To help you out, let me give you some arguments that show why your clown theory (of 40-50% of people being T-Cell immune, hence effective herd immunity at 15-20%) is very unlikely to be true:

1. There are dozens of places around the world with 15% infection rates from the first wave where R>2. We're seeing this in some European cities and suburbs right now. As another example: in summer, with substantial distancing, 30% infected suburbs in NY have R=1.

2. We have numerous cases of widespread infection with an incredibly high attack rate. Just one of many: A choir had a single infected person spread it such that 86% of attendees developed actual COVID-19 (the illness, they got sick). This is impossible under your theory.



Against this you have

1. "Oh why is Sweden so low it MUST be T Cell theory = true lmao you're scrambling to explain that one!"
2. Oh look Texas numbers are declining after about 20% burn through, let's ignore all possible other factors in this sensitive multifactorial situation and claim it's just because the T Cell theory is true and they're now herd immune.

That's the quality of the logic you're bringing. It's at the level of an 11 year old. Meanwhile my data points are devastating to your theory and you've never addressed them. How are 86% of choir members (and a dozen other well documented cases of huge attack rate) consistent with your 20% = herd immune, 40-50% = naturally immune, T Cell theory?

Are you sure you understand immune responses and how T cells fight off pathogens?

Your whole assumption is that the USA has some form of herd immunity now, which is just not correct.

A/ We don't know how much of USA has gotten C19.
B/ We don't know how long immunity lasts or how effective immunity will be in winter in places that get cold.
C/ Europe its initial wave was really bad in a lot of countries, I don't see why Europe necessarily has significantly lower infection/immunity rate than USA. Countries like Italy, Spain, UK, Sweden at the very least look close to USA in terms of how the infection has spread.

To me your whole theory is just built on the statistics of recent weeks: USA new infections are going down, and as a result you built your theory.

To note that:
A/ USA infections are now trending up again.
B/ Current USA new infections remain lower than Europe overall, corrected for per capita.
C/ USA death numbers remain very high going into winter and are also trending up again, and remain extremely high compared to Europe, corrected per capita.

The case you are building makes no sense.

Also, even if USA has more herd immunity, if rule compliancy is significantly lower in USA than in Europe (which I think is accurate), that doesn't necessarily mean that herd immunity will result in a worse off winter compared to Europe.

Which is why I asked: What needs to happen when for you to admit your theory about winter and USA/Europe was wrong?

I don't assume that the US has some form of herd immunity. They do however have far more immunity now in their active spreader nodes, which will be a huge advantage going into winter (they're dealing with a much lower R than Europe).

The USA death numbers (combined with the age data we have) shows enormous spread through the young and proves that the US has done a large wave of mass innoculation of the most active spreaders, that Europe hasn't had.

Except they're not. The first wave went through all populations (because life was normal) and the age breakdown shows that. Thus the death rate was ~1% on the first wave. The death rate is maybe 0.2-0.3% during the US summer wave, AND it's spread hugely and organically and preferentially through the active nodes (as opposed to hospitals and normal population contact as the first wave - the burnout through active spreader nodes was arrested by hard lockdown).

The inoculation benefit of second wave deaths is likely 5x or more higher than the inoculation benefit of first wave deaths. Also, it's possible immunity declines over the 8 months it will be before the European first wave immune run into winter.

This is why you shouldn't be a prick when someone else is doing worse than you. The shoe is on the other foot now, my European friend. Europe is a basket case of corona now I'll soon be fleeing for the US. They badly screwed up the first wave, did a good job of containment (at great economic cost) during the time when it shouldn't have been contained, and are now facing down an ugly winter.

We'll know come mid winter or so whether it's correct. There are so many variables that you can't make it an absolute (how much more Europe burns through now, whether there is re-lockdown in time with its economic damage, how bad the flu season is, how population compliance plays out, etc)

1/ I don't think it is necessarily valuable to compare R across countries where the infection spread is significantly different, now that significant measures are in place to reduce the spread, and contact tracing & massive testing is in place. I don't follow all countries but as an example Belgium is ramping up its testing massively in last few weeks.

If we just use the worldometers distribution of countries, Europe is adding 50ish k / day on 743 million population.

USA is adding 38ishk on 331 million population.

USA infection is still bigger than Europe.

If Europe continues ramping up and USA reverses it current increase, that will change in a week, but lets see what happens first.

2/ I accept that we disagree on "who is doing better USA vs Europe", I understand we'll not agree. And it has something to do with your attraction to Trump. And tbh I don't really care, I understand that your posts should just be ignored if they are related to Trump. What I dislike and why I keep responding, is your analysis of the situation the USA. I strongly disagree with the idea that the USA summer spread will make it easier for them to handle winter. You are overestimating the effect of the immunity, are assuming that the immunity effect will be strong and are overestimating the immunity gap vs EU & USA. I also think it is more likely that EU population will be more responsible during winter vs USA, and that that effect will be bigger than anything related to the USA its 'favorable immunity position'.

3/ Shouldn't you just move somewhere where there will be no real winter and that are not being ravaged by C19?

None of this has anything to do with Trump. People have Trump on the brain; I've said since day 1 that the leaders (anywhere) are almost irrelevant in how this plays out; it's the experts and bureaucracy and the population characteristics that determines how this plays out. I have no interest in discussing Trump, but I'll shoot down idiot notions of him being a major factor in spread when people make that false claim. I'd do the same for France's Macron if people claimed that, or Spain's leaders. Experts and their incompetence have driven this response, as has population responsibility and IQ levels.

A month ago I would have agreed with you that Europe will act far more responsibly than the US, and some countries will (Germany for example, the Nordic countries). But having seen the absolute clownshow that Prague has become, going from 200/day to 2000/day in a month and with no will to act responsibly (everyone is tired of corona and just wants to live), I'm not so sure any more.

I consider it an open and shut case that the US is far more immune. I mean most US deaths have happened at a 0.2% death rate (cf. 1% in Europe with nearly all deaths in the first wave), which means 5x the burn through. In the US it's also been prolonged natural spread with high selection bias toward the least responsible, most socially active nodes, which amplifies the immunity effect. There's no question in my mind that the R in the US will be WAY lower than in Europe come winter (for a given level of lockdown/economic destruction), and R is really all that matters. You can tweak distancing to keep it at or below 1 if R is low; if R is high there's no choice but to go full ****** with lockdowns when things get bad.

As for where they are in comparison, I'd rather be a leader in the US than Europe right now. What a mess. We'll see if they can get it under control without lockdown in the next few weeks.

This just popped up on my stock news feed:
In Europe existing spread has been overwhelmingly through the young, so this sounds like the 4/5th generation of spread is now going to the old. In 6-8 weeks this means a soaring death rate (you need several generations of intra-group spread through the old and then about 3 weeks for the deaths to start piling up).

This paper came out yesterday on T Cells. It is from the British Medical Journal, which is probably some third-tier bunch of quacks who don't know what they are talking about.

https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563

Tooth you keep talking about the importance of R and use the example of 1.2 vs 1.8 or whatever, but doesn't the math change as time goes on? R will decrease on its own over time as more people gain some immunity?

Authoritarians in the thread saying leadership and messaging don't matter during a pandemic.

Will be interesting to see if Europe as a whole moves significantly higher than the 40/50k we're at now (depending which definition of Europe you use). I personally expect it will keep increasing until politicians & population wakes up.

Death trend is also bad in a lot of countries, especially France & Spain, but also remains quite good in a lot of countries. The new EU wave is really weird. Next few weeks will be crucial & very interesting.

Number of positive cases is now higher than during wave 1. Obviously testing & contact tracing changed a ton, but politicians in a lot of countries are acting like "this is fine, in line with expectations, nothing going on". Really weird. I expect them to be wrong & it'll get really awkward in 1-3 weeks.

This graph says it all

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-neil-ferguson

A deliberate burn through in the summer was literally the expert SAGE bipartisan working group's recommendation to avoid a terrible winter second wave and have lower overall death. Now he's complaining about "relaxation of controls over summer"?? That was the whole damn strategy they put forward, and why so many people died in the first wave. Another expert proven incompetent.

We disagree far too much on that to even begin to have a useful conversation.

Perfect storm is what we are facing now and no-one who has been listening to the experts should be remotely surprised.

This is the counter argument.

https://twitter.com/UKCovid19Stats/s...63726991675392

6-8 hour waits to get the test administered here. Weeeeeeee

socialized medicine ftw! waiting hours upon hours for medical services is the Canadian way.

knock on wood I haven't had to step foot in a hospital in many years.

Off-topic, but I am still impressed from my experience:

Recently had a minor surgery in Belgium (socialized medicine ), surgery with local anestesia. My experience was:
Enter hospital. Get private room immediately upon arrival. Less than 1 hour after entering the hospital there's blood everywhere (local anestesia, was awake during the surgery). After 45 minutes surgery is over, doctor asks me if I have any more questions. We chat for a few minutes, then I get moved back to my private room where I get a meal. Nurse tells me I can stay the whole day in the room to recover and that the doctor will come check if I am still here at some point, should I have any more questions. But that I'm allowed to leave whenever if that's my preference.

I eat the meal and chill for 15 minutes, leave the hospital. A little more than 2 & a half hours after entering.

Wont cost me a single cent .

Nice. Although not technically free since half your income is taxed, but still glad to hear you have a system that actually treats you like a human being. In Canada we pay half our income, and then some cases you end up needing a major operation and you die on the waiting list. (many such cases! Sad!).

Canada C19 deaths: 9.2k
US: 200k

USA Government still spends a ton on healthcare, so you have to pay for it in taxes and insurance premiums. Someone living in Canada will pay less tax towards health care than someone living in USA.

I would assume that the serious side effect probability might fall into the range where it would be correct for some people to get the vaccine but not others. Would the FDA be allowed to approve it with this distinction?

Dunno who Tom Gara us but it being transverse myelitus was known some time ago (Chrisv iirc in another place posted about it, must be at least a week ago)

Does Tom Gara actually know anything or has he heard a word and googled it?

Haven't found any other references to it anywhere, and a Facebook employee isn't a reliable news source imo. From what I could see, the NYT article was talking about the cases we already knew about 2 weeks ago.