[breakfastduck]

Overly cautious about the herd immunity stuff here.

We're not going to eliminate the virus completely. That's a given, we should stop aiming for that.

If we get to a point where there's a stable number of daily deaths then we're good. (like we have for literally every single fatal illness.)

[SECProto]

> (like we have for literally every single fatal illness)

Smallpox. And if you consider within the borders of a given country, a dozen others (polio, measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox).

[0xffff2]

Which countries have eliminated the latter 4? I would consider an illness "eradicated" if the vaccine is no longer regularly given. At least 10 years ago (when I was in the field), MMR and Chickenpox vaccines were still regularly administered in the US.

[SECProto]

> I would consider an illness "eradicated" if the vaccine is no longer regularly given

Fair enough. I would consider a virus eradicated when the general population gives zero thought to it, and effectively no one dies from it. Doesn't meet the strict medical definition, but I thought the description of "If we get to a point where there's a stable number of daily deaths then we're good" was overly pessimistic.

[ksk]

>I would consider an illness "eradicated" if the vaccine is no longer regularly given.

That's not how it works. Just because you don't see an outbreak for a while, that is never a reason to stop immunizing children. Pathogens can and do have natural reservoirs. This is why when some idiots stopped taking the Measles vaccines we had an outbreak here in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_reservoir

[0xffff2]

Of course that's how it works. We don't regularly administer small pox vaccines anymore because it has been eradicated except for a couple of very tightly controlled samples. That's what "eradication" means. My memory is slightly hazy, but I think we might have skipped Polio as well for anyone not going oversees, because Polio largely meets the definition of "eradicated" in the US. Meanwhile, we continue to administer MMR and Chickenpox vaccines because those diseases still exist in the wild. The very fact that Measles has returned is ipso facto proof that it was never eradicated, and the fact that (normal) people never stopped giving that vaccine to their kids is proof that no one ever believed it was.

[artursapek]

COVID-19 is a slice of apple pie compared to Smallpox

[breakfastduck]

None of those are a common type of Flu, which we've never been able to cure, though.

[SECProto]

Covid-19 isn't a "common type of flu" either. The diseases I mentioned were certainly widespread and endemic. And they're all different types of virus.

[rsynnott]

How can people possibly still think COVID is a type of flu? This was perhaps forgivable in February, but...

[nradov]

The moving average of daily deaths in the US has been stable or declining for the past two months.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

[vaughnegut]

A friend of mine in public health mentioned to me that it's not uncommon for second waves of epidemics to be less deadly, since many of the people most vulnerable to the disease would have already passed away during the first wave.

[breakfastduck]

I mean, that's just common sense, and something the media is actively choosing not to raise.

[mikeyouse]

This idea that the "Media" is this sinister entity trying to stop the spread of good news during a pandemic which the entire world has taken drastic steps to curtail yet which has still killed over 1.1 million people is just so silly.

[tfew]

The media optimizes for eyeballs and attention, and hence we see hysterical, inaccurate, and fear-based reporting. With all the noise they put it, it absolutely does crowds out facts showing that the virus is now likely less deadly than it was in the earlier phase of the pandemic.

"If it bleeds, it leads"

[nradov]

Technically this is know as "mortality displacement" or the "harvesting effect".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_displacement

[ffdjjjffjj]

That was true until last week. Deaths are now rising again, and daily new cases are approaching the level of the summer peak.

[breakfastduck]

Daily new cases means nothing - it's a completely artificial figure that can be inflated or deflated by simply changing how many tests are conducted.

Deaths is the only relevant measure.

[ffdjjjffjj]

It doesn’t “mean nothing”, it’s another data point. If you see test positivity rate remaining low but cases increasing - which we do in many areas with sufficient testing - then it does suggest more people are getting the virus.

You can also corroborate this by comparing it to new hospitalizations, which are also up.

“Deaths is the only relevant measure” - not sure where to start with this except to say that this is not at all what epidemiologists seem to think and I won’t address it further without some very dramatic reasoning and evidence.

[irq11]

” If you see test positivity rate remaining low but cases increasing - which we do in many areas with sufficient testing - then it does suggest more people are getting the virus.”

No, it suggests that you’re doing more testing, and finding more cases. Which, exactly as the OP said, is a metric that can be manipulated by doing more testing.

The whole reason we emphasize positivity rate is to try to compensate for the inherent bias in reporting raw case counts.

There have been far more cases than we have ever formally detected with testing. There’s plenty of room to increase that number by testing more people, but it will not affect hospitalizations or deaths - which is exactly what we’re seeing.

[chimprich]

Deaths are not an entirely useful measure to see how the pandemic is progressing because they are a lagging indicator.

Positive test rates measure what was happening about a week ago. Hospital admissions reflect activity a week or two before that, and deaths often get reported a month or more after the events that caused people to get infected.

You have to look at all the data to get an idea of what is happening.

[irq11]

There has been a slight uptick in weekly deaths, roughly on par with what was observed in the last week of September. Given the trend of the line and the delayed reporting from most states, it’s more accurate to say that deaths have flattened:

https://covid-19.direct/US?tab=daily

[komali2]

Doing so would ignore the sometimes dramatic effects survivors experience - from the people I know alone, this ranges anywhere from previous marathon runners still huffing and puffing their way up stairs despite having been otherwise symptom free for 6 months, to a man who survived by the skin of his teeth and it now appears will never be able to taste or smell again.

I don't know about you but I'm feeling like simply "getting to a stable number of daily deaths" doesn't cut it. Also, that statement alone doesn't make sense to me - a fatality rate of 50% could potentially maintain a stable rate of daily deaths... Of thousands.