This was a thoroughly entertaining read:
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Thanks, will give it a read later. Opened the page and saw itâs a long article.
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I wonât be surprised if we see a spike again. All over the place I see people going about their lives like the virus doesnât exist.
I get so frustrated at the gym because people donât follow the rules and thereâs no supervision. Complained to Virgin Active a while back and then things got better but now itâs worse than ever.
Some of my co-workers posted pictures of a big party that they went to. Shooters, nobody wearing masks, people taking photos together where they all have their arms around each other.
In my opinion itâs inconsiderate. If you donât care about yourself, then so be it. But you are putting the rest of us in danger.
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Which is why I maintain that this virus will likely be around for months or even years to come.
Weâve adapted to a new norm and accepting that is part of life but downplay the severity of it. Sure it will be around but take the necessary precautions. I guess in the end, you can only do your part.
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Thing is⌠if others decide that they arenât going to do their partâfor whatever reasonâthen that means those of us who are more vulnerable have to take extreme precaution.
Cloth masks are not to protect the wearer, they are to protect everyone else from the wearer. So if people refuse to wear masks, or wear them like chin nappies, then those of us who need to minimise our risk of being exposed have to wear N95 respirators and eye protection.
Similarly for people who choose to go to mass gatherings and refuse to use the COVID Exposure Notification app.
I remember reading somewhere that you need a reasonable fraction of compliance (I think itâs around 60% uptake for the app, and 80% of people properly wearing masks?) otherwise the system doesnât work.
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Just like HIV I suppose. People accept it as part of our society and apply caution where necessary, but downplay the severity of it.
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I attended a bday bash this weekend, we kept social distancing up to a point, I went and washed my hands at least every hour. There was just 12 of us and we spread out as much as possible.
But at some point, we do need more normal - yes its a new normal but people in general are social creatures and they do need more than what they have been getting during the levels 5 - 2.
At least from what I have seen, in my area, we all wear our masks, all sanitise as you go into the mall, when you enter each store.
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No disagreement here. We just have to be smart about it for another few months â the way you described.
Weâve definitely seen an increase in the Reproduction Number (Rt) of the virus in South Africa:
It is hovering at around just over 1.0, which is not great but also no cause for alarm just yet.
Looking at the various data dashboards, what this seems to translate to is that our number of active cases is flat. I.e. we have âflattened the curveââat least with respect to active casesâand ensured that our hospitals are not overrun, exactly like we wanted to.
As long as people donât get too irresponsible and cause a surge in infections, and a corresponding surge in the Rt, we can carry on like this (masks in public, hand hygiene, screening, testing, and contact tracing) until we get a vaccine to boost herd immunity over the critical threshold.
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What I always find interesting on these graphs are the the fact that there are some areas here that was flat from the first day⌠which never made sent
I have noticed an uptick in the WC as well, not huge but def increase again, we had just hit 2000ish a couple of weeks ago. And now we are going back to 3k.
But the amount hospitalised and in ICU is much lower.
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You guys know my feelings.
This is an observation on the mask thing. There is a new breed of person that walks around pick n pay with their mask off but holding a coffee cup in the way to pretend that theyâre drinking so they donât have to wear their mask.
As to the âsecond waveâ sure there will be one. Especially as we get to our next flu season. As a few doctors have said this will join all of the other coronaviruses currently in circulation.
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I am very lucky that I spend 90% of my time at home. I HATE wearing a mask because it keeps fogging up my glasses if it is over my nose but I still wear it.
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The only place I wear a mask is in the shop and the elevator at home (much to my disgust.) So yeah, needless to say I forget it sometimes and have to go back home.
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I went to the clinic yesterday having an asthma attack. The chairs in the waiting room were social distanced. I was still wearing a mask.
I was struggling to breathe, so I pulled the mask away from my face to breathe in, but let it snap back in place every time I exhaled.
If youâre not wearing a mask, it must be because you have a constant need to suck a huge bag of ****s
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Agreed, when we go out as a family, we donât leave the car without our mask in place. The only exception here is my 1yo son. We havenât visited a mall in since lockdown started in March. We get what we need from any smaller shops or superettes.
Albeit, I walk my son to school and home every day and while this is in a âpublicâ space, I have my buff around my neck. For the same reason you mention, my glasses mist up. But no one is around us and if we pass anyone the masks come on, or when we move into a crowd (i.e. once getting to school).
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Havenât we got a resident canadian here eh?
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Corona virus? Weâll have Nunavut
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I hope Iâm not too tired to remember to read this tomorrowâŚ
BTW, which horseman of the apocalypse are ya? Askinâ for a friendâŚ
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https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02948-4
The false promise of herd immunity for COVID-19
Why proposals to largely let the virus run its course â embraced by Donald Trumpâs administration and others â could bring âuntold death and sufferingâ.
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Yeah âherd immunityâ is one of those terms that has been misappropriated and lost its true meaning.
Like how Donald Trump took the term âfake newsâ and weaponised it against the actual news media. The term used to refer to websites which peddled objectively false stories to make money from programmatic click-through advertising (thanks, Google, Facebook, Apple!). Now it just means ânews I donât want to hearâ or âfacts I find inconvenient to my worldviewâ or even âeditorial/columns I disagree withâ.
As a reminder, hereâs an article we did at MyBroadband where we interviewed the operator of a fake news website:
Anyway, back to the topic at handâŚ
Somewhere along the way, the term âherd immunityâ has become conflated with a do-nothing strategy in response to COVID-19. I.e. let the virus burn through the population, inoculating those who survive and losing those who are vulnerable. The myth is that you face the short-term pain of some people dying rather than the long-term pain of a collapsed economy, in which people will die anyway.
This proposal has been refined somewhat. Nowadays itâs not to simply let the virus run its course, but for some steps to be taken to protect the most vulnerable, at least.
However, herd immunity is not a pandemic response strategy. The article actually has a pretty good definition of what âherd immunityâ actually used to mean:
Herd immunity happens when a virus canât spread because it keeps encountering people who are protected against infection. Once a sufficient proportion of the population is no longer susceptible, any new outbreak peters out. âYou donât need everyone in the population to be immune â you just need enough people to be immune,â says Caroline Buckee, an epidemiologist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts.
Typically, herd immunity is discussed as a desirable result of wide-scale vaccination programmes. High levels of vaccination-induced immunity in the population benefits those who canât receive or sufficiently respond to a vaccine, such as people with compromised immune systems. Many medical professionals hate the term herd immunity, and prefer to call it âherd protectionâ, Buckee says. Thatâs because the phenomenon doesnât actually confer immunity to the virus itself â it only reduces the risk that vulnerable people will come into contact with the pathogen.
In short: the reason we no longer have to get smallpox or polio vaccines is because of herd immunity. Thanks to global cooperation through organisations like the WHO, we have eliminated smallpox from the face of the earth, and have successfully reduced polioâs footprint to a handful of countries.
All that said, I think this article presents a good summary of the argument for why the do-nothing or do-almost-nothing strategy isnât a good idea.
One thing I didnât see mentioned in the article is the fact that getting COVID wonât necessarily make you permanently immune like with measles. It is entirely possible that whatever immunity you get against the virus might fade over time â a problem that a vaccine would mitigate.
To be clear: This is specifically an argument for and against the do-nothing and do-almost-nothing strategy, not for or against lockdown. As has been demonstrated in countries with the necessary preparedness and infrastructure in place, it is perfectly reasonable to have a COVID-19 response that does not include a hard lockdown. (FWIW: I donât think South Africa is one of those countries. It took us months to get ready for our epidemic peak.)
As always, the issue of curfews, not being allowed out to exercise, and bans on cigarettes and alcohol are an entirely separate matter that I think most agree was completely unreasonable.
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