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COVID-19 - R0 and Herd Immunity - are we getting closer?

Posted 6 years ago
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POSTED BY: Jan Brugard
10 Replies

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POSTED BY: Jan Brugard

Well put, Jan.

When we come out of this if a few months (hopefully only a few), a large portion of the population will still be susceptible. I worry that new small outbreaks could spread rapidly, giving a so-called rebound. This behavior is not uncommon in dynamical system models such as the ones used for infectious diseases, and there is some evidence that real biological systems behave this way. Moreover, as Dr. Fauci (US NIH) said earlier this week, the pandemic will spread into the southern hemisphere, which is just entering its winter season, and from there it could easily reenter the northern hemisphere later this year or next where there will be lots of susceptible people, unless a vaccine can be discovered and delivered.

POSTED BY: Robert Nachbar

Could not agree more. This leads one to think that we may need to work on general better practices e.g. in medicine considering increasing use of telehealth under even "normal" circumstances (likely to help with minimising all nosocomial infections) and/or that we will have to have repeated periods of increasing social distancing until a vaccine is available.

Posted 6 years ago
POSTED BY: Bernard Gress

Current tests are PCR-based, detect current infection (or at least presence of virus RNA, ongoing debate about significance of positivity for infectivity after resolution of symptoms) with SARS-CoV-2 aka virus causing COVID-19, they would not be (true) positive unless someone is actively infected. Tests to detect prior infection with this virus are being developed but not yet available, they are the serologic assays you hear of. Not fully uptodate but good intro here.

Yes, and if that's right then it would be great. Because then the fatality must obviously be a lot lower than currently believed, and we would be much closer to immunity than we believe.

I highly doubt this though.

POSTED BY: Jan Brugard
Posted 6 years ago
POSTED BY: Josh O
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