or this:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/17/us/vaccine-hesitancy-politics.html

Which has the interesting title: Least Vaccinated US Counties Have Something In Common: Trump Voters.

Since you had trouble understanding my textual but simple statements on herd immunity, maybe you can better relate to this next article, which has some neat colorful bars in red and blue; maybe EVEN you will be able to understand:

https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/the-red-blue-divide-in-covid-19-vaccination-rates-is-growing/

Now what, big guy?

 

Just giving you some quick facts and that it is a county that vote Trump proves NOTHING.

And yes I believe based on college surveys and other that most phd's vote Democrat


And know don't know that most doctors are conservatives.

And the fact remains BIDEN IS PRESIDENT and HE set his OWN goal and failed. It's HIS job to get people vaccinated, he asked for it he won it.

And your ad homs refute nothing so try to be a little more civil.

 

Herd immunity is here, just like the flu. People get sick, and then they get better. So many frightened people rushing off to have their nasal cavities probed for a test that is being abused and generating mass amounts of misleading data. All for a virus with a 99% survival rate.

Yes Virginia, the world has gone mad.