What if we break out the individual countries?
And we obviously canât lock down our country like New Zealand did, but you can see how effective it can be in that chart.
China also has aggressive lockdowns, backed by its usual authoritarianism, and the population is also highly COVID-concerned. There is also incentive to underreport by the central government (for international propaganda purposes) and by local governments to the central government (no one wants to be the bearer of bad news). However, even honest counts are likely to be far better than in the US.
Other than relatively high income, the US is trending toward characteristics usually associated with poor countries: a distrustful and divided population, increasing income and wealth inequality, an economy with many markets trending toward oligopoly, politics more focused on hurting the other side rather than working together, etc⊠Is it a surprise that the US is a relative failure in COVID-19 mitigation, as evidenced by having âlockdownsâ that are enough to be burdensome, but not enough to be effective at stopping the virus?
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Who here is choosing the variolate themselves with COVID-19?
A question about the mask study-cloth masks were found to reduce transmission about 50% but that was found not to be statistically significant? How can that be? And presumably the same level of risk reduction occurred for all variants? So if KN95s were 83% effective against omicron, they were also 83% effective for delta?
I didnât know intentional injections with covid were allowed in the US, @ucbalumnus . I know the UK did some as part of a medical study recently. Is that here too?
Someone who wanted to variolate with COVID-19 could just find someone with COVID-19 and get breathed on by that person in close proximity for a significant amount of time indoors in a small poorly ventilated room. No injection needed. Of course, they would then want to test themselves over the next several days to make sure that they got it, in case they get an asymptomatic infection.
Not that I would recommend such a thing. But it is something that someone who does not want to get vaccinated but does want to gain natural immunity can try. Of course, there is the risk of severe COVID-19 or long COVID-19.
Many, many people live in homes with family members who have covid and no effective way to isolate. Millions. Some of them also developed covid, some did not. I guess they were all variolating.
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Iâm editing this post because I thought previous posters were talking about variolation for the purpose of organized scientific study. There are studies conducted to study Covid infection vs. immunity and I heard about it on Science Friday this morning. They talked about swabbing your nose with varying amounts of virus and measuring the immune response.
I actually was thinking about volunteering. My ears and sinuses disagree. Weâll see.
Well, that didnât take long. Did anyone suggest that people are trying to get Covid? Because I sure didnât. That doesnât negate the natural immunity of those who have had Covid. If we hadnât ignored and downplayed natural immunity throughout the pandemic just maybe we would be in a better place today with our vaccination numbers. As I said earlier, once you lose trust itâs har to regain it.
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I heard about the study looking for volunteers to study the infection on Science Friday this morning.
Before vaccines, there were posters here advocating that we let the virus infect everyone to get to natural immunity / herd immunity, but none that I recall were choosing the variolate themselves. Meaning that they were advocating everyone else take the risk with the virus, but they were not willing to do that themselves.
As far as past infections go, it would be reasonable to consider that as equivalent to vaccination for policy purposes, but such past infections would need to be documented by medical records or an antibody test.
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With so many people taking home tests perhaps we just have people certify their own past infection.
Thereâs nothing wrong with saying natural immunity from having Covid is good. The problem is going forward, no one yet knows whoâs going to be fine, whoâs going to have longer term effects from mild to major, and whoâs not going to make it. For those who survived, great, esp if without problems. (Time will tell what, if any, problems come down the road from lingering or unseen effects of course.)
Iâve seen it proposed post vaccine that it could be reasonable to get Covid (post vaccine only) to have the extra protection natural immunity provides. I havenât seen âCovidâ medical folks suggest trying to get it without being vaxxed first. We havenât gone that direction, but we continue to look at the data out there. We arenât getting any younger and age matters.
Personally, Iâm hopeful that between the vaccines and those who got it even if not vaccinated that Covid will decrease a ton in the near future so it wonât be a major issue.
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I expect covid now will be regarded as chickenpox ( 1989?) And measles (1957?). If you were alive then you are presumed to have been exposed and either were infected or developed immunity.
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I know medical lad needed a titer for chicken pox to prove he had it since he wasnât vaxxed. This was just a couple of years ago. Nothing is presumed without a vax record, at least for his medical job.
Perhaps not for medical jobs. It has been presumed for every college, grad school and employment I have had.
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This one was interesting to read as I was catching up on âlocalâ news, particularly the back door method being used. It reminds me of another story from years past where our local Taco Bell drive thru had an off menu âspecial,â or at least they did until a police officer ordered it and was âsurprisedâ with what he received.
The problem is immunity from Covid is not as predictable as that from vaccination. Anecdotally, how many people do you know that swear they had Covid before it was here in the US.
In order to accept natural immunity (which shouldnât be discounted btw) we would have to have better tracking, track which variant they had, have better testing, have better variant tracking and an app to contain all this information.
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Yes, endemic canât get here soon enough
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