80% not susceptible to Covid

[VenusTiger]

Karl Friston: Up to 80% not susceptible to Covid

If studies conclude this to be the case, it is a GAME CHANGER. Please have a read.

unherd.com/2020/06/karl-friston-up-to-80-not-even-susceptible-to-covid-19/

What are your thoughts?

When Karl Friston speaks about dark matter, he is talking about something which causes the gap between the predictions from models and reality. This "dark matter", he says, could be geographical isolation in certain countries. There certainly hasn't been any kind of study showing 80% of people are immune, he is just coming up with ideas as to why some countries have had lower amounts of cases than others. Here is a much more reliable interview with the man.
www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/31/covid-19-expert-karl-friston-germany-may-have-more-immunological-dark-matter

Coming back to this for a read

'Up to 80% not susceptible to COVID' could also be written as 'We don't know how many are susceptible to COVID', but that wouldn't really grab the eye, would it?

We haven't had a 'release us for lockdown!' thread yet today. So I guess this is it?

@DianaT1969 - no, as I don't believe hindsight is helpful - I'm just fascinated with the figures around the globe - I realise each country records deaths differently, I realise the UK has many deaths 'with' covid not 'from covid' for instance and I'm just interested to understand how cities in different countries can be effected so massively.

It makes sense as some people can catch it but are only mildly affected - I wouldn't have realised I had caught it if dp hadn't come down with it 3 day's before (I had a mild fever for approx 2 hours and lost sense of taste and smell). I'm German descent.

I call BS unfortunately as already 25% i think immune in nyc... So already over his 20%.
I do think there could be some resistance as only 25-50% within a family. A healthier thinner population will have more asymptomatic.
I guess we will have to wait to see if anywhere gets a second wave and where that takes immunity.
We may find 25% immune in nyc is enough as there are probably older and vulnerable and wfh people about.

It's a statement hedged by maybe's (based on an unpublished model made by a neuroscientist) in an interview for unherd. Friston's statements in the interview are fine but the reporting (particularly the headline) are wildly overstating what he says.

There are lots of possible models which can produce expansion rates which fit the behaviour of the virus. None of the them mean that much without other data to corroborate them. Currently the data coming in is broadly confirming the existing scientific consensus.

Some level of pre-existing immunity from other Coronaviruses is a valid hypothesis, but that's it. Most other models I've seen (from actual epidemiologists) do not agree with some of the assumptions Friston is making to get to his tentative conclusions.

This looks something written by someone with a very limited intellect.

His explanation for the remarkably similar mortality outcomes in Sweden (no lockdown) and the UK (lockdown) is that “they weren’t actually any different.

This is not true though is it. Firstly Sweden and UK don't have the same mortality outcomes, and secondly the issue with the UK was an unchecked lockdownless rampaging viral spread in late March. At that point more than 40% of our covid-19 tests were positive. This was diabolically bad.

The lockdown was shutting the stable door after the horse had already fucked off.

We don't need to speculate about this crap because we can see that 15% of care home residents in certain boroughs are dead. It's there and it's fact and it's consistent with them all being infected.

The idea that 'the UK had a lockdown and Sweden had lockdown' is that of a complete simpleton.

The 'lockdown' is a response, purely and simply, to horrific images from northern Italy (not Italy, just a few provinces in the north). Legal lockdown or not people would have locked down because of TV.

Not this bollocks.

Because at the end of the day the actual processes that get into the epidemiological dynamics — the actual behaviours, the distancing, was evolutionarily specified by the way we behave when we have an infection.”

I can tell you that religious nutters in Sharia law Aceh were swearing blind that it was impossible that students returning from Aceh to Malaysia were infected with covid-19 because those in Aceh performe

d the daily Islamic prayers with great discipline. They must have caught covid-19 in transit.

It is idiotic to suggest that we have certain evolutionary behaviours, when those behaviours are, to put it bluntly, a response to the TV.

There are lots of examples of asymptomatic people spreading to lots of people and plenty of instances of thousands of people being infected in a short space of time as a result of proximity - evolution be damned.

I find it hard to believe that Karl Friston is a blithering fucking idiot, so I must assume the responsibility for the crap in this article lies with the author.

Sweden had lockdown

sorry 'Sweden had no lockdown '

V.interesting @ShootsFruitAndLeaves - thank you!

@donquixotedelamancha It's a statement hedged by maybe's it certainly is that, but aren't all models?

I read a Japanese focussed article the other day that quoted a similar stat saying that for whatever reason 80% of covid infected people don’t infect others. It’s all very interesting but the fact remains that we’re still not entirely sure why any of these statistics are occurring.

Maybe 80% of people aren’t susceptible but who can say with any certainty who that 80% actually is. It’s not a figure you can hang the lives of the other 20% of the population on especially since we have no idea what the possible long term effects could be.

For example, it’s not unheard of for corona viruses to cause infertility in livestock (which is why there’s a chicken corona virus vaccine). How long would something like that take to recognise?

Just to reference the article I mentioned

asiatimes.com/2020/06/japans-contact-tracing-method-is-old-but-gold/

Placemarking

Isn’t this the idea of 80/20 rule again? In this case, 20% of people - the so-called superspreaders - are responsible for 80% of transmissions?

All of the research has shown that a percentage, especially the young, haven’t developed symptoms or measurable infection on exposure. This is true of all virus including influenza, and probably due to innate immunity, however it is nowhere near 80%, more like 20.

Behaviour may well be under some genetic control, ask any car insurance about the difference between men and women ie x and Y chromosomes and risk taking, but whether to that extent is dubious.

@Redolent

Thought the super spreaders were more to do with say someone attends a conference, then goes to dinner with his cohort, before the next morning hopping on a plane to go skiing etc
One person responsible for infecting large numbers of people because he/she decided to go out despite feeling rough!

Doesn't seasonal flu infect far far more than show symptoms, let alone end up in hospital or worse?

COVID has a low k (dispersion factor)
i.e. most infections are spread by a small number of infected people^
^
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-alll^^

SARS-CoV-2 .....Without social distancing, this reproduction number (R) is about three.
But in real life, some people infect many others and others don’t spread the disease at all.^
.....
That’s why in addition to R, scientists use a value called the dispersion factor (k), which describes how much a disease clusters.
The lower k is, the more transmission comes from a small number of people
....
In the flu pandemic of 1918....the value was about one, indicating that clusters played less of a role.
.....
in a recent preprint, Adam Kucharski of LSHTM estimated that k for COVID-19 is as low as 0.1
“Probably about 10% of cases lead to 80% of the spread,”

A big problem with transmission of COVID, as compared to most other diseases, is that people are infectious days before symptoms.
So it isn't just the selfish who spread it

Interesting theory.
There is some evidence that infections drop off sharply once 15-20% of the population have antibodies (as in London and NYC).

I'm glad I shared this article with MN - so many interesting and informative posts - thanks everyone!!

It is interesting and I’m hearing more about some people actually having immunity when we at first thought none of the population had immunity. This isn’t the first article saying this.

Placemarking, too!

@Cornettoninja that was interesting re Coronaviruses causing infertility in livestock. I did quick search & it seems SARS (& body’s own antibody response) destroyed sperm. I know SARS-Cov-2 has been found in testes & some posters have talked about periods changing after CV-19 infection.
It’s these unknowns about long term health impacts that may not be seen for years that worry me.