[alancalverd]

Your suggestion that "quarantines" would explain why the flu and coronaviruses tend to peak around December/January in the northern hemisphere is very dubious.

I made no such suggestion. This thread is specifically about COVID-19 and it is clear that wherever and whenever quarantine has been strictly imposed, the incidence of new cases has decreased sharply. This is entirely consistent with current scientific knowledge about the transmission of the disease between humans. 

Not too sure what you mean by "people like" me.  My name is a bit of a giveaway (archetypal British male) and I'm a healthcare scientist, but you didn't know that. Perhaps you could elucidate?

[Bored chemist]

singular events can't cause the Rt to hit a certain level throughout a whole month and suddenly reverse it the next month.

it explains why cases peaked around a week or two after the winter solstice,

Well; which is it?
If an event like the Solstice can affect covid rates then an event like Christmas can do so.

I'm done talking to you.

Bye.

[charles1948]

A small minority of people will catch the virus and die. But the vast majority won't  - they'll survive. As they always have throughout human history.  Otherwise we wouldn't be here.

Isn't all this modern faffing about with vaccines and "lockdowns" just wishful thinking?  As if we could immediately stop a virus from doing its thing.

We should just ride the wave, and go on into the future.  Where we can live together with Covid-19, as fellow biological organisms.

What's wrong with that?

[Bored chemist]

As if we could immediately stop a virus from doing its thing.

"Immediately" is  a stretch.
But, in principle, we could do it in a month.
Everyone goes home and stays there except the military who, distribute food + essentials.
After a month the virus will be gone.
So would a lot of people.
And it's not very practical.

But the reality is we could do it.

https://xkcd.com/2287/

[Bored chemist]

Isn't all this modern faffing about with vaccines and "lockdowns" just wishful thinking? 

No,
The hint is from countries that didn't do it properly (like the UK) compared to those that did like NZ.

[Kryptid]

Isn't all this modern faffing about with vaccines and "lockdowns" just wishful thinking?

No...

As if we could immediately stop a virus from doing its thing.

I don't think anyone has argued that we would get immediate results.

We should just ride the wave

That causes hospitals to be overwhelmed (there is a county in the state where I live where the hospitals were routinely above 90% capacity for a while) and you get more people dying that way. Vaccinations will prevent deaths in the future.

[alancalverd]

A small minority of people will catch the virus and die. But the vast majority won't  - they'll survive. As they always have throughout human history.  Otherwise we wouldn't be here.

Wrong. If you do nothing to prevent it, everyone will  be infected, 20% will need acute hospital treatment, 10% will suffer longterm disability and 5% will die. That's why we do what we can to prevent it.

Isn't all this modern faffing about with vaccines and "lockdowns" just wishful thinking?  As if we could immediately stop a virus from doing its thing.

To nobody's surprise, it works. As it has done for smallpox, polio, ebola,....That isn't my interpretation of wishful thinking.

We should just ride the wave, and go on into the future.  Where we can live together with Covid-19, as fellow biological organisms.-

Only politicians use "we" to mean "you".  And even Boris Johnson changed his tune once he had received a dose.

What's wrong with that?

So far, everything.

[set fair (OP)]

"Immediately" is  a stretch.
But, in principle, we could do it in a month.
Everyone goes home and stays there except the military who, distribute food + essentials.
After a month the virus will be gone.
So would a lot of people.
And it's not very practical.
But the reality is we could do it.

https://xkcd.com/2287/

It might have been a good idea to first have vaccinated health care workers, old folk's homes and essential workers plus the military and threaten a Wuhan style lockdown if we didn't (inevitable) obey the current lockdown. Not my favourite prime minister, but, I bet Thatcher could have pulled it off.

[Drmarkf]

The oddity seems to be India where apparently the infection rate is anomalously low - the the extent that Test cricket is now permitted in half-filled grounds.

To be strictly accurate, half of the ground sections have been almost full, while the remaining areas have been almost completely empty 🤣

There’s an interesting discussion of the possible factors influencing the current falling Covid rates in one of the recent BBC More or Less episodes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p098579l [nofollow]

[set fair (OP)]

There’s an interesting discussion of the possible factors influencing the current falling Covid rates in one of the recent BBC More or Less episodes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p098579l

Thanks, looks like nobody knows. I hadn't clocked South Africa.

[set fair (OP)]

The US data is down to interpretaion because there is the fall in cases is overlated by the triple whamy of thanksgiving, christmas and new year but it looks like tne underlying change started around november 12th. All the youtube comentators failed to clock that the surges they predicted didn't match what actually materialised.

[evan_au]

https://xkcd.com/2287/

A pizza-led recovery!

[set fair (OP)]

I think everyone (even virologists) would be able to see what happened in the US if there were graphs of the doubling times of daily new cases and daily deaths. As it is experts are trying to explain something that happened in January when whatever happened, happened 7 weeks earlier.

[set fair (OP)]

You can have two viral infections at the same time but some respiratory viruses don't like company eg flu. Perhaps the US had an epidemic of a mild but very infectious cold.

[charles1948]

The number of Covid cases gets small
When the Spring comes
But will increase
In the Fall.

[CliffordK]

To some extent, we must be running out of unexposed people.

I've heard "Herd Immunity" being thrown around.  But that is only a portion of the story. 

A large portion of the population has been really good at avoiding getting the disease.  So,  the disease may have blasted through some of the retail clerks, and those individuals who are a little careless.  But, there is a huge proportion of the population that is still susceptible.

India and Brazil are in the middle of their next wave of infections.

I think despite all the vaccination, there are signs of the USA heading into a fourth wave (spring 2020, summer 2020, fall/winter 2020, and now spring 2021).  We are hitting Spring Break for students, and the Easter holiday for family reunions. 

Hopefully many of the elderly and vulnerable will have gotten the vaccine, but that isn't universal.

With some luck, the fourth wave will just be a fourth ripple.

[set fair (OP)]

Yes, herd immunity doesn't wash when Utah, Washington and Oregon all follow the national curve and these states are far from herd immunity.

[set fair (OP)]

The dramatic drop in the US and Canada occurred about the same time as 3 variants of concern were taking over in other countries. If this was driven by the fact that there was growing immunity to the wild type due to number of people who had already had the covid, then where were the new variants in the US? Perhaps there was one (or more) which could infect people who had had he virus already but it went undetected because it caused much milder illness and infected people had no or minor symptoms and therefore didn't get tested.

[set fair (OP)]

The photoperiod is known to influence immune functions, such as innate immunity. My own guess is that it explains why cases peaked around a week or two after the winter solstice, when innate defenses would start getting stronger and prevent infections, after doing the opposite in December and accelerating transmission.

Cases peaked in the US early january but the R number started to fall in mid November. So transmissions were decelerating in december. This is easiest to see on the "our world in data site" where you can truncate the graph to show just October to January.

[set fair (OP)]

You can have two viral infections at the same time but some respiratory viruses don't like company eg flu. Perhaps the US had an epidemic of a mild but very infectious cold.

The virus would have to be very infectious to beat the masks and spread right across the US, so maybe it's a pathogen that spreads by fomites... and now they're telling us washing our hands is not so important, not that I'm suggeating the US deliberately released such a pathogen across the country.