How do we know a pandemic's over?

[Chanakya]

Three nonsensical posts in a row. I must have won the argument!

I am not equipped to argue against you. But that's fine, because I'm not even attempting to argue against you. Like I assured you, I'm happy to just follow this, is all.

Sorry, couldn't resist interjecting that admittedly completely nonsensical comment, but, I mean, c'mon, an epidemiologist called Cockburn? Don't the limericks just write themselves?

"ducks down again, for good this time*

 

[icerat]

I am not equipped to argue against you. But that's fine, because I'm not even attempting to argue against you. Like I assured you, I'm happy to just follow this, is all.

Sorry, couldn't resist interjecting that admittedly completely nonsensical comment, but, I mean, c'mon, an epidemiologist called Cockburn? Don't the limericks just write themselves?

"ducks down again, for good this time*

Well ... to be fair ... a year after that paper above, he did publish this ...

 

[jt512]

I am not equipped to argue against you. But that's fine, because I'm not even attempting to argue against you. Like I assured you, I'm happy to just follow this, is all.

Sorry, couldn't resist interjecting that admittedly completely nonsensical comment, but, I mean, c'mon, an epidemiologist called Cockburn? Don't the limericks just write themselves?

Sorry. I completely missed the joke. That is, indeed, hilarious. Even better than Dr. Anil Potti.

 

[novaphile]

Sorry. I completely missed the joke. That is, indeed, hilarious. Even better than Dr. Anil Potti.

Didn't work for me.

I've known too many people who are called Cockburn, and hence read it with the usual pronunciation.

Do Americans pronounce it as 'co' or 'cock' ?

 

[jt512]

Well ... to be fair ... a year after that paper above, he did publish this ...

[qimg]https://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/2482765b2e595b158c.png[/qimg]

It took balls to write that.

 

[jt512]

Didn't work for me.

I've known too many people who are called Cockburn, and hence read it with the usual pronunciation.

Do Americans pronounce it as 'co' or 'cock' ?

The latter.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

... People promoting work from home really piss me off, because it ignores the vital workforce that keeps the rest of us alive. The entire food supply chain, emergency workers, doctors, nurses, police, infrastructure workers, rubbish collectors...

Work from home is selfish and counter-productive, Thank christ it's now a thing of the past here and most other places. And yet, virtually no workers are dying of covid.....

So because not everyone can work from home no one should?

Talk about selfish and counter productive.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

We don't have a global goal to eliminate the common cold,

Well d'uh, the "common cold" as you refer to it comprises more than 200 different pathogens and a good 35% of those are not specifically identified pathogens.

... or influenza. Hell, influenza gets a vaccine update every year, and it's still expected to be endemic forever.

Again, you don't understand a category of pathogens that while related in this case, still represent a large number of different pathogens.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Come on, you're panicking!
It's the nearest pump!
You can't expect us to go all the way to Warwick Street. Everybody else is using this one in Broad Street.
You might not iike it, but it's a fact!

I find it fascinating people know about the Broad St pump.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

... Two diseases [smallpox and SARS1] which conveniently aren't contagious pre-symptoms.

Not exactly.

Starting with smallpox:

For smallpox per the CDC, contagion begins when lesions develop within the mouth but those must be recognized by the patient or at least by the patient who goes to a healthcare provider who recognizes what they are.

Smallpox patients became contagious once the first sores appeared in their mouth and throat ...

... These scabs and the fluid found in the patient’s sores also contained the variola virus. The virus can spread through these materials or through the objects contaminated by them, such as bedding or clothing. People who cared for smallpox patients and washed their bedding or clothing had to wear gloves and take care to not get infected.

Rarely, smallpox has spread through the air in enclosed settings, such as a building (airborne route).

In England one of the last cases was spread through an open window in a lab to a person in a room one floor below.

The fact there was no animal reservoir was how, combined with intense public health work, it was eliminated. There is still some risk of cases in lab facilities but it is not currently circulating in any human populations.

... The measles vaccine is incredibly efficacious at stopping the disease, with an extremely stable virus and no need for vaccine boosters over half a century of use.

Sort of. We give 2 doses to get the small number of vaccine failures that occur if only 1 dose is given. It still leaves a small percentage of persons who are vaccine failures.

As for herd immunity, if you get ~95% of the population immune that's enough to prevent sustained person to person spread.

... As you're fully aware, none of the covid vaccines are anything like the efficacy of MMR and the virus is constantly mutating. We've already been through 3 or 4 new vaccines in 3 years and current versions have been highly ineffective against infection.

When you say, MMR, don't forget that is 3 separate vaccines with different levels of efficaciousness.

... Maybe you need to put down the rose-tinted spectacles and look at reality for a while.

I've lost track. Just what specifically are you claiming @Icerat is wearing rose-tinted glasses to look at?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Oh yeah. About that SARS1 period of communicability:

Again from the CDC:

Is a person with SARS contagious before symptoms appear?
To date, no cases of SARS have been reported among persons who were exposed to a SARS patient before the onset of the patient’s symptoms.

And given it's airborne as opposed to droplet spread it appears to not be contagious via contaminated surfaces. OTOH, it did turn out reusing isolation gowns posed some risk to healthcare providers.

 

[The Atheist]

Why do I even bother engaging with someone who thinks that a case in Thailand is evidence the virus had spread to "all parts of the globe".

I think I'm guilty of expecting someone who considers himself an expert on the subject to be up with the play. Mea culpa.

I only showed one case in Thailand, because it proves my point beyond doubt. We know that a large number of cases never developed symptoms and that people from Wuhan were flying around the globe before the virus was identified. If one positive was found on 13 January, it's certain there were dozens of others. The cat was well and truly out of the bag, which is why I was first to call a global pandemic on 23 January 2000. You should go back and look at the first thread on the subject to get to grips with it all.

You also know how contagious covid is, so expecting people to believe it was able to be stopped at any stage isn't realistic.

Such a statement proves you know nothing about human behaviour - and also apparently struggle with reading comprehension, since, as I made clear, I consider masking to be a relatively low priority intervention. I rarely do it myself. But I'm used to that kind of response -

"We need good ventilation and HEPA filters!"

As I've pointed out many times, those ideas are pie in the sky. There isn't the money or resources to make it happen, and air purifiers won't stop it spreading. As I'm marginally involved in the HVAC industry I have a very good handle on what the costs and impossibility of implementing systems would be.

I used masks as an example, because you were the one who raised the FFP2 masks. I was just stating an obvious fact and if you want to talk human behaviour feel free to explain how you're going to convince people to wear masks, which would need to be an integral part of the illusory elimination strategy you're trumpeting.

 

[dann]

Why do I even bother engaging with someone who thinks that a case in Thailand is evidence the virus had spread to "all parts of the globe".

I think I'm guilty of expecting someone who considers himself an expert on the subject to be up with the play. Mea culpa.

I only showed one case in Thailand, because it proves my point beyond doubt. We know that a large number of cases never developed symptoms and that people from Wuhan were flying around the globe before the virus was identified. If one positive was found on 13 January, it's certain there were dozens of others. The cat was well and truly out of the bag, which is why I was first to call a global pandemic on 23 January 2000 [sic]. You should go back and look at the first thread on the subject to get to grips with it all.

You also know how contagious covid is, so expecting people to believe it was able to be stopped at any stage isn't realistic.

If people pretend that "one case in Thailand ... proves [their] point beyond doubt," there really is no point in engaging with them. I assume that's the reason why Peter Hotez didn't bother engaging with Joe Rogan and RFK Jr.
When they live in a country that eliminated the virus a couple of times before the vaccines and before it mutated to become several times more contagious - Is anybody even counting how many times more contagious at this point? - it makes it even more obvious that they have no interest in the truth about the pandemic and ways to combat it.

This attitude is made even more obvious by selective quoting of posts they 'criticize'. For instance, why cherry-pick and leave this out?

You very words here confirm I was correct - if it was successfully supressed it was, by definition "kept out". Permanently, no. But that's expected. You eliminate locally then handle introduced outbreaks. That's how elimination works.

It is so much easier to pretend that the argument never existed and leave it out when you reply to a post.

Such a statement proves you know nothing about human behaviour - and also apparently struggle with reading comprehension, since, as I made clear, I consider masking to be a relatively low priority intervention. I rarely do it myself. But I'm used to that kind of response -

"We need good ventilation and HEPA filters!"

As I've pointed out many times, those ideas are pie in the sky. There isn't the money or resources to make it happen, and air purifiers won't stop it spreading. As I'm marginally involved in the HVAC industry I have a very good handle on what the costs and impossibility of implementing systems would be.

I used masks as an example, because you were the one who raised the FFP2 masks. I was just stating an obvious fact and if you want to talk human behaviour feel free to explain how you're going to convince people to wear masks, which would need to be an integral part of the illusory elimination strategy you're trumpeting.

"As I have pointed out many times" = 'As I claim again and again without any documentation or even consistent argumentation whatsoever.'
"I have a very good handle on" = 'I am an (alleged) authority, so there is no need for me to document anything.'
"I was just stating an obvious fact" = 'Anything I claim without any reference to actual numbers or facts is an obvious fact.'

"WAAHHHH!!! WAHHHH!!!! butIdonwannawearamask!!!! WAAAHHHHH!!!!!"

That is the response that those pretend arguments call for, but ...

 

[marting]

I find it fascinating people know about the Broad St pump.

Interesting. I was just reading how the Polio epidemics started as a result of improved sanitation and hygiene. This is a really fascinating review:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2991634/

First, the earliest outbreaks occurred in countries where hygiene and sanitation were most advanced. As public health improved in less developed countries, outbreaks followed, over a period of 60 years from about 1890 to 1950 (18, 31). Second, once polio became established, the age distribution gradually increased over many years, consistent with an increasing delay in initial infections (discussed further below). Third, in pre-epidemic countries, a high proportion of infants transitioned from passive antibodies to active antibodies without a seronegative gap.

 

[dann]

After more than two months of silence, on Wednesday the London-based weekly financial outlet, The Economist, finally updated their global daily estimate of excess deaths attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to their projections, the cumulative global excess death toll now stands at 28.5 million, 4.1 times higher than the official COVID death toll, which surpassed 7 million at the end of 2023.
For inexplicable reasons, The Economist’s tracker, which uses a machine-learning model that provides estimates of excess death for every country on every day since the pandemic began, suddenly stopped updating in mid-November, just as the winter surge of the JN.1 variant began.
Amid fourth winter of death, COVID excess death toll approaches 30 million globally (WSWS, Jan 26, 2024)

Estimated cumulative excess deaths during COVID-19, World (Our World in Data: Data source: The Economist (2023); WHO COVID-19 Dashboard)

 

[dann]

Come on, you're panicking!
It's the nearest pump!
You can't expect us to go all the way to Warwick Street. Everybody else is using this one in Broad Street.
You might not iike it, but it's a fact!

I find it fascinating people know about the Broad St pump.

1. I'm not exactly people.
2. Before I posted it, I tried to find a sketch based on the idea. I was surprised that I didn't find anything. It writes itself.

Consider, for instance, people telling workers at the local brewery that filtration or boiling of the water doesn't work:
'It's a confabulation by the Illuminati made up to force people to exercise more by walking all the way down to Warwick Street, and everybody knows that exercise isn't good for us. It's a waste of life force that will make us die sooner!'

There was one significant anomaly—none of the workers in the nearby Broad Street brewery contracted cholera. As they were given a daily allowance of beer, they did not consume water from the nearby well. During the brewing process, the wort (or un-fermented beer) is boiled in part so that hops can be added. This step killed the cholera bacteria in the water they had used to brew with, making it safe to drink.
Broad Street cholera outbreak (Wikipedia)

It will be observed, that the water of the companies of the Surrey Side of London, viz., the Southwark, Vauxhall, and Lambeth, is by far the worst of all those who take their supply from the Thames

Other companies, such as the New River Company and Chelsea Waterworks Company, were observed to have better filtered water; few deaths occurred in the neighbourhoods which they supplied. These two companies not only obtained their water from cleaner sources than the Thames, but they filtered the water and treated it until there were no obvious contaminants.
Investigation by John Snow (Wikipedia)

It’s time to revisit Donald Trump’s ‘battery’ theory of life force (CNN, Feb 8, 2019)

Or the protests against the oppressive regime when they come to remove the pump handle:
'It's not that we aren't in on doing something to improve health, but what about our free choice? Those among us who believe in the government propaganda are free to go down to Warwick Street if they want to. They can do that any time! We're not stopping the scaredy-cats! But why force it upon the rest of us who know that this disease has nothing whatsoever to do with the pump? Some of us have been doing our own research, and we know that it's caused by miasma! Besides, we know for a fact that the government has put something in water in Warwick Street to control our minds and turn us into witches and atheists!'

Dr William Farr, the commissioner for the 1851 London census and a member of the General Register's Office, believed that miasma arose from the soil surrounding the River Thames. It contained decaying organic matter which contained miasmatic particles and was released into the London air. Miasma theorists believed in "cleansing and scouring, rather than through the purer scientific approach of microbiology."
1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak: Miasma theory (Wikipedia)

 

[Myriad]

Other companies, such as the New River Company and Chelsea Waterworks Company, were observed to have better filtered water; few deaths occurred in the neighbourhoods which they supplied. These two companies not only obtained their water from cleaner sources than the Thames, but they filtered the water and treated it until there were no obvious contaminants.
Investigation by John Snow (Wikipedia)

John Snow knows nothing.

 

[dann]

'It's obvious that John Snow only came up with his crazy idea because the government bribed him to do so! Unlike us, he never did his own research!'

By the way, somebody else deserves credit for that particular part of the story. The Wiki quotation was introduced by this:

The cholera epidemic of 1849–1854 was also related to the water supplied by companies in London at the time. The main players were the Southwark and Vauxhall Waterworks Company, and the Lambeth Waterworks Company. Both companies provided water to their customers that was drawn from the River Thames, which was highly contaminated with visible and invisible products and bacteria. Dr Hassall examined the filtered water and found it contained animal hair, among other foul substances. He made the remark that:

It will be observed, that the water of the companies of the Surrey Side of London, viz., the Southwark, Vauxhall, and Lambeth, is by far the worst of all those who take their supply from the Thames

1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak: Investigation by John Snow (Wikipedia)

The link to the Wiki article about the Lambeth Waterworks Company tells us that, "facilities played a role in John Snow's statistical investigations during a cholera outbreak, the facility was further upriver than many other waterworks and hence had cleaner water, leading to fewer cholera deaths."

 

[dann]

And speaking of John Snow: Primers (John Snow Project).

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Just when you thought it was over...

Covid-19 wastewater levels rise for three weeks in a row

Covid-19 modeller Michael Plank said even though wastewater readings could bounce around a little, it appeared there had been a rise in actual cases, with those reported to Te Whatu Ora also trending upwards.

That was probably because more people had been returning to work and school after the holidays, he said.

The number of people currently hospitalised with the virus was 200 - about half the number at the peak in December.

"That peak was itself already much smaller than many of our previous waves," he said. The Christmas wave was mainly driven by the JN1 variant, which now made up about 93 percent of all cases.

Just one problem with that - the December wave was not 'much smaller than many of the previous waves'. In fact it was larger than the previous one.

However when I looked at the numbers yesterday I noticed a peculiar change - hospital numbers at the peak of that wave had been revised downwards.

Compare this graph captured on the 10th of January...

...to this one today.

On Jan 10 the numbers were 483 on Dec 24 and 439 on Dec 31. The next week it went even higher, but I naively didn't capture that graph. Today it's saying 377 on Dec 24, ~22% lower than it was on the Jan 10 graph. Now I don't know what to believe....