Coronavirus Pandemic

[Letters]

As revealed half a year ago, the new, fake cyber-pandemic is here. The anti-humanitarian cunts at the WEF have started the obligatory public drill, which is a way to take the piss out of you by explaining in detail how they are fucking you up the anus while you fret about dress code. Yes, you really are that stupid - just read back through the threads.

I genuinely didn't understand any of that. What are you getting at here? Cyber-pandemic? Help me out.

[Mac76]

I genuinely didn't understand any of that.

what do you expect from someone writing from inside a whisky bottle at 3.21 in the morning?

[WMUG]

According to this thing: https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/vaccine-queue-uk we'll "achieve herd immunity", whatever that means, in early September, so make of that what you will.

Ok according to this paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s415...Aq_4b_D51l0gUw

Herd immunity is defined as an R-rate of lower than 1, so each new case generates fewer than 1 new cases on average.

I'm not able to find any up to date studies on Google Scholar that estimate what the current R-rate is, but gov.uk is claiming at the moment that it's somewhere around 1-1.2.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-value-and-growth-rate

Where they're getting their numbers from I don't know, but having a look at that Excel spreadsheet that they link, we did indeed have herd immunity in England a few months ago (at least going by the definition in the nature article), from January to June.

Of course, we were either in lockdown or under heavy restrictions during that time. Now that those restrictions have largely lifted, the R-rate is going back up, as you'd expect, and we no longer have what Nature defines as herd immunity.

The height of the R-rate was in October, when we weren't in lockdown and didn't have a vaccine.

From that, the conclusion I draw is that herd immunity is achievable through indefinite lockdowns, but the effect of the vaccine is yet to be determined, at least going purely by these numbers.

I'm not a statistician though, so I'll defer to others who have a better ability to interpret those statistics than I do.

[Letters]

That's a strange definition of herd immunity.
I thought the idea of herd immunity was that enough people have the antibodies that we can all go out to play.
An R rate lower than 1 can of course be achieved by us all hiding under our beds but that's not a very sustainable solution.

[WMUG]

That's a strange definition of herd immunity.
I thought the idea of herd immunity was that enough people have the antibodies that we can all go out to play.

Sure, but how do you define "enough" in that case?

An R rate lower than 1 can of course be achieved by us all hiding under our beds but that's not a very sustainable solution.

Agreed, which is a factor the Nature definition doesn't take into account, as far as I can see.

I guess a good definition would be an R rate of less than 1 with no restrictions. The issue there would be predicting how much the R rate would rise before lifting restrictions, I don't know how you'd do that.

[Letters]

The expert I heard the interview of said that "enough" is about ~70-80% of a population.

[WMUG]

The expert I heard the interview of said that "enough" is about ~70-80% of a population.

Interesting, did they give any reasoning for that figure?

[Letters]

Interesting, did they give any reasoning for that figure?

About 1 hour 9 in:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000wdg6

Now obviously this is from the BBC, and thus inadmissible (). And she is described as a "Mathematician, who specialises in health data."

It's actually the interviewer who says "70-80%" - and she's talking about %age of people who have been fully vaccinated which I guess is a form of herd immunity.
The expert talks about Israel who she says have got to "effectively 0" cases through vaccination and she says they unlocked when they got to over 70% of people fully vaccinated, and she notes they were still cautious.
TL;DR, her opinion is June 21st is too early and reckons we should wait a couple of months.

[Mac76]

the thing is we're all tired of lockdown but equally the hype of the 21st as 'Freedom Day' is a guarantee that people won't just go around and act normally, they'll all go stupid crazy and up the infection rate big time

[GP]

Gentleman, This is democracy manifest