So it must show that something else is going on, for example that a significant number of people, especially younger ones, resist infection without ever generating detectable quantities of antibodies. Those people are as good as immune, since they are most unlikely to get infected.
This is very possible and various experts have expressed the same view. There is certainly something going on which doesn’t add up, because you get scenarios where the thing spread really rapidly which shows it is highly infectious, and at the same time antibody tests are showing a low level in the population.
The current view here is that 80% of infected people (showing positive on a virus test) are asymptomatic, and since this group is unlikely to get tested, there you go…
In the meantime the UK new infection numbers have stopped going down. I expect this will be mirrored in other countries as they relax the movement restrictions
Deaths are still going down, a few % per day, but this is on a roughly 4 week lag from infections
Germany has levelled off too, although at lower numbers, and with a recent increase
Clearly this thing is not going to just fizzle out. It’s here to stay.
Clearly this thing is not going to just fizzle out. It’s here to stay.
Yep. The best case is that the number of infections stays roughly constant. My model says that there is a surprisingly large flat zone around 1<R<1.5 where this happens.
Can your model predict the level at which the media will get bored? 
The difficulty is that you still don’t know how badly “you” might be affected. You might be asymptomatic or you might end up on a ventilator. Notwithstanding the statistics on the various health and genetic factors which so strongly feature in the latter group, you just can’t tell.
This uncertainty is stopping a lot of people from going back to a normal life. Shaking hands is going to be finished. At 63, will I ever fly with anyone else (except Justine, my GF) again? For older people, only a vaccine will end this. The young, and some % of the others, will soon stop caring, and will thus ensure it does never go away.
Peter wrote:
Germany has levelled off too, although at lower numbers, and with a recent increase
Recently there have been a few significant hotspots here, including a meat processing plant in NRW and housing blocks in Berlin and Göttingen with lots of poor/migrant tenants. The meat industry in particular seems to be vulnerable, with several hundred infected in a single factory
Similar outbreaks happened in the US earlier.
Peter wrote:
This is very possible and various experts have expressed the same view. There is certainly something going on which doesn’t add up, because you get scenarios where the thing spread really rapidly which shows it is highly infectious, and at the same time antibody tests are showing a low level in the population.
There was a study (i believe it was reported here) showing that 100% of people having had Covid-19 had T/B-cells specific to SARS-CoV-2 and were thus immune. Apparently detecting T/B-cells specific to a particular virus is much more difficult than antibody detection.
Peter wrote:
This uncertainty is stopping a lot of people from going back to a normal life. Shaking hands is going to be finished. At 63, will I ever fly with anyone else (except Justine, my GF) again? For older people, only a vaccine will end this. The young, and some % of the others, will soon stop caring, and will thus ensure it does never go away.
Without a vaccine we will all have to make choices.
but then we make choices every day. We choose to get out of bed, we choose to fly an aircraft with one engine, we choose to drive a car, we choose to eat too much, so the list goes.
Most choices at least to some extent, and probably largely subconscioulsy, are based on our perception of risk.
While the risk of being infected is very low, I suspect most people will accept the risk. The CAA will not allow pilots to self certify for ever. So most will accept if the infection level is very low, they will fly with an examiner.
If hot spots develop, people will naturally retreat into their bubbles.
Essentially, I think the lower the risk is perceived, and the fewer we hear that are being infected, the more COVID will not be considered a significant risk, with the reverse of course being true.
MedEwok wrote:
Recently there have been a few significant hotspots here, including a meat processing plant in NRW and housing blocks in Berlin and Göttingen with lots of poor/migrant tenants. The meat industry in particular seems to be vulnerable, with several hundred infected in a single factory
Similar outbreaks happened in the US earlier.
There is a suggestion in the Times today that there is an indication that COVID does better in cool, humid conditions (as found in an abattoir).
Great. So we will all be forced into veganism at some point.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
Essentially, I think the lower the risk is perceived, and the fewer we hear that are being infected, the more COVID will not be considered a significant risk, with the reverse of course being true.
Yes, exactly. And awareness of the virus will inevitably reduce as soon as the media gets bored, as hinted at by Peter earlier today. This will also affect the public perception of risk, probably already does as we speak.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
There is a suggestion in the Times today that there is an indication that COVID does better in cool, humid conditions (as found in an abattoir).
Which makes sense if we recall that the previously known common Coronavirus variants, e.g. those causing the Common Cold, also appear more often under such conditions.
Moreover, there is a social/political component to this: Wherever there are many poor/poorly educated people packed closely together, as is the case in an abattoir as well as in (social) housing blocks, infections spread easier. This has been true for almost all infectious diseases since time immemorial.
Iceland Review update on travellers arriving by air. No mention of what is done with others on aircraft when positive tests occur.
“A total of 2,332 travellers were tested at the border between Monday and Wednesday, five of whom tested positive (not all five infections were active).”
