Can't get away from herd immunity?

amother

Beige

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 4:09 am

Teomima wrote:

It isn't possible. There are so many people that have to be out and about for that chain too happen. Let's say food. It's not just the delivery person. It's the employee who packs the order. The other person who stocks the shelves. The warehouse employee that removes it from the truck. The truck driver. The farmer. The food manufacturer. Etc etc.

What you describe above is what Israel did. We didn't leave the house for two months (other than dh, an essential worker). We got everything delivered. It was left by the door. Doing this saved countless lives, but it did not, and could not, eradicate the virus entirely.

Some of us did it. Some of us didn't. That's the problem.

People were still ordering and receiving toys. That's not essential. Restaurants were delivering. That's not essential, either. There were stores - not grocery stores - open even when they were supposed to be closed. Remember when they talked about Pikud Ha'oref handing out food packages? That's what real lockdown looks like. Literally police on the streets, arresting and fining anyone who steps outside their home without proper permission. In most areas of Israel, that's not what happened.

WitchKitty

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 4:56 am

Firstly,this Worldometer link explains the fatality rate nicely.

Second, enough was said here about flattening the curve, about making sure the numbers don't go to high at once so the hospitals can deal with it, etc.

I want to ask you one thing. (And I've asked this in the last thread where you mentioned the same herd immunity idea. Never received an answer|): WHY are you trying to make me sick?
I'll tell you the truth. I am NOT interested in lying in bed for a week or two. I am not interested in coughing, and aching, and fever, and loss of taste and smell. Or more. I am just not interested in getting sick.

I have a hyperactive brother with Down syndrome whose adrenal gland is problematic. He will die if he gets COVID19. Now, you're telling me to be sick for a month, so that next time I see him (when I stop shedding, whenever that happens), I won't need to worry about infecting him.
Well, why don't I just not see him for a month, without being sick?? Which is what I'm doing? That way I'm not worried about infecting him. And since I'm SDing, I'm not worried about infecting myself, either.
(And, something I just realized- if you are planning on infecting the world, what will happen to my brother during this time? Should we lock him in a room until the whole family gets over it?)

I hear that the numbers in America are down. I'm very happy for you. I'm also sad for you and about half my American relatives, who were in bed this whole time, while I was enjoying Pesach.

Aylat

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 7:25 am

ora_43 wrote:

Agree that 99.9% is completely inaccurate, but OTOH it's also inaccurate to compare known cases to known deaths, since there are so many unknown cases and unknown deaths.

I think the closest we can get to knowing the mortality rate is to look at countries with fairly thorough virus tracking, and see what the mortality looks like there.

Eg Israel (1.65%), Norway (2.79%), or South Korea (2.36%).

Even that only gives a partial picture, since a. these countries presumably also have missed cases, b. populations vary, and the countries with high testing rates tend to - not coincidentally - also have populations that are above-average in terms of general health.

If you compare the 'excess mortality' in NYC this year to the estimated number of cases based on antibody testing (over 2 million), the mortality rate looks more like 1.2%.

I would guess that ultimately the best estimates are going to put mortality at somewhere in the 1%-2% range. (Which is still quite high compared to other widespread contagious illnesses.)

True.

amother

Gray

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 8:44 am

CiCi wrote:

Yes, all whom I've heard talking about this virus, including Fauci, said their will be more waves of the virus coming again. And scientists say once an virus comes into existence it continues to exist. We may get efficient vaccines and medication to treat it eventually, but the virus itself will not dissapear.

https://www.washingtonpost.com.....emic/

You've overlooked a key word - they use the word "may". The virus "may"...... and not the virus "will".

Because right now the scientific world is just not sure. Some viruses stick around in waves and some just mutate away and disappear. Why that is so, science can't precisely explain. But because of that, they all want to err on the side of lives and be prepared if the virus 'may' end up sticking around.

To reiterate my previous point - Science takes time, that's an unfortunate limitation of our current scientific methods. So until then, all the laymen self-professed experts are just spouting their own beliefs, based on cherry-picked information. We all need to have a bit of more patience, and wait till science catches up. That doesn't mean the lockdown needs to continue in this manner, it just means we still need to keep some SD restrictions in place and tolerate some inconveniences for the next few months.

Teomima

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 9:45 am

amother [ Beige ] wrote:

You're right, not everyone did. But nonetheless even if everyone were perfect, and only essentials services were provided/delivered, there's still hundreds, if not thousands, of people involved in each chain of the process. It's very unrealistic to think a total shutdown could put an end to the virus. I think everyone needs to accept that it is here, and here to stay, and the best we can do is manage cases as they come. The initial shutdown was like breakers at the shore, there to slow down and ease the aggressive waves. But we're still dealing with a dangerous undertow. The next few days will be very telling in Israel, as we see the number of cases rise. With any luck we won't see as significant of an increase in the numbers regarding those in critical condition, on life support, or deaths.

CiCi

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 10:07 am

WitchKitty wrote:

I'm not trying to make anyone sick!!! I do remember telling you that! All I'm saying is that I cannot see how the virus won't spread unless the country is in complete lockdown forever which will not happen. It's not what I want! I'm just an extremely practical person (and this seems to rub people the wrong way)

I knew before getting coronavirus that I will get it. I simply understand that there's no way out. I got it and had it for so long time, so at a certain point I did get nervous about having it, but I knew there's no way out unless I shut my family in my house forever which was not going to happen. Nor did I want to lock myself and my family in forever.

Talking about the immunocompromised, all I can tell you is that I'm from the high risk group and I was sick for weeks with the symptoms, but not to the point that I had to go to the hospital b"H, and I tested positive for antibodies. My mother with cancer was 100% exposed to the virus. She did not get the symptoms b"H and tested negative. Then there where healthy, young people who passed away. It does not mean that if someone is exposed to the virus or if someone catches it they will get the symptoms or that immunocompromised people die.

I look at coronavirus as all other viruses. They are always around us and there's nothing we can do to prevent them from being around us. Yes, the fatality rate and rate of transfer is comparatively high with corona because it's the first time we are exposed to a virus the body has no immunity at all. However, the fatality rate is not as high as everyone makes it out to be because not the entire population got tested and proper care was not given to patients. Unlike others here who protested what I said, I know for a fact that many people who have no family when they are so weak that they need to get to the hospital can fall into an extremely deep depression, their minds shut down, particularly in older people, and that can hasten death. People died from starvation and neglect. That is a fact. Many people in the political field in the US today, especially in the liberal leaning states, and many in the medical field, especially in the management, do not care about human life and their needs. The hospitals were not prepared. That's why so many people died. In Israel the situation is completely different. Politicians, and certainly all in the medical field care very much about every patient's needs. Under such care the death rate will be much lower.

The percentage of Israelis who already had the virus is much higher than previously thought. It does not mean that the scenerios that played itself out in the US or Italy will be the same in Israel. There are many different factors in play, some of which I spoke about above.
https://www.docwirenews.com/ho.....more/

CiCi

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 10:21 am

amother [ Gray ] wrote:

It's not merely inconveniences. Life revolves around availability of essentials like grocery shopping, financial income, etc so long-term lockdown is absolutely impossible and will never happen.

Last edited by CiCi on Tue, Jun 02 2020, 11:52 am; edited 3 times in total

amother

Beige

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 10:26 am

Teomima wrote:

Okay, but look where we got after about a month of the lockdown that we did do - we had maybe 10 new cases a day.

If we'd made it tighter we probably could've shortened that month to just three weeks.

If we'd made it longer we almost certainly could've gotten our numbers down to five or less new infections per day, within another week or two.

But we didn't, we reopened when many thought it was still a bit too early, and this is the result. Fortunately it's probably not an ason, but only time will tell.

ora_43

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 10:53 am

CiCi wrote:

But again, the goal is not to completely stop the virus from spreading. It's to keep the spread under control, and keep as many people as possible healthy for as long as possible.

Quote:

I look at coronavirus as all other viruses. They are always around us and there's nothing we can do to prevent them from being around us.

Do you feel this way about ebola? SARS? HIV?

Not all viruses are created equal. Coronavirus isn't ebola, but it isn't the common cold, either. We're talking about a virus that could reduce life expectancy by over 10 years.

Quote:

The hospitals were not prepared. That's why so many people died. In Israel the situation is completely different. Politicians, and certainly all in the medical field care very much about every patient's needs. Under such care the death rate will be much lower.

But it's not at all clear that the death rate was lower in Israel. Not once you take age differences and undiagnosed cases into account.

Without any real treatment, quality hospital care is virtually meaningless. The only difference is whether people die of multi-organ failure after a half-hearted attempt to save them, or die of multi-organ failure after extensive attempts to save them.

In any case, our ICUs here in Israel are stretched to the limit in a normal year. So if it's quality medical care we're after, keeping the virus under control is vital.

Teomima

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 10:56 am

amother [ Beige ] wrote:

Who do you say only a month? We were home for two months. My kids were home from March 13th till May 17th. That was way over a month.

As for reopening, people needed to work. They needed income to live. In order to work, they needed kids in school. Would it have been safer had everyone stayed home longer? Without a doubt. But I understand why the government made the call it did. Of course, you're right. We're paying the price for that call. But I think it'll be better than it would have had all these people gotten sick three months ago when we were in no way equipped to handle it. There weren't enough ventilators in the country, there wasn't enough PPE for medical staff (though let's face it, there still isn't). There was even an alcogel shortage in the beginning.

I guess the choices were either stay in shutdown long term, and suffer the repercussions to the economy, or try to slowly reemerge, hope that the hot weather decreased the risk (and unfortunately we learned that it did not), and that we would not overwhelm our healthcare system. We're stuck between a rock and a hard place.

CiCi

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 12:11 pm

Quote:

But again, the goal is not to completely stop the virus from spreading. It's to keep the spread under control, and keep as many people as possible healthy for as long as possible.

How does that contradict what I said that the virus will spread? It doesn't.

Quote:

Well, those viruses are all still here. Viruses simply don't dissapear...It just speads differently. I'm not so sure that corona will reduce life expectancy. There's no proof of it at this point. In any case, how does reduction of life expectancy of 10 years contradict what I've said regarding the spread of the virus or my belief in low-level herd immunity?

ora_43 wrote:

We disagree about the quality of care in saving patients. I believe the quality of care makes a difference in life and death. Half of the corona patients in NY died because of neglect, because of hunger and dehydration. You can wait for hours just to start initial medical treatment when needing critical care even when the hospitals are not overwhelmed.

amother

Babyblue

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 12:20 pm

CiCi wrote:

I always said it doesn't work and now you see it didn't work in Israel. We don't live in bubbles.

I believe it's like the flu. Even if it comes back every year it's still not so infectious as covid-19 was and not so potent because we are all somewhat immune to it.

Knock knock
For the millionth time,
we are not looking for people not to get it( that would be ideal)
We are looking to flatten the curve. Do you know what that means? It means, the same amount of people will get it, but at a slower pace. Enabling hospitals to care for patients and not unintentionally neglect them.
Hundreds of people died because there wasn’t enough help, people starved.

Today as the hospitals are emptying and they are more educated regarding corona, people that are admitted have a much bigger chance of surviving.

By going out and infecting each other, collectively we killed our fellow community members.

CiCi

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 12:41 pm

amother [ Babyblue ] wrote:

Knock, knock, for the millionth time, I never said anyone wants people to get it, or that I want people to get it. It doesn't matter what we want. It matters not one iota. The virus is spreading/has spread (depending on the location) whether we want it to or not, and you are saying that yourself as well!

You are totally contradicting yourself with saying you don't want people to get and then you say you only want to flatten the curve.

Nobody wants the virus at all! It will spread and that's my point! I was not talking at all how quickly or slowly it will spread. I was saying that in the long-run, lockdowns do not prevent the spread of the virus.

All those who bashed me and are bashing me are at the same time admitting that it will spread! How hypocritical can you get!

Quote:

Enabling hospitals to care for patients and not unintentionally neglect them.
Hundreds of people died because there wasn’t enough help, people starved.

The hospitals were offered help but they refused. There was neglect from the top, from politicians, to hospital management, down to many hospital workers.

Quote:

Today as the hospitals are emptying and they are more educated regarding corona, people that are admitted have a much bigger chance of surviving.

By going out and infecting each other, collectively we killed our fellow community members.

Wow you are really contradicting yourself.

First you are saying that you can't stop the spread and you are looking to flatten the curve and again at the end you are saying that by going out we are killing each other? Only if you stay in your home forever can you stop the spread. You know that's not going to happen so you say we have to flatten the curve. And at the very end you say that by going out we are infecting each other...Either you can stop infecting each other or you cant. Make up your mind.

Cheiny

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 2:45 pm

CiCi wrote:

Lockdowns don't help in the long run. I believe that the virus needs to run its course because the only way it recedes is through herd immunity.

The virus had spread in Israeli schools even with strongly enforced lockdowns.

https://vosizneias.com/2020/06.....eaks/

Edit: I want to clarify that I don't mean vaccine type of total immunity but more like low level immunity like we have to the flu and other viruses.

Edit #2: The hypocrisy on this thread is beyond. Many have bashed me for saying it will spread and then admitted themselves that it will spread but that we had to flatten the curve. I never said that we didn't have to flatten the curve. All I said was that lockdowns do not stop the from spreading in the long-run. Because the world cannot lock themselves in forever, at a certain point life has to continue and so does the spread of the virus. Sorry.

As Ben Shapiro says " facts don't care about your feelings."

Edit #3: 100% total lockdowns and long-term lockdowns cannot and never will happen. I'm not going to explain here why as I don't have the patience to do so. It's self-explanatory, reality won't change even if you don't get it.

You’re wrong, the lockdown in NY is the reason all the numbers are BH down (let’s see what happens as a result of the actions of all the protesters and rioters not SD), and the numbers in Israel spiked AFTER schools opened up!!

ora_43

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 3:06 pm

CiCi wrote:

How does that contradict what I said that the virus will spread? It doesn't.

That's not the part it contradicts. It contradicts the part where you say that the current spread of the virus somehow proves that restrictions have failed.

Quote:

I'll just repeat your Ben Shapiro quote: Facts don't care about your feelings.

Maybe herd immunity is possible, maybe it isn't. Maybe it's possible to get herd immunity via a vaccine, maybe it isn't. Maybe the virus will burn through the entire population of Israel before any treatment is available, even at the current rate of spread.

The point is that you don't know, you're just guessing. Which is fine, and hey, you might even be right! Any guess at this point has a decent chance of being right. But then you're criticizing Israeli policy based on... your gut feeling? That's the part that's strange, here.

Yes, if it turns out that there's no vaccine and no treatment, and that herd immunity can easily be achieved with minimum deaths, we sure will feel silly for living with all those restrictions unnecessarily. (Until we remember that our ICUs were full even with the restrictions and then we'll be like "oh right, that was why.")

But we would feel much, much worse if we let tens of thousands of people die, only to discover that, whoopsies, there's no immunity anyway! Or whoops, it turns out there's a treatment now that saves 50% of patients, huh, we could have saved 10,000 lives just by wearing masks and doing health checks for another five months.

It's a risk either way.

It feels like you're making this an argument over whether or not social distancing restrictions are The One True Policy, but that's not the argument here. We know that social distancing is a gamble. We just think it's the least-risky gamble available at the current time.

Quote:

I'm not even going to get into the argument that hospitals starved people to death.

It's a big planet. Look at literally anywhere outside New York. The death rate? Still high. Even in countries with high-quality medical care.

CiCi

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 3:10 pm

Cheiny wrote:

People in the heimishe and minority communities and a large percentage of the US population were exposed before lockdown. The virus spiked during lockdowns because it went into effect too late into the game. Indeed, let's see what happens next week after all the rioting, which is going on for a few days already and the hospitals are still empty. I am almost certain there will not be a big spike in the next 2-4 weeks because this wave has passed. If another wave hits us in a few months don't blame the riots, scientists were already predicting it.

Of course there was a spike in Israel after the lockdowns because the majority of Israelis were not exposed to it before and during the lockdown. That's exactly why I'm saying that lockdowns do not keep the virus from spreading unless you keep people in lockdown forever.

Last edited by CiCi on Tue, Jun 02 2020, 3:19 pm; edited 3 times in total

amother

Beige

Tue, Jun 02 2020, 3:15 pm

Teomima wrote:

I counted mandatory strict lockdown. Add 2 weeks before Purim, when it was recommended but not mandatory. Afterwards the lockdown loosened but schools didn't reopen (the only ones that did were special ed). All in all you have about 6 weeks of tight strict lockdown, of those only a month really legally enforced.

For sure it's better now than it would've been three months ago, that's not even a question.

I do think that had we held out another 2 weeks we might be in a very different place right now. Lo nora, we'll do fine as long as we keep borders closed.

There are no easy answers to this but I think Israel has done very well so far and I just hope it continues this way.