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COVID-19 Pandemic: Transmissions, Deaths, Treatments, Vaccines, Interventions and More...

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and as a Trump supporter, he is the last person I would take my cues from about health and I do not and people should not take any health related cues from any elected official because politics is woven into it all. Thats why we pay the experts at the CDC and the task force.

its another reason that Murphy is a fraud as he has refused to release any information of the scientific data he is using....so transparent right, and thats why people are questiioning him even elected Dems. People need information, not a politician dictating what they can and cannot do.

Have you not watched his COVID-19 briefing? I suspect you have not. Murphy references all the key risk indicators and dives into the data.
 
Murphy will be re-elected because he is doing his best to protect the citizens of NJ from getting ill (with as yet unknown long-term consequences) or dying. We need to be patient until there is a vaccine, monoclonal antibodies, or effective drug treatments - likely in a matter of months, not years. With over 2500 clinical trials ongoing it's just a matter of time until results are known and we can feel more confident about going back to near normalcy. There are plenty of safety nets established both at the state level and federally to help people cope with unemployment or closed small businesses. We need to knock this virus out as much as possible before the majority of people will feel safe going out and patronizing businesses again, from hair salons to indoor dining to gyms - the economy will not recover until that happens.
https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/vid...ronavirus-at-planet-fitness-in-west-virginia/
 
Murphy will be re-elected because he is doing his best to protect the citizens of NJ from getting ill (with as yet unknown long-term consequences) or dying. We need to be patient until there is a vaccine, monoclonal antibodies, or effective drug treatments - likely in a matter of months, not years. With over 2500 clinical trials ongoing it's just a matter of time until results are known and we can feel more confident about going back to near normalcy. There are plenty of safety nets established both at the state level and federally to help people cope with unemployment or closed small businesses. We need to knock this virus out as much as possible before the majority of people will feel safe going out and patronizing businesses again, from hair salons to indoor dining to gyms - the economy will not recover until that happens.
https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/vid...ronavirus-at-planet-fitness-in-west-virginia/


LOL
 
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So what your saying is it takes awhile for cases to jump after a reopening? Because that is what I'm saying.
Nope. You said FL cases were trending up before June 5th. Not really. They sure trended up after June 5th.

NJ started stage 1 re-opening on May 18th. Six weeks later we had 156 cases reported today.
 
COVID update in NJ:
156 new cases yesterday (lowest since the start)
978 hospitalized (lowest since the start)
1.92% of tests were returned positive (good)
R-naught .86 (good but not as good as when we started the phase 2 reopen)
18 lives lost (good, realtively)

early week reporting caveats apply, but we are under 1k in the hospitals statewide and that's from our peak over 8k, and that's amazing.
Excellent numbers - we have flatten the curve.
 
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I'm not against it, but when the #'s start to increase you have to be prepared to close things back down.
And if the numbers don’t increase? 46 states have gyms open with only Florida, Texas, Arizona and Ca. Having issues.
 
Why isn't Murphy mandating face coverings/masks at all time?
The one theme of this thread is "face masks work".

Even while "outdoor dining" you still walk past people and are within 6ft of staff. Social distancing isn't possible.
Look at the pictures from the shore this weekend.

Murphy even specifically commented on "few, if any, masks".
Well if he mandated masks outside, people would have to wear them.
 
Are you surprised after seeing this from Saturday night?

GXD76CXYTJD6XELUTTYEMIAQ3M.jpg
What bar is this
 
Why isn't Murphy mandating face coverings/masks at all time?
The one theme of this thread is "face masks work".

Even while "outdoor dining" you still walk past people and are within 6ft of staff. Social distancing isn't possible.
Look at the pictures from the shore this weekend.

Murphy even specifically commented on "few, if any, masks".
Well if he mandated masks outside, people would have to wear them.
Oh god?? You can't figure that out??
 
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Why isn't Murphy mandating face coverings/masks at all time?
The one theme of this thread is "face masks work".

Even while "outdoor dining" you still walk past people and are within 6ft of staff. Social distancing isn't possible.
Look at the pictures from the shore this weekend.

Murphy even specifically commented on "few, if any, masks".
Well if he mandated masks outside, people would have to wear them.
No chance on beaches, golf courses etc. NJ numbers are way down - current rules are working.
 
My niece who lives in Georgia tested positive yesterday. She was staying with her boyfriend at his parents house.

The boyfriend, his parents and grandmother are now getting tested. Her three friends tested positive.

I am confident she will be fine. She is 21, thin and in great shape. It is all the other folks that she has come in contact with that have me worried. While attending nursing school, she worked at a bridal shop that has been open since June 1st.
 
Good lord.

Rt isn't an "esoteric number". It's a key metric in predicting the rate of future case development. It's up. Spread is increasing. Not by a lot, but it's increasing. Why would you, knowing that, approve a reopening milestone that has proven to increase the infection rate?

Trump thinks like you, which is precisely the reason why we have 125,000 dead people in this country.
This tells us nothing about to whom the virus is transmitted.If 95 per cent of the people getting the virus this way are not those who would be 2021 deaths,then the figure is irrelevant.
 
Let me go further here.
I have great difficulty trusting the medical community concerning a condition about which the final chapter has not been written.My experiences with the way I was treated for my several bouts of H2 pylori ingrained this into me.Once they took out my gall bladder,twice they attempted to send me to a psychiatrist,and once they attempted to refer me to a heart specialist.They were wrong every time,costing me a bodily organ and forcing me to retire prematurely.How do you expect me to believe that they are the final word?
 
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Let me go further here.
I have great difficulty trusting the medical community concerning a condition about which the final chapter has not been written.My experiences with the way I was treated for my several bouts of H2 pylori ingrained this into me.Once they took out my gall bladder,twice they attempted to send me to a psychiatrist,and once they attempted to refer me to a heart specialist.They were wrong every time,costing me a bodily organ and forcing me to retire prematurely.How do you expect me to believe that they are the final word?
Second opinions. Blindly. Tell #2 you have symptoms of something. See if they come up the same solutions
 
My niece who lives in Georgia tested positive yesterday. She was staying with her boyfriend at his parents house.

The boyfriend, his parents and grandmother are now getting tested. Her three friends tested positive.

I am confident she will be fine. She is 21, thin and in great shape. It is all the other folks that she has come in contact with that have me worried. While attending nursing school, she worked at a bridal shop that has been open since June 1st.

Best of luck to them all; my cousin and her son in AZ both have COVID and are struggling with it at home, but so far not serious enough for hospitalization.
 

I almost posted that this afternoon, but it was too depressing to think about. At least this influenza virus is only in pigs right now and has not yet jumped to humans, zoonotically, like the CV did and other strains of influenza do. But if it did, that would not be good, obviously - last thing we need is a bad flu season on top of a continuing coronavirus pandemic.
 
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By the numbers once again, according to the Johns Hopkins site: The U.S. recorded some 40,000 new cases in the last 24 hours, and about 300 deaths. 20,000 Americans were pronounced recovered. Some 570,000 Americans were tested since last night; if the current proportion of infections--one for every 150 Americans holds true, that means another 3,000+ cases were uncovered through testing.
 
New papers just published in the NEJM on the newly defined Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome in Children or MIS-C, which is a very serious condition being seen in small numbers of mostly children; one paper is on NY and one is national). In NY out of 15,500 COVID-19 patients under 21 through May 10th, 816 were hospitalized (5%) and 14 died (0.1%, which is much higher than the US number); see the graphic below, which is nicely presented.

In addition, once the syndrome was noticed and defined, 95 patients met the criteria, which if translated across the US at NY/US case ratios, would be in the range of 600 such patients. There was also a companion paper in the NEJM which looked at 186 patients with MIS-C in 26 states. Some pretty serious effects from this syndrome, unfortunately. So, even though COVID deaths in children under 18 are a bit lower than for influenza (120 per year from flu over a recent 8-year period vs. somewhere in the 50-100 range for COVID), the pandemic isn't over and it's not just about deaths, as these studies show.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2021756?source=nejmtwitter&medium=organic-social
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2021680

ekbAuqp.png
 
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COVID update in NJ:
156 new cases yesterday (lowest since the start)
978 hospitalized (lowest since the start)
1.92% of tests were returned positive (good)
R-naught .86 (good but not as good as when we started the phase 2 reopen)
18 lives lost (good, realtively)

early week reporting caveats apply, but we are under 1k in the hospitals statewide and that's from our peak over 8k, and that's amazing.

Why would R-Naught increase while new cases decrease?
 
Why would R-Naught increase while new cases decrease?
A few things on how the state *appears* to present data. Rt on 6/27 is for the the "7-14 day period prior to account for the incubation period." That quote comes from the graphic he presents in his daily presser.
Spot positivity is a single day number and it's on a lag from the day it's presented.
 
What is the best site to get real info on Florida. Looking for ICU bed occupancy rise / Hospitalization etc .
 
This tells us nothing about to whom the virus is transmitted.If 95 per cent of the people getting the virus this way are not those who would be 2021 deaths,then the figure is irrelevant.
I'm guessing there's a typo in there and you're saying if the virus is transmitting mostly among young people who should be okay it doesn't matter so much.

If the prevalence of infection isn't that great then yea it could be okay but I'm guessing there's some threshold of that prevalence (don't know what it is) but when you cross it since so many people are infected (even ones who are young and healthy) it'll snake it's way to the vulnerable. A sort of six degrees of separation to the vulnerable if you will. If the infection rate is down I think you can protect the vulnerable to a degree but if it goes up too much too fast then I think the virus finds it's way to the vulnerable...of course what that threshold is who knows.
 
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Nope. You said FL cases were trending up before June 5th. Not really. They sure trended up after June 5th.

NJ started stage 1 re-opening on May 18th. Six weeks later we had 156 cases reported today.
2 things about that graph.

1)FL's reopenings started weeks before.

2)You do see an increase in cases before the bars open.
 
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And if the numbers don’t increase? 46 states have gyms open with only Florida, Texas, Arizona and Ca. Having issues.
I said I'm for opening, and my shut it down comment is contingent upon cases going up.

So obviously if they don't go up, they stay open.
 
By the numbers once again, according to the Johns Hopkins site: The U.S. recorded some 40,000 new cases in the last 24 hours, and about 300 deaths. 20,000 Americans were pronounced recovered. Some 570,000 Americans were tested since last night; if the current proportion of infections--one for every 150 Americans holds true, that means another 3,000+ cases were uncovered through testing.
Is there any info as to how many of the 570k tested were "first timers" vs. repeats?
 
2 things about that graph.

1)FL's reopenings started weeks before.

2)You do see an increase in cases before the bars open.
I think you missed the whole point of what Friston's model suggests. We will use London as an example. London has slowly begun reopening since last month. Effective June 1st schools opened and some shops, etc. I understand it has been a partial reopening but happening nonetheless. Antibody testing has shown that 17% of Londoners have had the disease by May 22nd. Friston's model suggests that roughly 20-25% of people are actually susceptible meaning that they are approaching herd immunity in the susceptible population.

What have we seen as they slowly reopen?

IwydGHc-cwUNinFzF-OmFFV0RNOsPOkOCLbheqPEVTduv3ygdt0NBLNlqg4O91DuugOFbJhWRtWCZaNBuVaOWmzj7TqRCQ_Yd_M6r4D3HW2H3hzVpg6av3ng8zCofJCfQbyTYyzp


Either you want to believe that they are incredible at social distancing/mask wearing and have avoided a spike or you can be open to the POSSIBILITY that there susceptible population has been reduced to the point where the virus is struggling to spread. I guess time will tell.

When I first read his thoughts and suggestions based on his model, I thought yeah right. But the data we have seen in London, NYC, NJ, etc seem to agree. If we reopen and things spike like Florida then he is wrong. But if not and he is right then we are not handling things correctly in areas already burned up by the virus.
 
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I think you missed the whole point of what Friston's model suggests. We will use London as an example. London has slowly begun reopening since last month. Effective June 1st schools opened and some shops, etc. I understand it has been a partial reopening but happening nonetheless. Antibody testing has shown that 17% of Londoners have had the disease by May 22nd. Friston's model suggests that roughly 20-25% of people are actually susceptible meaning that they are approaching herd immunity in the susceptible population.

What have we seen as they slowly reopen?

IwydGHc-cwUNinFzF-OmFFV0RNOsPOkOCLbheqPEVTduv3ygdt0NBLNlqg4O91DuugOFbJhWRtWCZaNBuVaOWmzj7TqRCQ_Yd_M6r4D3HW2H3hzVpg6av3ng8zCofJCfQbyTYyzp


Either you want to believe that they are incredible at social distancing/mask wearing and have avoided a spike or you can be open to the POSSIBILITY that there susceptible population has been reduced to the point where the virus is struggling to spread. I guess time will tell.
What do you mean by susceptible? Isn’t everyone “susceptible” except maybe young kids? And the thinking is that around 25-35% are asymptomatic but can still spread it?
 
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More on masks.

From the article:

To be sure, masks are recommended primarily to prevent the wearer from spreading the infection. But emerging evidence has shown it can help offer some protection for those wearing it too. There are some simple memes (remember the urine test one?) and tweets breaking down the reasoning, and experts say there’s something to them.

Here’s what you need to know about how well masks can protect you, the wearer, against getting COVID-19.

What does the data say?

One experiment published in the New England Journal of Medicine used high-speed video and found that hundreds of droplets were generated when someone said a phrase, but almost all of the droplets were blocked when the mouth was covered by a washcloth. Epidemiological studies have also strongly suggested that masks help keep people safe too. One study published in the journal Health Affairs analyzed the spread of COVID-19 before and after masks were required in 15 states and Washington, D.C. The study found that there was a slowdown in the spread of the virus in areas where masks were required, and the slower spread became more obvious over time.

And in May, the Springfield-Greene County Health Department in Missouri revealed that, while two hairstylists worked on 140 clients when they were sick with COVID-19, everyone wore masks and none of those clients tested positive for the virus. “This is exciting news about the value of masking to prevent COVID-19,” said Clay Goddard, director of health, in a press release at the time.

Masks aren’t perfect at protecting you, but experts say they’re better than nothing.

It’s important to acknowledge that cloth face masks aren’t as effective as medical-grade masks like N95 respirators at preventing the spread of COVID-19. Medical masks can filter out up to 95 percent of aerosolized particles, while cloth face masks can only filter out up to 60 percent of those particles, per the World Health Organization (WHO).

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently released guidelines on what to look for in a cloth face mask. The organization specifically recommends wearing a mask with three layers, including an inner layer of an absorbent material, like cotton, a middle layer made of nonwoven material like polypropylene to serve as a filter or barrier, and an outer layer made of a nonabsorbent material like polyester.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/wearing-face-masks-protects-yourself-204849762.html
 
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What do you mean by susceptible? Isn’t everyone “susceptible” except maybe young kids? And the thinking is that around 25-35% are asymptomatic but can still spread it?

Here is a summary of Friston's thoughts:

Just one month ago, the idea that most people aren’t susceptible to Covid-19 — perhaps the overwhelming majority — was considered dangerous denialism. It was startling when Nobel-prize-winning scientist Michael Levitt argued in UnHerd at the start of May that the growth curves of the disease were never truly exponential, suggesting that some sort of “prior immunity” must be kicking in very early.

Today, though, the presence of some level of prior resistance and immunity to Covid-19 is fast becoming accepted scientific fact. Results have just been published of a study suggesting that 40%-60% of people who have not been exposed to coronavirus have resistance at the T-cell level from other similar coronaviruses like the common cold.

Now, from the unlikely source of a prominent member of the “Independent SAGE committee”, the group set up by Sir David King to challenge government scientific advice and accused by some of being populated with Left-wing activists, comes a claim that the true portion of people who are not even susceptible to Covid-19 may be as high as 80%.

Professor Karl Friston, like Michael Levitt, is a statistician not a virologist; his expertise is in understanding complex and dynamic biological processes by representing them in mathematical models. Within the neuroscience field he was ranked by Science magazine as the most influential in the world, having invented the now standard “statistical parametric mapping” technique for understanding brain imaging — and for the past months he has been applying his particular method of Bayesian analysis, which he calls “dynamic causal modelling”, to the available Covid-19 data.

Friston referred to some kind of “immunological dark matter” as the only plausible explanation for the huge disparity in results between countries in an interview with the Guardian last weekend. The eye-catching phrase attracted a lot of attention on social media, with some commentators keen to dismiss it as rubbish, but he meant it in a quite precise way: like dark matter, the undetectable substance that makes up approximately 85% of the universe, it is provably there by its effects. We just don’t know anything about it.

His models suggest that the stark difference between outcomes in the UK and Germany, for example, is not primarily an effect of different government actions (such as better testing and earlier lockdowns) but is better explained by intrinsic differences between the populations that make the “susceptible population” in Germany — the group that is vulnerable to Covid-19 — much smaller than in the UK.

As he told me in our interview, even within the UK, the numbers point to the same thing: that the “effective susceptible population” was never 100%, and was at most 50% and probably more like only 20% of the population. He emphasises that the analysis is not yet complete, but “I suspect, once this has been done, it will look like the effective non-susceptible portion of the population will be about 80%. I think that’s what’s going to happen.”

Theories abound as to which factors best explain the huge disparities between countries in the portion of the population that seems resistant or immune — everything from levels of vitamin D to ethnic-genetic and social and geographical differences may come into play — but Professor Friston makes clear that it does not primarily seem to be a function of government coronavirus policy. “Solving that — understanding that source of variation in terms of this non-susceptibility — is going to be the key to understanding the enormous variation between countries,” he said.

Professor Friston is ultra-cautious in his choice of words, and understandably so: the impact of this realisation, if proven correct, is hard to overstate.

Immediately it would change how we should think about lifting lockdown: a tube carriage in London might in theory have to be restricted to 15% capacity to maintain social distancing of 2 metres, but if, as Professor Friston believes, the susceptible population in London was only ever 26% and 80% or more of that group is now provably immune via antibody testing, you can put a lot more people in a tube carriage without increasing the level of risk. Ditto restaurants, pubs, theatres and most recently, MPs in parliament. It would question the whole idea of social distancing being a feature of any “new normal”.

It would take the heat out of the political argument around the pandemic, and give the lie to the idea that it was ever primarily government actions (however incompetent or incompetently executed) that explain differing death rates. As Professor Friston puts it, once you put into the model sensible behaviours that people do anyway such as staying in bed when they are sick, the effect of legal lockdown “literally goes away”.

His explanation for the remarkably similar mortality outcomes in Sweden (no lockdown) and the UK (lockdown) is that “they weren’t actually any different. Because at the end of the day the actual processes that get into the epidemiological dynamics — the actual behaviours, the distancing, was evolutionarily specified by the way we behave when we have an infection.”

Most significantly, it would mean that the principal underlying assumption behind the global shutdowns, typified by the famous Imperial College forecasts — namely, that left unchecked this disease would rapidly pass through the entire population of every country and kill around 1% of those infected, leading to untold millions of deaths worldwide without draconian action — was wrong, out by a large factor. The largest co-ordinated government action in history, forcibly closing down most of the world’s societies with consequences that may last for generations, would have been based on faulty science.

When I put this to Professor Friston, he was the model of collegiate discretion. He said that the presumptions of Neil Ferguson’s models were all correct, “under the qualification that the population they were talking about is much smaller than you might imagine”. In other words, Ferguson was right that around 80% of susceptible people would rapidly become infected, and was right that of those between 0.5% and 1% would die — he just missed the fact that the relevant “susceptible population” was only ever a small portion of people in the UK, and an even smaller portion in countries like Germany and elsewhere. Which rather changes everything.

With such elegant formulations are scientific reputations saved. Practically, it makes not much difference whether, as per Sunetra Gupta, the 40,000 officially-counted coronavirus deaths in the UK are 0.1% of 40 million people infected, or, as per Karl Friston’s theory implies, they are more like 0.5% of 8 million people infected with the remaining 32 million shielded from infection by mysterious “immunological dark material”. If you are exposed to the virus and it is destroyed in your body by mucosal antibodies or T-cells or clever genes so that you never become fully infected and don’t even notice it, should that count as an infection? The effect is the same: 40,000 deaths, not 400,000.

This wouldn’t mean that most of the population is technically immune to Covid-19 — scenarios with a very high viral load, such as doctors treating Covid-19 patients in hospitals may still overpower these defences — but it would mean under normal circumstances, most people would never have contracted the disease.

The atmosphere in the UK continues to change irrespective of Government policy, and if people ever were afraid they are becoming less so, having intuited that, for now at least, the coronavirus threat seems to be in retreat. Gradually, the scientists are providing explanations for why that might be.
 
Here is a summary of Friston's thoughts:

Just one month ago, the idea that most people aren’t susceptible to Covid-19 — perhaps the overwhelming majority — was considered dangerous denialism. It was startling when Nobel-prize-winning scientist Michael Levitt argued in UnHerd at the start of May that the growth curves of the disease were never truly exponential, suggesting that some sort of “prior immunity” must be kicking in very early.

Today, though, the presence of some level of prior resistance and immunity to Covid-19 is fast becoming accepted scientific fact. Results have just been published of a study suggesting that 40%-60% of people who have not been exposed to coronavirus have resistance at the T-cell level from other similar coronaviruses like the common cold.

Now, from the unlikely source of a prominent member of the “Independent SAGE committee”, the group set up by Sir David King to challenge government scientific advice and accused by some of being populated with Left-wing activists, comes a claim that the true portion of people who are not even susceptible to Covid-19 may be as high as 80%.

Professor Karl Friston, like Michael Levitt, is a statistician not a virologist; his expertise is in understanding complex and dynamic biological processes by representing them in mathematical models. Within the neuroscience field he was ranked by Science magazine as the most influential in the world, having invented the now standard “statistical parametric mapping” technique for understanding brain imaging — and for the past months he has been applying his particular method of Bayesian analysis, which he calls “dynamic causal modelling”, to the available Covid-19 data.

Friston referred to some kind of “immunological dark matter” as the only plausible explanation for the huge disparity in results between countries in an interview with the Guardian last weekend. The eye-catching phrase attracted a lot of attention on social media, with some commentators keen to dismiss it as rubbish, but he meant it in a quite precise way: like dark matter, the undetectable substance that makes up approximately 85% of the universe, it is provably there by its effects. We just don’t know anything about it.

His models suggest that the stark difference between outcomes in the UK and Germany, for example, is not primarily an effect of different government actions (such as better testing and earlier lockdowns) but is better explained by intrinsic differences between the populations that make the “susceptible population” in Germany — the group that is vulnerable to Covid-19 — much smaller than in the UK.

As he told me in our interview, even within the UK, the numbers point to the same thing: that the “effective susceptible population” was never 100%, and was at most 50% and probably more like only 20% of the population. He emphasises that the analysis is not yet complete, but “I suspect, once this has been done, it will look like the effective non-susceptible portion of the population will be about 80%. I think that’s what’s going to happen.”

Theories abound as to which factors best explain the huge disparities between countries in the portion of the population that seems resistant or immune — everything from levels of vitamin D to ethnic-genetic and social and geographical differences may come into play — but Professor Friston makes clear that it does not primarily seem to be a function of government coronavirus policy. “Solving that — understanding that source of variation in terms of this non-susceptibility — is going to be the key to understanding the enormous variation between countries,” he said.

Professor Friston is ultra-cautious in his choice of words, and understandably so: the impact of this realisation, if proven correct, is hard to overstate.

Immediately it would change how we should think about lifting lockdown: a tube carriage in London might in theory have to be restricted to 15% capacity to maintain social distancing of 2 metres, but if, as Professor Friston believes, the susceptible population in London was only ever 26% and 80% or more of that group is now provably immune via antibody testing, you can put a lot more people in a tube carriage without increasing the level of risk. Ditto restaurants, pubs, theatres and most recently, MPs in parliament. It would question the whole idea of social distancing being a feature of any “new normal”.

It would take the heat out of the political argument around the pandemic, and give the lie to the idea that it was ever primarily government actions (however incompetent or incompetently executed) that explain differing death rates. As Professor Friston puts it, once you put into the model sensible behaviours that people do anyway such as staying in bed when they are sick, the effect of legal lockdown “literally goes away”.

His explanation for the remarkably similar mortality outcomes in Sweden (no lockdown) and the UK (lockdown) is that “they weren’t actually any different. Because at the end of the day the actual processes that get into the epidemiological dynamics — the actual behaviours, the distancing, was evolutionarily specified by the way we behave when we have an infection.”

Most significantly, it would mean that the principal underlying assumption behind the global shutdowns, typified by the famous Imperial College forecasts — namely, that left unchecked this disease would rapidly pass through the entire population of every country and kill around 1% of those infected, leading to untold millions of deaths worldwide without draconian action — was wrong, out by a large factor. The largest co-ordinated government action in history, forcibly closing down most of the world’s societies with consequences that may last for generations, would have been based on faulty science.

When I put this to Professor Friston, he was the model of collegiate discretion. He said that the presumptions of Neil Ferguson’s models were all correct, “under the qualification that the population they were talking about is much smaller than you might imagine”. In other words, Ferguson was right that around 80% of susceptible people would rapidly become infected, and was right that of those between 0.5% and 1% would die — he just missed the fact that the relevant “susceptible population” was only ever a small portion of people in the UK, and an even smaller portion in countries like Germany and elsewhere. Which rather changes everything.

With such elegant formulations are scientific reputations saved. Practically, it makes not much difference whether, as per Sunetra Gupta, the 40,000 officially-counted coronavirus deaths in the UK are 0.1% of 40 million people infected, or, as per Karl Friston’s theory implies, they are more like 0.5% of 8 million people infected with the remaining 32 million shielded from infection by mysterious “immunological dark material”. If you are exposed to the virus and it is destroyed in your body by mucosal antibodies or T-cells or clever genes so that you never become fully infected and don’t even notice it, should that count as an infection? The effect is the same: 40,000 deaths, not 400,000.

This wouldn’t mean that most of the population is technically immune to Covid-19 — scenarios with a very high viral load, such as doctors treating Covid-19 patients in hospitals may still overpower these defences — but it would mean under normal circumstances, most people would never have contracted the disease.

The atmosphere in the UK continues to change irrespective of Government policy, and if people ever were afraid they are becoming less so, having intuited that, for now at least, the coronavirus threat seems to be in retreat. Gradually, the scientists are providing explanations for why that might be.

How does the professor explain how a Choir in Washington state where 65 of 80 came down with the virus many hospitalized and ~5 died. or the Irish pub in Florida where 15 get infected in one night or the Pharma convention in Boston? There are other events like this as well.
 
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