The Unique US Failure to Control the Virus

Yes, that's a very interesting observation. I've been thinking of the political divide and of the people who still think that this is just a plot to bring Trump down (incredible; they don't seem to understand what the pan in pandemic stands for, as all 215 countries in the world are facing this, and only one of them has a Donald J. Trump), but you are right, it's not just that. It's people who are scared of the abrupt change in our life and society and economy, and they keep yelling "BS, this is not happening, or shouldn't be happening, it is nothing, it's a hoax, it's a little flu, other causes of death are bigger and we don't do anything about them, all the science is fake, the scientists don't know what they say anyway, masks don't work and are for sheep and slaves, the cases are over-counted, I want my freedoms."

It's pathetically, actually, because periodically we see people among these deniers, who then fall seriously ill themselves and issue regretful declarations from their death beds, or lose loved ones, and suddently they go "oh, it isn't a hoax after all; this is serious."

But I'm disappointed. We are an advanced country. We used to be the leaders of the world in so many ways... how come we got to this abject failure, and this level of ignorance and denial??

With a more rational response we could have been at a much better place, by now.

Remember the first projections of the University of Washington? They said that *provided that we continued to adopt epidemiology control measures* we were supposed to stay at 61,000 deaths and our last dead person was supposed to have died on August 6. Three days ago, on August 6, I remembered that prediction, and was sad, thinking, oh well, we are now in an even worse situation than at the time this prediction was issued... August 6 is upon us, and we are in a deep hole, and we brought it upon ourselves.

 

I’m sorry about your brother. Is he recovering? My paternal grandmother and my wife’s maternal grandmother both had multiple strokes over multi year periods. In my family stroke and cancer are neck and neck for which is the most diabolical.

I don’t need another gig anyway. I don’t know how much time being a lab rat eats up but with something like that it would be quite a bit.

All I really know is back in 2018 they were still having good luck with non humans with mRNA but poor immune response with humans. Apparently they figured it out. I doubt any company is excited about divulging too much proprietary information right now.

Ok. Beats anaphylaxis hands down. I looked up the rate of anaphylaxis from vaccination in humans and one in a million is what I found. We see much higher than that in critters, but when I’ve seen it, it’s always multiple vaccines simultaneously along with stress of branding and castration. Hopefully that won’t be part of C19 vaccination!

We have quite a bit of data now showing antibody levels can become undetectable in a significant percentage of recovered individuals quite quickly. I think we can use such tests as a guide, but certainly not a way to determine IFR without accounting for undetectable antibody levels in some fashion. If we try and extrapolate T cell immunity data we risk overestimating.

I just now found the post from yesterday you refer to and I agree with the biased samples and problems with false positives. But undetectable antibodies in recovered individuals must be accounted for as well. Also, I’m assuming the CDC is accounting for all the PCR tested individuals that return false negatives. Last I checked PCR tests before symptoms appear are still returning upwards of 50% false negatives.

I read a bit on that study and came away thinking the observed myocarditis was definitely persisting longer than in influenza on average, but I’m not convinced it’s all going to be permanent significant damage. But that’s not my wheelhouse. I think when I was looking for other information on viral myocarditis I ran across a study claiming 90,000 deaths per year may be caused by influenza myocarditis induced cardiovascular events. I suppose in that light, we ought not be surprised to see problems in this area with SARS-CoV-2. That would lend credence to your gut feeling.

I’ll just reiterate we should expect positive PCR test result rates to drop all else being equal if we increase testing on pre symptomatic individuals. Because PCR isn’t catching more than 35-50% of these preseymptomatics, we are going to see quite a change in percent positives than when we only tested symptomatic individuals, especially severe symptomatic ones as in the very early days when test were less available.

Also on the cruise ship, IFR could have been affected by initial dose if that theory is true. A ship would be the perfect place for high initial viral doses. What is your take on that theory that initial dose impacts severity? I know there is historical precedent in other viral disease and there is some evidence now for it being the case with C19 but I’m not seeing evidence sufficient to get me completely on board.

Outside of the off chance antibody dependent enhancement develops or there is a problem with a carrier or adjuvant there should be no problems. By design mRNA vaccines should be much safer than killed or attenuated type vaccines.

To jump back to GBS, I don’t know if it would ease anybody’s mind or not on vaccine safety, but it might cause people to stop and reconsider the statistics if they are told they are more likely to get GBS from “the runs” than a vaccine.

I couldn’t get your first link to load for me but enjoyed the second one. I didn’t pay any attention to “SARS episode one” so I’m pretty ignorant of research on that one.

When information on SARS-CoV-2 T cell cross reactivity with previous coronavirus started coming out I spent quite a while thinking about if that could explain children being relatively unaffected by C19. Perhaps the severe cases in adults were caused by ADE from cross reactivity (original antigenic sin). When you start running the numbers though it’s clear the only way to get to percentages of the population having cross reactive immunity as high as we are seeing is to attribute a good chunk to common cold coronaviruses.

Since children have 5-6 cold infections a year, even if only 20% of these colds are caused by coronaviruses at any given time there are huge numbers of children not only with T cell immunity but still having very high titers of actual antibodies from a recent infection. If ADE was in play we should see violent reactions especially in kids having had recent coronavirus colds.

Of course there could be other things in play, such as healthier macrophages in kids compensating for the “original sin”. Long story short though I just don’t see that we have any more hard evidence ADE is going to be a problem with a vaccine than we do a vaccine will cause a horn to grow out of our foreheads. But as you say, trials should show us some ADE or horns if they are real possibilities.

Yes that’s one of my pet peeves. I think we can be realistic without having to get pessimistic. Hiding the cell mediated information from the public was terrible and I don’t like to think about why it was. If you dig, the researchers did warn against using the IgG data to make claims about no immunity. But the media never reported that. I still don’t see much talk about cell mediated immunity in the media except maybe in relation to vaccines. Never in the context of natural infection. Of course I don’t see a lot of media coverage so maybe I’m missing something.

Yes competition has its advantages and it’s pitfalls.

 

That’s very profound. I hope people think it over and take actions to make things easier on themselves next time something bad like this happens.

 

Not much to comment there as I agree with most of what you said above, but just a few comments on a question you asked; yes, I do believe that higher viral load will be more likely to cause more severe disease. One interesting thing about children and COVID-19, it seems like children have lower levels of ACE2 in their respiratory tract and as you know the virus needs ACE2 to infect cells, so this might explain their milder cases and their being less of a vector for transmission. But the common cold idea is interesting too. Sure, the Diamond Princess cohort may have had a higher IFR due to the confined conditions and older age, but then, I'm not advocating the idea of taking that 1.4% as the real rate, as I've seen some immunologists do. From the beginning, when I saw that, I thought "the real rate is probably lower than that." But not THAT much lower like someone here claimed (a ridiculous 0.03% in that person's opinion). You have a good point about underestimation of the size of the infected cohort due to IgG fading away fast. Thanks for asking for my brother. He is physically well now but with aphasia, having phonoaudiology therapy to relearn how to speak. But it's very sad.

 

I never thought many Americans were ever rational to begin with! No damned basic common sense on most fronts.

 

Mankind has always been decimated by pandemics. That you think they magically no longer happen is indicative of real denial, I have to say.

And yes, scientific truths are arrived at via numbers & repetition. In this case, people who don't want to wear masks or give up their comforts, are not the numbers and repetitions anyone should be paying attention to. With respect, that would be like letting children decide what to eat and when to go to bed.

 

You didn't respond to what I wrote. Americans are NOT like the Japanese. They cannot be trusted to do the right thing (obviously).

 

Not to mention increasing evidence of longer term cognitive issues.

 

None in the community. There hasn't been for 100 days (+).

 

I suspect it's a combination of "American Exceptionalism", generations of fostered non-compliance - which even in an emergency when all need to pull together, is still somehow viewed as a win, lives of very precarious and complex dependences, and that inability to delay gratification.

 

You mean like how the Japanese decided not to do lockdown when virtually every other place in the world did and yet they did so much better.
Also saying that any people can’t be trusted to do the right thing is the authoritarian battle cry.

 

That is my hope, also. We are actively encouraging our kids to purchase property (land, specifically) asap, as a result of this. While all three are being educated in fields of high demand (ie, plenty of work) and will inherit land from us, there are no guarantees in life. More land will keep them and theirs alive, if nothing else.

 

There is no central scientific truth about Covid. Japanese scientists came up with findings that shaped government health responses which were different from that of Belgium which were different from that of the Netherlands which were different from that of the US which were different than New Zealand. The practical difference is that Japan, the EU and the US have significant world economies and New Zealand does not.

 

My goodness can you imagine how up in arms the dems would've been if Trump would have ordered that. I mean seriously, can't happen in this country.

 

It is a matter of leadership to organize the population. A strong and pragmatic and compassionate leadership, provides trust.
Avery good example is Germany, which is one of the most important economies in the world. They shut down hard and when the data was right had a very controlled re-opening. Now they are working on control and isolate outbreaks.
Economically, they are recovering, already.

 

It's what I meant by brain damage.

 

Yes. In this country, what a party does even if it makes sense, the other party immediately tries to sabotage.

 

Yes, because they can be trusted to do the right thing. How many ways does it have to be said?

Or will you keep pretending that Americans are just like the Japanese?

 

Oops .. sorry, missed it!

 

Unfortunately that's probably true. Very sad.

 

The virus is the same EVERYWHERE. It has 'scientific truth' in abundance.

What various humans do in response to it, is utterly irrelevant. The virus doesn't give a damn.

 

Yes and Spain and Italy and especially Belgium shut down even harder without success.
Here in the Netherlands, the lockdowns were relatively minor and retail stayed open the entire time. The Netherlands was continually pestered by Italy to lock down much harder but Dutch scientists created intelligent lockdown always mindful of controlled exposure (knowing that exposure is key to getting past this as is true of all contagious diseases) strictly avoiding measures to eliminate exposure altogether. It was successful. Compare it to it to neighboring Belgium.
It astounds me that people are so terrified of this virus that kills so proportionately few (even padding in “presumed“ cases and deaths). Apparently the many many more deaths from so many other diseases and conditions don’t matter. But if house arrest and mandatory masking make people feel better, then I guess it is in government’s interest to oblige it’s own with legislation as elections are always on the horizon. Placebos also have a storied place in medicine as well.

 

Maybe people like to think for themselves, and make the choice whether or not they want to wear the mask, not you. The people who lack intelligence are those who blindly do what their governors tell them. The people with intelligence are willing to stand up for what they believe, not cower.

 

One device is an actual safety device, and that is a seatbelt. Not a mask. So it would make sense to have seatbelt laws.

 

Did you just say a mask is not a safety device?