For 450 years Typhus ravaged Europe. The death rate without antibiotics is somewhere from 10 – 40%.
There is still no vaccine to typhus, but overcrowded ghettos of partially starving people managed to stop the spread in 1941. The Nazis crammed some 450,000 people into a 3.4km2 area in Warsaw. In the first round, typhus spread rapidly, infecting 120,000 people and killing 30,000. But the Jews got organized and just as everyone was expecting rates to rocket with winter approaching, the exponential curve fell off suddenly “to extinction”. A new paper claims they beat it with social distancing, hygiene, and home quarantine.
Typhus is due by a bacterium transmitted by lice and fleas. It causes a fever, headache and rash. It was such a scourge that in 1759 one estimate suggests as many as a quarter of all prisoners in England died from typhus. Infection rates were so bad in prison that the disease was called ‘gaol fever’ and prisoners on trial would even infect court members from time to time. In the early 1600’s more than 10% of the total German population may have been killed by typhus. Currently it is infrequent except for in a few African and South American nations. There were less than 50 cases in the US during the 35 years up to 2010.
New study explains how the Warsaw Ghetto beat typhus
RMIT via MedExpress,
“Fortunately, many of the anti-epidemic activities and interventions are documented, and it turns out that Warsaw Ghetto had many experienced doctors and specialists,” he says.
Stone found evidence of well organized training courses covering public hygiene and infectious diseases, hundreds of public lectures on the fight against typhus and an underground medical university for young students.
General hygiene and apartment cleanliness were encouraged and sometimes enforced. Social distancing was considered basic common sense, and home quarantining was not uncommon. Many volunteer soup kitchens were opened up in the period before the epidemic’s decline.
“In the end, it appears that the prolonged determined efforts of the ghetto doctors and anti-epidemic efforts of community workers paid off,” Stone says.
“As those in the Warsaw Ghetto demonstrated, however,” Artzy-Randrup explains, “the actions of individuals in practicing hygiene, social distancing and self-isolating when sick, can make a huge difference within the community to reduce the spread. It is the cooperation and active recruitment of communities that beat epidemics and pandemics, not government regulations alone.
Typhus was largely controlled around the world in the 20th Century because in 1909 Charles Nicolle realized that lice were the vector. In World War I, delousing stations were set up on the Western Front, though typhus killed thousands on the Eastern Front, and by 1922 it was raging in Russia with some 25 million cases. After World War II major outbreaks were quelled, largely with personal and public hygiene and a lot of DDT.
The Rickettsia bacterium is not the same as coronavirus which can spread through the air, but it’s kind of inspiring that community compliance and public health measures can stop deadly killers even in crowded impoverished ghettos.
We can’t stop coronavirus with the exact same measures, but it’s still possible to extinguish transmission lines with determined dedication. It’s harder to stop an airborne spread but we have so many more tools at our disposal than imprisoned Jews did in 1941. What we seem to lack is the will. Coronavirus is only a fragile string of chemical code that will decay in two weeks if it doesn’t find any new bodies to live in. Thankfully it’s nowhere near as deadly as typhus, but ironically, if it were that deadly, it’d probably kill less people in the West overall. We’d be shutting borders, wearing masks, and we’d be galvanized into action, not squabbling.
How much damage has already been done to our formerly high-trust societies?
When universities like James Cook Uni sack their whistleblowers and turn themselves into Government PR machines, the price is far more than the billions it costs to keep the “safe spaces” working. The real price is that, on the odd occasion, even when academics give good advice, people don’t believe them.
there are vaccines against rickettsial diseases … just not enough demand for typhus to justify the expense. great coronavirus vaccines in avians .. we should expect good results against viremic coronavirus in people as well.
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That may be true that there are working vaccines against other rickettsial diseases, but there is still no vaccine for any other human coronavirus infection, and the point of the typhus tale is that there are other ways to beat diseases, and any public health program needs a cohesive high trust community.
There are many diseases we have essentially eliminated from our own nations both with and without vaccines. Typhus is just one.
The Covid vaccines in trial now may still not give long protection — we have no idea. They may still turn out to have side effects we don’t want. Or it may be that a 3 month vacc combined with quarantine can knock this thing out of the West (though the poor unfortunates of the third world still suffer). A 3 month vacc may make travel possible to infected nations.
Big Pharma has invested billions in over 100 different vaccine potentials. They won’t be as happy if the West eliminates the virus or if it uses a cheap antiviral. Selling vaccines to the poor in Africa does not generate the same profit.
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Hi Jo
Agreed and well said. We just haven’t followed accepted practices( I had posted the inadequacy of identification and testing of Covid viruses in another post)to be confident we understand Covid virology or its infectiousness.
Something stunning from the Victorian Red Cross Covid protocol for blood donors .
Donors in the affected areas are still able to donate as long as they meet our standard eligibility criteria, are feeling well and healthy, have not been in close contact with a confirmed COVID-19 case and are not waiting on the results of a COVID-19 test.
I wonder how many slipped through?
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The challenge is not in believing academics, rather in considering academics are actually “experts”. Expertise Is based on real world performance, and graded by comparison to the results of many others’ performance.
The problem with academics is that they rarely deal with real world performance, and generally, tenured academics fall into “camps” or “schools” of acceptable thought. In other words, progression in academia is generally by sticking with the consensus (of similarly minded academics). This pattern becomes worse when consensus is shaped by funding practices – at which point, consensus becomes only about continuing the status quo.
I doubt either the academics or the government will consider a major review or revision of university funding as a result of the recent decision against Peter Ridd.
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Your so right.
The invasion of politics and government funding everything that really don’t helps its own citizens. Back in the 1980s, I was finding everything turning into a business and many experts starting to appear.
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As I understand it Tenure was supposed to buck that trend via ensuring on-going employment if differing academic views are voiced.
It’s not so much about Peter Ridd, as the bent JCU Administration, and hyperventilating advocate media-sl*ts in bio-marine science, rather than geo-marine science.
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You couldn’t have summed it up better Pauly.
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[Off topic]AD
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DDT was used to kill lice that carried typhus as well as mosquitoes that carried malaria.
The banning by the Left of DDT based on fictional data is another example how the Leftists kill people based on lies (apart from other more direct methods).
DDT was banned in the US in 1972 and elsewhere soon after.
I’m not sure how many people died from typhus after the ban on DDT but it certainly caused the death of 50 million people due to malaria.
Unbelievably, flea borne typhus is present among the homeless in the Democrat paradise of downtown Los Angeles.
https://www.outbreakobservatory.org/outbreakthursday-1/10/18/2018/typhus-bites-back-in-los-angeles
https://asiatimes.com/2020/02/california-sees-resurgence-of-medieval-diseases/
http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/acd/vectortyphus.htm
Article about the DDT ban and malaria deaths:
HOW THE ENVIRONMENTALIST BAN ON DDT CAUSED 50 MILLION DEATHS FROM MALARIA
http://www.discoverthenetworks.com/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1259
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Just to clarify, I am talking about DDT control of typhus outside and after the Warsaw Ghetto where social distancing was the control method.
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Stephen Talty in “The Illustrious Dead”, deals with the history of Typhus and in particular its effect on Napoleon’s Grand Armee in 1812.
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I’ve got an msds on that that refutes your unfounded hysterical assertions.
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There’s not much in the MSDS that doesn’t also apply to most other pesticides and chemicals in general. All statements are extremely conservative because no one wants to be sued due to some idiot misusing the product. Used appropriately it is safe and can save lives in areas where mosquitoes don’t already have resistance. And 50 million lives were lost due to malaria when DDT was banned, not that Leftists care because they believe in depopulation anyway, except for the Elites.
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Well that was well supported. I suppose you read the toxicology papers? All chemists are marxists?
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Your MSDS is big on ” could” but light on “will” !
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What?
That Democrats in downtown Los Angeles have fleas?
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From the New England Journal of Medicine on masks for COVID:
We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection.
Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes).
The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal.
In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2006372
via this twitter thread: https://twitter.com/jcho710/status/1273924949162340353
… which contains various quotes, like:
“An N-95 mask filters out particulate matter larger than .3 microns.
So the question then is how big is a COVID particle.
A COVID particle is about .1 micron….this idea of people doing anything particularly useful w…a mask is just LOONEY TUNES.”
– Sen. Dr. Scott Jenson, M.D.
Dr. Michael Levitt, Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry on the WHO’s approach to COVID:
“I think that there was a dynamic here, a dynamic which I found very anti-scientific.
Dr. Michael Levitt, Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry. “The total number of excess [COVID] deaths [as of May 7] is 160,000, maybe 170,000.
Basically, that’s about the same number of people who died in excess way in the flu season of 2017/2018.””
Dr. Alan Preston, Prof of Epidemiology: “This is a rookie 101 mistake in epidemiology. You don’t take the incidence rate to figure out the [case] fatality. You look at the prevalence. & it was stunning that the media would put on these so-called experts & not raise this issue.
The case reality rate is just completely and absolutely overstated.”
Dr. Michael Roizen, Chief Wellness Officer at the Cleveland Clinic. On the COVID-19 fatality rate: “Look at 60 and under, it is less than 0.002%.”
Dr. Artin Massihi: “The epidemiology of this disease is similar to the flu.”
Dr. Eran Bendavid, Professor of Medicine at Stanford, on mainstream COVID narrative data: “The numbers don’t quite add up.”
Many more quotes/links at twitter thread.
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Pretty much what ive also been saying that the current cov19 virus has similar danger to a bad flu.
In 2019 Victoria had 334 deaths from flu.
What I have noticed is Victoristan appears to not release any information about any existing comorbidities and results of autopsy.
The deaths are predominately 65+ years,just like the flu.
Corona virus is dangerous, unless youre Fauci
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/07/phony-fauci-blasted-taking-off-mask-ballpark-terrible-first-pitch/
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‘A spike in deaths attributed to flu and pneumonia has sparked concerns that COVID-19 deaths may have been misdiagnosed in Australia, indicating that there could be higher levels of community transmission than believed.’ SMH
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SMH.
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Travis,
I can and have already quoted more papers showing that masks reduce spread by as much as 70%. (Do you read my posts?) What do we believe? Theoretical micron limits that suggest masks are useless or the observations of in vivo studies that show they work? Corroborated with real life data from nations which use masks versus those that don’t?
I too thought masks couldn’t filter out these tiny particles. Then I read the papers. Because most transmission appears to come from large droplets, the masks may very well be effective on these larger particles which also carry many copies of the virus.
And viral load does seem to matter too (another point I thought was irrelevant) masks may reduce the load.
http://joannenova.com.au/tag/masks/
Chu et al (2020) Physical distancing, face masks, and eye protection to prevent person-to-person transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis, http://www.thelancet.com Vol 395 June 27, 2020, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31142-9
See also
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/03/masks-can-stop-maybe-75-of-influenza-and-you-can-make-them/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19193267
So I was wrong twice, I thought masks were useless and I thought viral load was irrelevant. Then I read the best arguments from both sides and I changed my mind.
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PS: Regarding the persistent myth that Covid = The Flu.
After massive quarantining that reduced flu cases by a record amount, the idea that this disease is “like the flu” flies bizarrely in the face of observations.
If it take massive action to keep deaths to the same level as a normal flu season how is that “the same”? Do the maths on what happens without massive action, is that another flu season or something ten times worse?
Second waves all over the world show that we are not remotely near the end of the coronavirus tally. How is comparing the partly run pandemic with total flu seasons even remotely sensible?
PS: The epidemiology of this disease is NOT like the flu. It’s a cluster spread disease with a high K value that makes the Ro rate changeable. The presymtomatic incubation is 2 – 4 times longer for Covid (which gives us more time to track and trace contacts). The demographic mortality rate is very different — in the flu children under 5 are the largest spreaders and suffer a high mortality.
I realize it’s hard for people with no background in epidemiology to judge — but just as with climate science — it’s always possible to find one expert to say something that supports whatever we want to hear.
It doesn’t matter whether they have a Nobel, they can still say unsupportable junk.
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I’ll save that for later
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Al Gore?
Rajendra Kumar Pachauri?
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From my armchair I can see only a slight symptomatic difference to the ‘Flu. I cannot take it serious when we have conflicting “expert” opinion regarding the efficacy of masks;OK not to wear , now a game changer. I am quick coming to the view of “herd immunity” as it has been the historical response. This is not the Spanish Flu or the Plague. Get used to it unless an effective vaccine comes.
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Good luck trying to change the views of anyone here Jo.
No mater what evidence you put up.
It’s against their ideology
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They were misdiagnosed in Florida, on correction the numbers reduced from 90,000 to 11,000.
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What a pity COVID-19 cannot read all those blogs saying it’s really just like a bad flu season and the world has overreacted.’
Greg Sheridan/Oz
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In this cossetted age we have overreacted. Massive paranoia.
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And who needs hospitals, doctors or old people either!
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As you have probably seen, OriginalSteve, (from Gateway Pundit) not all doctors agree with the “health experts”.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/07/us-frontline-doctors-hold-presser-washington-dc-dispel-misinformation-covid-9-including-attacks-life-saving-hcq-treatments/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/07/frontline-covid-doctor-calls-fake-news-challenges-cnns-chris-cuomo-take-urine-test-prove-isnt-taking-hydroxychloroquine-video/
Yeah, this news is not on the ABC or news.com.au so just ignore it, it”s probably just another case of fake news about the Damnpanic.
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Travis, masks may have a pore size that theoretically lets very small particles through. But be aware that with impact on the mask-fabric and static charge on that fabric from air being drawn through captures almost all of the small particles impacting the mask. This does NOT apply very well to those masks made from people’s socks where the course fabric has pore sizes of 10 microns or more. An aerosol particle of 10 um diameter, containing perhaps 100,000 virus particles, may well fly straight through such a home-made mask.
Further, a single COVID particle almost certainly would not infect a person on its own. A single dry COVID viral particle flying through the air would quickly degrade and be non-viable. I’ve asked people, including Jo, how many COVID particles would be needed to cause infection but nobody knows. Very likely it would take tens of thousands of viable COVID virus particles to cause infection. Worry more about the larger inhalable aerosol particles containing thousands of viable COVID-19 virus in a tiny droplet though secure envelope of watery saliva floating around in indoor air and landing on bench-tops, door knobs, your mouth, nose, eyes etc.
That the COVID-19 virus would be 0.1 um diameter would not be right. That would be 100 nanometres in diameter – that’s huge for a virus. You would be able to see it under a visible-light microscope. I don’t think so !! Masks are useful, wear them. But I would agree that compulsory wearing of masks in uncrowded outdoor space is unjustified nonsense!
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On viral load, in theory, one perfect virus might be enough. But in practice perhaps there are so many errors that it takes 2 or 3 viruses in a single cell at the same time to create a perfect working factory. And therefore it may take hundreds of viruses just to get the odds of three viruses at once in the same cell.
As for compulsory use in outdoor and other spaces, I agree that it may not be that useful, but if the rules are too complicated it means people need to remember to put masks on and off often (with the risk that entails as well) so the whole mask wearing becomes less effective.
For that reason I would still support one simple mandatory rule. The more effective the antiviral measures are the sooner we can dump all the restrictions.
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Hi Jo
Have you researched the cost of universal community mask wearing?
Its quite in depth and the costs keep mounting for both the community as a whole and the individual.
I am still against the mandating of universal face coverings (incl scarfs and homemade).
Data does not look good for countries that mandated masks…Venezuela (April), Vietnam, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Morocco or France (May)and then there are the US states of New Mexico (May) or California (June).
Do you know any locations that achieved/maintained a downward trend after mandating face coverings?
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Have you researched the cost of universal community mask wearing?
At $5,000 per day for an ICU bed, plus cost of extending lockdowns at Billions of $ per week, better to ask how many billions are saved by cheap masks.
OK. Pick one — Austria. Plan to make masks compulsory announced from March 30. Check out the daily case load and the death rate. How is that “failure”? Obviously closing the borders in Austria (too late) made the biggest difference to the peak. But post masks, as community spread would have taken over — What “fail” was there?
Masks are obviously useful, but it may well be that in low trust polarized and dysfunctional communities, even after mandating them, the community resists doing all the sensible and useful things that stop the virus.
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Austria – still has rising infections
Masks are a failure (like lock downs) because they never end – every country/location in the list above (i got tired of looking them up but i expect the list is even larger) still has covid and almost all are rising infections….. again!!
Lock downs, masks……eradication is a battle destined to fail
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I strongly disagree with this. The spread of infection among the human population is a strong function of the level of care taken. Anyone wearing a mask sends me the message that they are concerned about themselves and their community. I like to send the same message. Even if it is no more effective against the virus than a black arm band worn by a mourner showing their care and respect; it is sending a message of caring.
A large number of people in Colac, southwest of Melbourne, is begging to be locked down. They see the upside of imposed quarantine outweighing the upside of “freedom”. A large number of businesses have shut their doors as the virus spreads through the local population. Most people out and about in Colac are already wearing masks in public despite the current order only applying to Melbourne and Mitchell Shire.
My son is a physician in the COVID wards of a large Melbourne hospital. In 3 weeks the hospital caseload went from two returning travellers with CV19 to 2 full wards of proven COVID sufferers and another two wards dedicated to suspected COVID awaiting test results; 60 in total and climbing. He said that most recover between 5 and 10 days after admission but those who do not clear it after 10 days are in for a tough time. Anyone over the age of 40 admitted with it is likely to become a serious case. They have ample supplies of the three drugs proven effective in managing symptoms. So far his hospital has only lost 1 person. But there are 6 in intensive care.
If you think it tough wearing a mask then give some consideration to medical staff required to wear them for 14 hour shifts; sometimes without a break (of any sort) – real physical and mental endurance.
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One thing that came out of that war was American Acceptionalism where everyone not American was beneath them. President Bush was fully expecting the same fanfare as they did freeing the French and other countries when he invaded other countries. Truly believing the propaganda of freeing them while blowing everything up and invading.
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You misunderstand American Exceptionalism. It’s not an arrogant view of the rest of the world, but the result of seeking excellence in everything we do while protecting and exporting the freedom that it arose from. By setting this example, many other countries followed and became more successful themselves. This is what the Marxists in control of the Democratic party are trying to destroy.
Yes, in many cases, America has been over zealous when freedom is attacked, and rightly so, but all too often we end up doing the dirty work for the least evil faction trying to gain control. Unfortunately, what leads us to do this is when the most evil faction already controls the majority of the population using propaganda and methods that are hard to override.
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I have no problem with “American exceptionalism”. Australia has a cultural variation on it called, being a “quiet achiever”. When I was younger this was widely encouraged by the ‘Ocker’ idiom, “Have a go ya bloody mug!” It seems obvious the objection to “American exceptionalism” is that it should be tagged as, “Classified! – For American Ears Only”.
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… and New Zealand is God’s Own.
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US doctors holding press conference to stop what appears to be organized disinformation campaign about cov19?
https://www.americasfrontlinedoctors.com
“American life has fallen casualty to a massive disinformation campaign.”
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Another reason is that the models used by “experts” in infectious diseases are proving to be completely wrong:
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This is a broad discussion by people in the field regarding the cause the problem and the solutions.
My prediction they are all about to be de-funded, de-registered and generally busy with tax and compliance issues.
As Professor Peter Ridd has discovered you do not attempt to ‘Subvert the Dominant Paradigm’.
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Biden’s speech coach from UCLA addresses his fellows at the 2Hr 16 Min mark.
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Amazing to see a group of professionals attempting to relay their experiences and discuss strategies without the aid of a professional organization and its media managers.
As Rob Oakeshott said after announcing his support for the socialist Gillard Government as a show of contempt for his historically conservative electorate
I wish them all the success in attempting to bring healthcare back into the control of their community and in accordance to their principles.
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The Jewish tradition has a long history of isolation of infectious sick people as evidenced by the following examples biblical commandments:
As long as they have the disease they remain unclean. They must live alone; they must live outside the camp. (Lev. 13:46)
Command the people of Israel to remove from the camp anyone who has a skin disease or a discharge, or who has become ceremonially unclean by touching a dead person. (Num. 5:2)
AND after these Biblical commandments, examples:
When there is an epidemic in the town keep your feet inside your house. (Talmud, Bava Kama 60b)
Around 1347 the Jewish physician Jacob of Padua in Ragusa (now Dubrovnik) advised the city to establish a treatment area outside of the city walls for those who were sick.
Following Jacob’s advice the city established the following regulations. Sound familiar?
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Yes. Quarantine the sick. We had quarantine stations at most Ports of entry until about the 1960’s. We had leper colonies.
Imagine what would have happened in Ragusa if they had locked downed and destroyed the economy. There would have been not a Dubrovnik
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Yes. As far as I know, now is the first time in history that the healthy are quarantined along with the sick.
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Reality check – normal flu killed 334 last year ( 2019 ) in Victoria.
It appears there is consideration create “Covid Camps” for a bad flu. Why?
Citizen, your papers please…..
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/pm/epidemiologist-calls-for-melbourne-tower-residents-to-be-moved/12427814
“Epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws calls for lockdown, Melbourne tower residents to be moved to safety
“…and she’s calling for a purpose built facility to move large groups of people to…”
Um……FEMA Camps in Australia?
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Re the myth that we “didn’t” Quarantine the healthy.
Sigh. For the 50th time in comments. We quarantined the healthy in the past and we still do it now. Whole boats were ordered to quarantine. Whole towns were cuts off. Whole forts were locked down.
There was no way to know who was presymptomatic, and healthy people were always caught up in groups with the sick.
Even today to keep rabies out we quarantine all animals for 180 days — six months — because we cannot detect which ones are healthy even though most of the animals are.
Could people please toss out the idea that the ancients had a magical way to identify asymptomatic and presymptomatic people and could therefore “only quarantine the sick”.
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Thank you for the historical quotes re Jewish ancient knowledge. Really interesting.
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I think generally, I have no issues isolating sick people ( with some conditions about human rights of course ).
However – the thing I am very careful about is that until the deaths top 334 in Victoria ( equivalent to the flu in 2019 ) *and* we have information on the actual causes of death, then I’m not prepared to trust the actions of what in effect is now acting like a communist state with in effect no democratic oversight now ( i.e. an indefinately suspended parliament ). Then add in the cozy-up top the CCP, roving enforcement “gangs” of police and ADF, similar to China, and, well …ya have to ask….
My concern is now that this is a political exercise – the full information about how people have died from “covid” is not forthcoming. Why?
Its a public health issue, the public has a right to know. Just like in China, critical information is withheld from citizens, while the govt has its way with them.
Its an ugly image, and I apologize, but its the truth. The public are being “monstered” with no access to transparent information. It has to stop.
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Vested interests are everywhere, plus graft and corruption.
But that doesn’t mean that ALL pandemics are fake.
Fight your way past the noise. Both can be true — people are really dying of a fairly nasty new disease AND Big Pharma wants to make money, and Big pollies are both scared of failing and killing people and also delighted to pretend to be King Rulers.
The best way to get back to normal is to get rid of the flu. Then corrupt pollies have no excuse to clamp down…
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The actually sick are in urban hospitals, the not very sick are isolated in homes. Hospitals are always going to be in the cores of cities, as that’s where the people to treat are.
[I’ve spoken to people in remote northern communities in northern Australia who actually expected multi-story major hospitals to be built in the middle of nowhere. I pointed out that this is why there’s a very expensive large fleet of Royal Flying Doctor Service aircraft, with a typical cruise speed of 270 knots, and range of 1,500nm. But even that didn’t compute. And why did they feel this way? Because left-wing activist health experts had told them it was unfair, that they were the victims of a gross in justice, and they were entitled to be treated fairly, and have a major hospital nearby, just like almost everyone else who live in a city … reality optional.]
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Too true, but may I advance your logic a couple of more steps WXcycles.
Step 1: The reason the large Hospital is in the the city is due to the population density.
Step 2: The reason the population is concentrated in the city is generally due to the presence of a shipping facilities, factories, processors and of course breweries.
Step 3: The productive businesses leave to cheaper real estate avoiding the traffic jams and the Port is relocated to deep water. The City is then infested by Solicitors fighting over the carcasses.
Step 4: The City is destroyed and burnt down, sacked by the vandals (sorry peaceful protestors) as there no longer is a reason for its existence.
Happens all the time. Asks the Romans etc.
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Great outline by Pauly at #1. We need to understand the background.
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What can we say? Western Education in 2020.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/149157242@N05/50160755776/in/dateposted-public/
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Sorry to descend to triviality, but “the disease was called ‘goal fever’…” Shouldn’t that be “gaol” fever?
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Ahem. 🙂 True, goal fever presumably strikes soccer fans. Fixed. Thanks.
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Should the critique supplied by former Prof Ridd be given the same weight as the critique supplied by former TV Chef Pete Evens?
In a broader question, who gets to be an expert?
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looking at the comments on this thread, it is easy to dismiss any opinion, but it seems impossible to actually define the credentials to which an expert should have.
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“it is easy to dismiss any opinion”
Especially when its based on ZERO EVIDENCE, like warming by atmospheric CO2 !
You for instance, have ZERO credibility… and you work hard at maintaining it.
Peter Ridd had PLENTY of evidence of scientific malpractice at JCU, but the far-left bureaucrats in charge couldn’t let the truth come out.
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He’s very consistent.
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Peter, you are asking the wrong question. What you seek is the perfect person, who is “THE” expect so you can just lay your brain down and believe 100% of what any man says.
Instead, we are all human, all imperfect, and each statement we make needs to stand or fall on the evidence, not on WHO spoke it.
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Good point – but how am I to weigh the evidence as it is presented.
For example, Pete Evens might be right, his evidence is that by referring to coronavirus instead of Covid-19 all the deaths for coronavirus are conflated into those for Covid-19. I don’t believe anything he says, not since the ‘activated almonds’. So even if he was right, I would be on the opposite side.
Secondly I’m more inclined to accept evidence presented by someone who can claim authority on the topic. This would be you in the case of microbiology and Covid-19
In both examples, the evidence is coloured by the person presenting it.
Lacking the ability to conduct my own experiments, I do not see how to untangle the message from the messenger
/the coronavirus group includes the common cold
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Poor peter,
You have just told us all that you look at who is presenting the evidence, rather than the actual evidence.
We knew that already. Actual evidence is immaterial to you.
It is NOT a scientific approach, you know 😉
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See – I can always depend on you to prove my point
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Poor Peter, striving for IRRELEVANCE !!
01
What a garbled mess Peter.
Clean it up.
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The experts are way off. People on these threads have more insight than the entire VicHealth department. Even posted on thes threads myself back in Feb/March that this virus was airborne. You only had to look at the images out of Wuhan as well as have experience on hygiene standards on the Princess cruise boats to understand the virus spread more than just by direct contact.
The issue here in Victoria is one minority group has more say on government policy than the goal of public safety…workers united…
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Isn’t an expert one who gets paid for their opinion. The more money they get the higher up the ladder they go. For me, I’ll follow the experts who don’t make it on MSM.
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In the market for a cheap unused desalination plant?
But wait! If you buy one, we’ll include a second desalination plant, for the same low price!
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What happened to buy one get one free?
There are all those *cough* infomercials narrated in Strine accents so broad they can be sliced ‘n diced and finely chopped with a blunt butter knife — but Wait! There’s more! — FREE! $99 Value —Just add postage and handling — this offer not available in stores.
The last book I threw at the Telly connected well. Peace! Glorious peace! I’m not going to fix the Telly, not this time. The hardback version of “Magicians of the Gods” was Magic and really packed a good punch. Maybe one day I’ll tell Mr Hancock just how well it worked.
It didn’t hurt the book at all! (the telly was made in China) Great book, great read.
Recommended.
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From Judith Curry via ‘Watts up with That’ from Charles Rotter and Nic Lewis.
“Why herd immunity to COVID-19 is reached much earlier than thought – update”
Charles Rotter / 25 mins ago July 27, 2020
Reposted from Dr. Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.
Posted on July 27, 2020 by niclewis
By Nic Lewis
I showed in my May 10th article Why herd immunity to COVID-19 is reached much earlier than thought that inhomogeneity within a population in the susceptibility and in the social-connectivity related infectivity of individuals would reduce, in my view probably very substantially, the herd immunity threshold (HIT), beyond which an epidemic goes into retreat. I opined, based on my modelling, that the HIT probably lay somewhere between 7% and 24%, and that evidence from Stockholm County suggested it was around 17% there, and had been reached. Mounting evidence supports my reasoning.[1]
I particularly want to highlight an important paper published on July 24th “Herd immunity thresholds estimated from unfolding epidemics” (Aguas et al.).[2] The author team is much the same as that of the earlier theoretical paper (Gomes et al.[3]) that prompted my May 10th article.
Aguas et al. used a SEIR compartmental epidemic model modified to allow for inhomogeneity, similar to the model I used although they also considered further variants. They fitted their models to scaled daily new cases data from four European countries for which disaggregated regional case data was also readily available. In all cases they found a better fit from their models incorporating heterogeneity to the standard homogeneous assumption SEIR model. They found that:
Homogeneous models systematically fail to fit the maintenance of low numbers of cases after the relaxation of social distancing measures in many countries and regions.
Aguas et al. estimate the HIT at between 6% and 21% for the countries in their analysis – very much in line with the range I suggested in May. They also found that their HIT estimates were robust to various changes in their model specification. By contrast, if the population were homogeneous or were vaccinated randomly, the estimated HIT would have been around 65% –80%, in line with the classical formula, {1 – 1/R0}, where R0 is the epidemic’s basic reproduction number.[4]
Aguas et al.’s Figure 3, reproduced below, shows how the HIT reduces with increasing variation either in susceptibility (given exposure) or in connectivity, which affects both an individual’s susceptibility (via altering exposure to infection) and infectivity. The coloured dots and vertical lines show the inferred position of each of the four countries they analysed in each of these (separately modelled) cases.
Aguas et al. Fig. 3 Herd immunity threshold with gamma-distributed susceptibility (top) or connectivity related exposure to infection (bottom). Curves generated with the SEIR model (Equation 1-4) assuming values of R0 estimated for the study countries assuming gamma-distributed: susceptibility [top]; connectivity (and hence exposure to infection) [bottom]. Herd immunity thresholds (solid curves) are calculated according to the formula 1 − (1/R0)1/(1 + CV^2) for heterogeneous susceptibility and 1 − (1/R0)1/(1 + 2 CV^2) for heterogeneous connectivity. Final sizes of the corresponding unmitigated epidemics are also shown (dashed).
As Aguas et al. say in their Abstract:
These findings have profound consequences for the governance of the current pandemic given that some populations may be close to achieving herd immunity despite being under more or less strict social distancing measures.
The underlying reason for the classical formula being inapplicable is, as they say:
More susceptible and more connected individuals have a higher propensity to be infected and thus are likely to become immune earlier. Due to this selective immunization by natural infection, heterogeneous populations require less infections to cross their herd immunity threshold than suggested by models that do not fully account for variation.
The Imperial College COVID-19 model (Ferguson et al.[5]) is a prime example of one that does not adequately account for variation in individual susceptibility and connectivity.
Aguas et al. point out that consideration of heterogeneity in the transmission of respiratory infections has traditionally focused on variation in exposure summarized into age-structured contact matrices. They showed that, besides this approach typically ignoring differences in susceptibility given virus exposure, the aggregation of individuals into age groups leads to much lower variability than that they found from fitting the data. The resulting models appeared to differ only moderately from homogeneous approximations.
A key reason for variability in susceptibility to COVID-19 given exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing is that the immune systems of a substantial proportion (35% to 80%) of unexposed individuals have T-cells, circulating antibodies or other components that are cross-reactive to SARS-CoV-2 and can be expected to provide substantial resistance to it.[6] [7] [8] [9] Such components likely arise from past exposure to common cold or other coronaviruses, or to influenza.[10] Not being specific to SARS-CoV-2, and typically not being antibodies, such immune system components are not normally detected in seroprevalence or other tests for immunity to SARS-CoV-2.
I will end with a follow up to my June 28th article focusing on Sweden. In it, I concluded that it was likely the HIT had been surpassed in the three largest Swedish regions, and in the country as a whole, by the end of April notwithstanding that COVID-19-specific antibodies had only been detected in 6.3% of the population.[11] I also projected, based on their declining trend, that total COVID-19 deaths would likely only be about 6,400. Subsequent developments support those conclusions. Swedish COVID-19 deaths have continued to decline, notwithstanding a return to more travel and less social distancing, and are now down to 10 to 15 a day. According to the latest Financial Times analysis,[12] excess mortality in Sweden over 2020 to date was 5,500, or 24%. That is only about half the excess mortality percentage for the UK (45%), Italy (44%) and Spain (56%), and is also lower than for France (31%), the Netherlands (27%) and Switzerland (26%), despite Sweden not having imposed a lockdown or shut primary schools. Moreover, total mortality in Sweden over the last 24 months is now lower than over the previous 24 months, despite an upward trend in the old age population.
Nicholas Lewis 27 July 2020
[1] One example, further supporting my superspreader-based evidence of variability in social connectivity, is Miller et al: Full genome viral sequences inform patterns of SARS-CoV-2 spread into and within Israel medRxiv 22 May 2020 https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.21.20104521 This paper shows that 1-10% of infected individuals caused 80% of infections. That points to variability in social connectivity related susceptibility and infectivity quite likely being higher than I modelled .
[2] Aguas, R. and co-authors: Herd immunity thresholds estimated from unfolding epidemics” medRxiv 24 July 2020 https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160762
[3] Gomes, M. G. M., et al.: Individual variation in susceptibility or exposure to SARS-CoV-2 lowers the herd immunity threshold. medRxiv 2 May 2020. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.20081893v1
[4] The basic reproduction number of an epidemic, R0, measures how many people, on average, each infected individual infects at the start of the epidemic. If R0 exceeds one, the epidemic will grow, exponentially at first. But, assuming recovered individuals are immune, the pool of susceptible individuals shrinks over time and the current reproduction number falls. The proportion of the population that have been infected at the point where the current reproduction number falls to one is the ‘herd immunity threshold’ (HIT). Beyond that point the epidemic is under control, and shrinks.
[5] Neil M Ferguson et al.: Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand. Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team Report 9, 16 March 2020, https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk:8443/handle/10044/1/77482
[6] Grifoni, A.et al.: Targets of T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in humans with COVID-19 disease and unexposed individuals. Cell 11420, 2020 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.05.015
[7] Braun, J., et al.: Presence of SARS-CoV-2 reactive T cells in COVID-19 patients and healthy donors. medRxiv 22 April 2020 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20061440v1.
[8] Le Bert, N. et al.: Different pattern of pre-existing SARS-COV-2 specific T cell immunity in SARS-recovered and uninfected individuals. bioRxiv 27 May 2020. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.26.115832
[9] Nelde, A. et al.: SARS-CoV-2 T-cell epitopes define heterologous and COVID-19-induced T-cell recognition. ResearchSquare 16 June 2020. https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-35331/v1
[10] Lee, C., Koohy, H., et al.: CD8+ T cell cross-reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 conferred by other coronavirus strains and influenza virus. bioRxiv 20 May 2020. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.20.107292.
[11] Such seroprevalence is likely to significantly understate the proportion of the population who have had COVID-19, since asymptomatic or mild disease often results in undetectably low antibody levels (Long, Q. X. et al.: Clinical and immunological assessment of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections. Nat Med. 18 June 2020 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0965-6 . Such patients will nevertheless be immune to reinfection (Sekine, K. et al.: Robust T cell immunity in convalescent individuals with asymptomatic or mild COVID-19. bioRxiv 29 June 2020 https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.29.174888).965-6
[12] https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441. Data updated to 13 July
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B****r. This was supposed to be a response to WXCycles at 14.1 but the blog decided it had to be, just had to be, a sparkling clean brand new comment. I guess that’s a pleasant change from your comment is awaiting moderation.
And it’s only Tuesday today …
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It’s doing it again. Oh well, back to my book …
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Post it again in the right spot Sophocles and I’ll delete the one that fell in the wrong spot.
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Would take or buy a vaccine that this guy was involved with?
https://twitter.com/LegendaryEnergy/status/1287509508206391296?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1287681814295961600%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fhealth%2Fnext-time-youre-called-crank-or-flat-earther-being-concerned-about-rushed-coronavirus
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Good news, looks like the heard immunity threshold is only between 7% and 24%
https://judithcurry.com/2020/07/27/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought-update/
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Yank rubbish..
Proven by the simple fact that 146,000 Americans are DEAD.
Thye will still be trying to promote this herd immunity crap
From their hospital beds
When finally Covid decides to strike them down.
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Now if only we had the strict discipline of the Warsaw Ghetto to keep us all together we could beat this thing. Careful Jo as you’re getting a bit far out there when it’s patently clear now with asymptomatic community infection raging all the billions and sacrifices have been futile. Now it’s treatment and perhaps a vaccine but I see the hydroxychloroquine and zinc treatment has got the docs out in the street calling out Fauci and Co. Prove with a urine test you’re not taking it Fauci they cry and maybe they know something but the true science will always out in the long run.
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