The author is a professor at the John Hopkins School of Medicine.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-have-herd-immunity-by-april-11613669731

Dean Hoffman wrote

The author is a professor at the John Hopkins School of Medicine.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-have-herd-immunity-by-april-11613669731

Bet we don’t see anything like zero new positives in april.

On Sun, 21 Feb 2021 03:46:52 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

Dean Hoffman wrote

The author is a professor at the John Hopkins School of Medicine.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-have-herd-immunity-by-april-11613669731

Bet we don’t see anything like zero new positives in april.


I am not sure he means zero positives, just a rate low enough that we
can relax a little.
I am also not sure he is right. Time will tell.
Humans do have a way of spontaneously getting over this stuff
The Spanish flu just sort of went away.

On 2/20/2021 12:15 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 21 Feb 2021 03:46:52 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

Dean Hoffman wrote

The author is a professor at the John Hopkins School of Medicine.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-have-herd-immunity-by-april-11613669731

Bet we don’t see anything like zero new positives in april.


I am not sure he means zero positives, just a rate low enough that we
can relax a little.
I am also not sure he is right. Time will tell.
Humans do have a way of spontaneously getting over this stuff
The Spanish flu just sort of went away.



Not really
https://www.history.com/news/1918-fl...ic-never-ended

wrote in message
...
On Sun, 21 Feb 2021 03:46:52 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

Dean Hoffman wrote

The author is a professor at the John Hopkins School of Medicine.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-have-herd-immunity-by-april-11613669731

Bet we don’t see anything like zero new positives in april.

I am not sure he means zero positives, just a
rate low enough that we can relax a little.

Herd immunity is about a hell of a lot more than just relax a little.

I am also not sure he is right. Time will tell.

We already know that there is **** all herd immunity in the
places stupid enough to just let the virus rip like Sweden.

Humans do have a way of spontaneously getting over this stuff

With some viruses they do, with others they don’t.

The Spanish flu just sort of went away.

And influenza, the common cold, smallpox,
ebola, polio etc etc etc didn’t.

On Saturday, February 20, 2021 at 10:47:04 AM UTC-6, Rod Speed wrote:
Dean Hoffman wrote
The author is a professor at the John Hopkins School of Medicine.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-have-herd-immunity-by-april-11613669731
Bet we don’t see anything like zero new positives in april.

Yeah, that part didn't pass the common sense test.

On 2/20/2021 4:37 AM, Dean Hoffman wrote:
The author is a professor at the John Hopkins School of Medicine.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-have-herd-immunity-by-april-11613669731



Brazil thought they had reached herd immunity. How's that working out
for them?


"Another surge was coming. This time, Uildéia Galvão thought they were
prepared.

Galvão, the lead physician in the coronavirus ward at a public hospital
in the Brazilian city of Manaus, had been haunted by the wave that
crashed last spring. In less than 10 days, it ruptured the city’s
bewildered medical system. Sick patients were turned away. The dead were
piled into mass graves.

So Galvão’s hospital organized contingency plans. Additional beds were
reserved, and a detailed schedule for opening them was created.

But the new surge, when it came, was different. The virus had mutated,
with a suite of alterations that probably made it more transmissible —
and perhaps more lethal. Manaus was hit by what scientists call the P.1
variant. This time, it didn’t take 10 days to overwhelm Galvão’s
hospital. It took 24 hours.

Coronavirus-ravaged Brazil places hopes on Chinese vaccine that works
only half the time

Even in a city as traumatized as Manaus, the horror has been unlike
anything doctors have seen. The oxygen quickly ran out. Dozens of
hospital patients have died of asphyxiation. Scores more, unable to get
care, have died at home. Every half-hour, one doctor said, a funeral
procession rumbled toward the cemetery.

“We had a plan,� Galvão said. “We increased the availability of beds.
But even with that, there was strangulation.�

The humanitarian disaster unfolding in the Amazon’s largest city has
shown what happens when government failures, scientific misfires and
public indifference meet a new, possibly more dangerous variant of the
virus that has ravaged the globe.

Believed to have been circulating in the Amazon since December, P.1 now
appears to be the dominant coronavirus strain in Manaus. It’s been
detected in São Paulo and as far away as Japan. A first case was
identified in the United States on Monday.

Scientists are racing to understand the variant, one of several to have
emerged in recent months. They are trying to determine whether it truly
is more transmissible or has simply exploited lax behavior in a region
where many people are either unable or unwilling to take precautions
against the virus. The biggest unknown is whether the variant can infect
people who have recovered from the more common coronavirus strain.

A dying man, and a desperate search for an open bed

Doctors and front-line health workers are describing a dangerous new
chapter in the struggle against the virus. The shift came suddenly: It
wasn’t just the surge in patients but the severity of their cases.
People started arriving at hospitals significantly sicker, lungs chewed
up with disease.

“What has been said before, that this is a strain more transmissible but
not more severe — that’s not what is happening in Manaus,�
epidemiologist Noaldo Lucena said. “This isn’t a feeling. It’s a fact.�

The global implications could be significant. Since the beginning of the
pandemic, Manaus, a city of 2 million swelling along the Amazon River,
has been closely studied by scientists. Local officials shied away from
lockdowns or restrictions that have been successful elsewhere. And what
policies did exist, many people ignored. The virus, believed to have
infected a large portion of the population, was left mostly free to
spread naturally.

“Manaus represents a ‘sentinel’ population, giving us a data-based
indication of what may happen if SARS-CoV-2 is allowed to spread largely
unmitigated,� a team of researches wrote this month in Science.

For a time, after the wave of April and May subsided, scientists and
government officials wondered whether the city had achieved herd
immunity. Some scientists estimated three-fourths of the population had
been infected. Many believed the worst was behind the city.
Daily reported cases in Manaus through July

“Why Manaus will be the first Brazilian city to defeat the Covid-19
pandemic,� wrote a group of researchers from the Federal University of
Amazonas.

No one is saying that now.
A seductive vision unravels

In late December, as the holidays were set to begin, Amazonas state Gov.
Wilson Lima debated what to do. The daily counts of cases,
hospitalizations and deaths had begun to pick up. Scientists were
issuing increasingly urgent letters, calling on officials to institute
immediate restrictions on businesses and gatherings.

“We need to save lives and not deepen the health an humanitarian
disaster,� epidemiologist Jesem Orellana pleaded in one such missive.
“Lives matter!�

On Christmas Eve, Lima announced the closure of all nonessential
businesses. Protesters swept the city, closing roads and setting fires.
Business owners and lawmakers said the economy couldn’t survive a
shutdown. A third of the city’s workers are informal — street vendors,
delivery men, maids. They pushed the governor to repeal the decree. And
within two days, he did.

The coronavirus has come roaring back into Brazil, shattering illusions
it wouldn’t

Retailers and restaurants did brisk holiday business. Massive parties —
some numbering more than 4,000 revelers — gushed onto the streets. And
supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro, who has made inaction the
defining element of his pandemic presidency, rejoiced.

“All power emanates from the people,� tweeted Congressman Eduardo
Bolsonaro, the president’s son.

“Regardless of the alarmist newscasts, Manaus has seen a large drop in
deaths since June, showing collective (or herd) immunity,� tweeted Osmar
Terra, a former Bolsonaro cabinet member.

But that belief — which seems to have seduced many in Manaus into a
false sense of security — was quickly proved a fiction. Soon after the
holidays, deaths and hospitalizations exploded. The hospital system
buckled. The number of confirmed coronavirus deaths at home rose from a
total of 35 from May through December to 178 so far this month,
according to city health officials.
Daily reported cases in Manaus since October

That stunned Brazilian researchers who last month published a paper in
Science proclaiming that 76 percent of Manaus’s population had already
been infected with the virus.

“How can you have 76 percent of people infected and, at the same time,
have an epidemic that’s bigger than the first?" asked author Ester
Sabino. “This was a concern from the moment cases started to rise.�

To understand what was happening — and why the city wasn’t protected
from a debilitating second wave — the team started sequencing fresh
samples, to see if any changes in the virus could explain it.

On Jan. 10, Japan announced the discovery of a new variant, found to
have infected four travelers from Brazil’s Amazon region. Then Sabino’s
team published preliminary findings showing that the strain accounted
for 42 percent of the coronavirus cases sampled in December.

As viruses course through a population, they inevitably mutate, although
most such genetic changes are functionally insignificant. The
coronavirus has spawned countless variants around the world. But P.1 —
along with variants found in South Africa and Britain — is provoking
particular concern.

Not only does it have a spike protein mutation that could lead to a
higher infection rate, it possesses what’s called an “escape mutation.�
Also found in the South Africa variant, the mutation, known as E484k,
could help it evade coronavirus antibodies.

‘There are no words’: As coronavirus kills Indigenous elders, endangered
languages face extinction

Sylvain Aldighieri, a senior official with the Pan American Health
Organization who has been tracking the Manaus outbreak, said there is no
evidence to suggest that reinfections are driving the health crisis. “We
would have many more reports,� he said. “We have to use our common sense
at this point. Herd immunity in Manaus was not achieved.�

Other scientists have expressed doubt that 76 percent of people in
Manaus were infected.

Doctors said they haven’t seen many reinfections but cautioned that it’s
nearly impossible to know. The city was swept by the disease at a time
when shortages in supplies meant few could get tested. That early
failure has seeded today’s: Without previous testing, it’s impossible to
confirm a reinfection.

One case, however, has been confirmed by scientists. Dozens more are
under analysis.

Mariana Leite, 31, an engineer in Manaus, said she tested positive for
antibodies in June and felt a “sense of relief.� She didn’t think it
would be possible to be reinfected, but she said she was. Her polymerase
chain reaction test came back positive Jan. 8.

“It’s caused so much anxiety in everyone,� she said. “We feel like it’s
never going to end.�

Meanwhile, the P.1 variant appears to have widened its reach: In
January, according to a sample of 48 cases, it represented 85 percent of
the infections.

The surge is ‘like a horror film’

The toll has been clear. By mid-January, the hospital system hadn’t just
run out of beds, as it did during the first wave, but also oxygen. Wards
had been transformed, in the words of one epidemiologist, into “chambers
of asphyxiation.� Hundreds of patients were shipped out of the city,
some to the other side of the country.

The federal government was warned of the looming disaster, according to
an investigation requested by the supreme court, but didn’t do enough to
avert it.

On Jan. 3, local health officials told federal officials the health
system would probably fail within 10 days. Then the company White
Martins, which supplies the public health system in Manaus with oxygen,
warned state and federal health officials it couldn’t keep up with
demand. On Jan. 14 and 15, dozens of people suffocated to death.
"

Bob F wrote
Dean Hoffman wrote

The author is a professor at the John Hopkins School of Medicine.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-have-herd-immunity-by-april-11613669731

Brazil thought they had reached herd immunity.

But in fact they hadn't even got close.

On Saturday, February 20, 2021 at 7:37:13 AM UTC-5, wrote:
The author is a professor at the John Hopkins School of Medicine.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-have-herd-immunity-by-april-11613669731

He may be a professor, but much of what he says doesn't conform to
obvious reality. Like this:

""But the consistent and rapid decline in daily cases since Jan. 8 can be explained only by natural immunity. Behavior didn’t suddenly improve over the holidays; Americans traveled more over Christmas than they had since March. "

Traveling, family gatherings, parties, shopping, etc all increased dramatically from
Thanksgiving through XMas. Many people didn;t give a damn and refused to comply
with requests to limit gatherings. So why wouldn't that be a big part, probably the
dominant reason why new cases peaked around Jan 8? There was a rapid decline
last spring too, when infection rates were still low and there was no possibility at
all of heard immunity. As soon as we reduced emergency measures, it took off
again, peaking in July, again, that cycle had nothing to do with heard immunity.
This last up cycle looks like more of the same to me. Part of the decline can
certainly be attributed to more people having already had it and to the vaccines,
but to attribute it only to that is ridiculous. He also states falsely that people
who have had it have great immunity and that if they do get it again, they don't
have severe cases. I read about documented cases where people got infected
again within six weeks or so of having recovered. Two cases in particular, they
had far more severe cases the second time and died. IDK what the overall data
is, but he flat out stated that the second time isn't as severe.

On 02/20/2021 10:38 AM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 2/20/2021 12:15 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 21 Feb 2021 03:46:52 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

Dean Hoffman wrote

The author is a professor at the John Hopkins School of Medicine.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-have-herd-immunity-by-april-11613669731


Bet we don’t see anything like zero new positives in april.


I am not sure he means zero positives, just a rate low enough that we
can relax a little.
I am also not sure he is right. Time will tell.
Humans do have a way of spontaneously getting over this stuff
The Spanish flu just sort of went away.



Not really
https://www.history.com/news/1918-fl...ic-never-ended


There are studies claiming the pandemic subsided when after it killed
off the TB cases. The observed incidence of TB dropped dramatically
after 1919.