Thanks for this post. I was trying to get my thoughts in order to write a similar response, but yours is much better stated than mine could have been.
It really grinds my gears that somehow we got to the point where “Herd Immunity” == “Do-nothing response”. Herd immunity is the cornerstone of the highly successful strategy that was used to defeat Smallpox, so it certainly works! Do-nothing, on the other hand…
A doctor in Sweden.
I think we can thank advances in medical science for the difference
I get what this doctor is trying to say, but when it comes to a fraught topic like this, maybe doctors should leave science communication to professionals.
It is completely irresponsible to liken COVID-19 to the common cold, because you’ll have populists and people who don’t know better using that line in isolation without the important context he gives earlier in the article.
For some reason he also ignores the fact that when young, vital people recover from rhinoviruses and influenza, they generally make a full recovery without any lingering issues.
COVID-19 is, by all accounts, a different animal. Ergo, I have to put big question marks around his statement that “Covid-19 is not a unique disease”.
While most young people who get COVID-19 will recover, there are plenty of cases where people experience hectic lingering effects from lung damage and blood clotting.
Mike Hansen (another doctor), does a good job of explaining the published research on COVID-19. His videos on the data obtained from autopsies gives a good idea of the impact of COVID on the human body:
Something else I wonder about is the way he (Rushworth) analyses Sweden’s per-capita overall mortality statistics from 2017 and 2018.
Excess mortality statistics clearly show a peak in April, which must have been the height of Sweden’s epidemic.
OK… Despite the fact that it’s late and I really should be going to bed, I went and looked up the source article that Rushworth draws his conclusions from.
Here is the chart from that article. Pretty convincing right?
But let’s try and understand this better by changing the perspective a little. Let’s imagine we’re in the height of the 1918/19 flu pandemic in Sweden and we’re looking at a similar chart.
This is what it might look like:
Note that the jump in deaths only registers in 1919, even though the pandemic reached Sweden around July 1918.
And even then, if all I had to go on was this chart of per-capita mortality I might also look at it and go “eh, the Spanish Flu in 1918/19 wasn’t so bad”.
I also tried to double-check to make sure that Sweden was actually impacted by the Spanish Flu pandemic. Here’s one of the articles that popped up in my searches (there were some research papers and stuff as well):
(BTW: Don’t take this to mean that I’m in favour of extended lockdowns. While each country’s approach will need to be different, there’s no need to ban stuff like restaurants and hair salons from operating at this stage of the pandemic).
I spoke to a guy yesterday who was in hospital because of COVID-19. He is fine now but he says the person next to him at the hospital was very sick and eventually died. He said he could hear how the person couldn’t breathe and how he suffered and how he at some point was all panicky.
It sounds horrible. I don’t ever want to get it.
It seems to be quite the generic lottery though. We were quite confident that if my mother in law got it, she would be a gonner. She has diabetes, asthma and a whole string of conditions and usually when she gets sick, she gets it bad and barely survives the flu… She passed covid with flying colours though with less symptoms than me and my wife.
I think the key is partially to be diagnosed early and then mostly being lucky.
With moving house and what not I decided to take my family out of supper as a bit of a break and reward.
This was the first restaurant we had been to since lockdown commenced and all they did was check temp which I had to fill in myself. I also had to record any symptomic questionnaire which just left me wondering, what’s to stop anyone from writing this shit down down incorrectly?!
The only people I saw actively wearing masks were the staff. Once people had been seen to their table the patrons would remove their masks, and even walk around the without them. Seating wasn’t spaced generously.
Yeah same here when I went out for dinner with my parents on my birthday. The atmosphere was awesome and was great to experience again.
I had a laugh because the guy that stands at the front and invites people in wore his mask but every time he went to talk to someone he took it off.
Sky reckons that our level 5 lockdown utterly failed — that all it did was accelerate the spread of the virus. However, as a result, we’ve achieved a level of herd immunity in South Africa with an estimated 12–15 million people having antibodies for the coronavirus.
I’m not sure I agree with that assessment. I think the level of infection could have been much worse and overwhelmed our hospitals had it not been for the initial shelter-in-place order.
That said, Shabir Madhi cautions that this doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods necessarily. We don’t know a lot about the potential for reinfection.
However, Madhi also says that should there be a surge in infection again a hard lockdown is totally out of the question. We need a far more nuanced approach.
Unfortunately the consensus in the medical fraternity is that reinfection is possible after 2-3 months of initial infection. In other words, your antibodies die out after that long. Unfortunately there hasn’t been enough research in that area for a conclusive judgement yet.
Going on anecdotal evidence, my wife has had it twice now. Second round had similar symptoms as the first, but more severe, but it feels like it passed quicker. I also picked it up with my wife’s second round, but was largely asymptomatic again. It’s hard to judge the validity of this anecdotal evidence, though, since my wife has near daily exposure.
All that said, I think we’re seeing light in the end of the tunnel. It looks like South Africa did more things right with the lockdown than they did wrong (although I’ll never forgive or forget banning alcohol and cigarettes), and that the real vaccine hopefuls are starting to see the light of day.
That’s hectic. Thanks for sharing the anecdotal evidence, @Avatar. I think it helps people to appreciate the reality of this thing if someone they know has been affected.
Your wife is probably exposed to higher viral loads than the average middle class South African, but there are far more of us who have to share buses, taxis, and trains with many people over long distances on a daily basis who can pick up large viral loads that way.
Indeed, all indications point to being able to get reinfected, much the same as with rhinoviruses (i.e. the common cold), influenza, and other coronaviruses.
However there are many open questions regarding the dangers of reinfection. While antibodies do fade, I read research into T-cell immunity a few months ago which looked promising. So it may not be that you have no immunity against COVID-19 after three months, even if you don’t have antibodies in your system anymore.
Not that I underestimated the reality or the weight of the situation, but helping her do stats on all the patients she and her colleagues have treated in the COVID ward, and calculating mortality rates really, really drives the point home.
It’s important for us as a society to really get to a good level of understanding of this disease, and afterwards learn from the healthcare failures we’ve seen in so many countries. The research that Dr. Madhi has done indicates that South Africans in general have a good tolerance for COVID-19. Whether that’s from our TB-vaccine program, or because we’re a warmer climate, or we’re just better people in general, we cope better than other countries. If we didn’t have that stroke of luck, we’d be having a very, very different conversation here, and next time, we won’t be as lucky.
Sky should look a little closer to home for “utter failure”… imo.
This kind of mentality is just outright disgusting and so toxic.
That does not Spark joy. If you work for that asshole, and want to leave, we’re hiring java devs 
Needs PK. We sold our office.
We’ve been back in the office since mid May.
It’s such a strongly held opinion I have to wonder where it comes from. Who cares whether other people work from home or go into the office?
Whatever works for them, right? Or am I missing something?
I heard a rumour that Cyril is talking to us tonight?
This is a bone of contention in my company. We would all love to work from home but its not possible. My boss needs an excuse to be away from his family and unless we’re there to pressure him he won’t give us the information we need to do our work.
I do think we’re all responsible enough.
This could be another topic on its own once again. I’d be interested to see how its affected other members here. I know @Shrike and @FarligOpptreden are already pretty much work from home. I see above @Dragonic says their office was sold.
How are others working now?
I had to giggle there, I’ve watched too much of “The Umbrella Academy”.
