I will forever wonder how much of the underreaction/over-reaction between February and the end of of 2020 was politically motivated as we are certainly not going to get a straight answer from anyone ever. The Floyd riots and subsequent protests made it abundantly clear that some causes were virtuous enough to supersede the dangers of covid while some ( the welfare of our entire economy and well being of our school children) were not. What is clear is that the government will be in no hurry to relinquish the expanded power ceded to it by the frightened public.
Minor quibble - I think the mask studies were referring to reductions of 0.5%-1.5% *per day*, which would theoretically compound into much larger reductions in spread.
But if that were the case, one would think it would be much easier to separate counties wearing masks from those not wearing masks without needing a bunch of fancy statistical tools.
re: Kotkin's Neo-Feudalism analysis: left-totalitarians regressing to anti-Enlightenment paradigms
I'm in the central valley of northern California (not SF, not LA), in a suburban area, "purple" voting, trending toward "blue'. The number of insane SJWs/ZOMGs is noticeable, but there is still a lot of pushback from independent-centrists and conservatives. The deepest pockets of infection that remain in in trailer trash neighborhoods, the very ones that Rush Limbaugh used to makes jokes about. Generally, low income, various races, lots of poor hispanics that live in small multigeneration houses that have "essential" workers at high risk.
Anyways, California returning to "normal" is pretty meaningless, IMO, given the pre-COVID plunge into abnormality (disruption of fragile "Blue church" stuff). Consider Joel Kotkin's analysis of the deep, complex problems in California that were exposed by (not CAUSED by) COVID:
A bit of recent news about previously infected getting reinfected - not very likely per https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v2. But was only 5 months. Big brother SARs immune cells showed reponse 17 years after initial infection. CoV-2 remain under study. Some people are intrinsically immune anyway but nobody knows why.
To be explicitly clear, I was very skeptical of the "reinfection narrative" in 2020, and made that position pretty public over on Medium during that time. But now I know people who have gotten reinfected, and these are not "through the grape vine" connections, they're people I speak to in person regularly. Reinfection is real.
Now whether that's "they caught a different strain" reinfection or it's "their immunity wore off" reinfection is probably questionable. But one lady I know in particular had a very unusual symptom profile the first time and got that same unusual symptom profile the second time.
And, to be clear, I'm not saying I don't believe reinfection is possible. I'm just saying that there's little evidence the rate is higher than the seasonal flu . . . at this point.
Here's a small study (7 participants) where they attempted to infect people who had a particular strain of the seasonal flu a year later. 3 of the 7 got reinfected with the same virus a year after the initial infection. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/70/5/748/5429562
The study's too small to demonstrate anything other than the seasonal flu reinfection rate may be higher than is commonly believed. So, it may be that all the reinfection stories you're hearing are true -- but that wouldn't necessarily distinguish them from seasonal flu reinfection rates.
I would be interested in knowing common flu reinfection rates, but even that wouldn't tell us that COVID is more "reinfectious." As I understand it, the initial fear of COVID was partially attributed to the fact that none of us had any natural immunity to it. That may not turn out to be true, but it's undoubtedly true that most of us did not have any natural immunity to it. As a consequence, those claiming to be re-infected would have naturally had a much greater chance of secondary exposure simply because all (or most) of the herd had no immunity until at least a year into the thing, so more could go around.
At any rate, I'm done on this issue. I'll wait for some more data. I always enjoy reading your stuff BJ. Keep it up, my friend!
Oh yeah, I see what you're saying now and I think you might be right. It could be that I know a dozen or more people who got re-exposed and only a few got reinfected.
And this whole thing is an asymptote anyway, and is specific to each person.
There's another alternative, as well. We know the cycle count on the tests was cranked way up. They wanted to detect the earliest hint of possible COVID so folks would quarantine at the earliest possible time. Laudable goal, but we also know this resulted in a significant amount of false positives -- detecting dead COVID in individuals who never actually manifested any infection.
These people -- the ones who were falsely told they had COVID when they didn't and their bodies never developed antibodies -- could get COVID "again" and look like reinfections, when they are first timers. The best way I know to disprove this hypothesis would be if those told they had COVID had gotten an antibodies test at some point between the initial diagnosis and the alleged reinfection. If we see alot of that, then I'll put more stock in the "novel" part of the so-called novel Corona Virus.
I get all that and you are making the sorts of arguments I would make (and did make) last year. I am sympathetic to your case, but I'm telling you that these are legit instances of Covid reinfection. The loss of taste and smell is not something you can fake or mistake for something else.
Sure, but as someone who is great with data, I hope you can appreciate that I need something more than "I had COVID because I lost my taste and smell." As an aside, before I got vaccinated, I asked several others how they felt afterwards, particularly after the second shot (which the internet tells me is worse than the first). I got a range of responses -- my arm was dead for a week; painful gas; bad fever and headaches for days; I noticed nothing; I had a mild fever; I couldn't concentrate.'
All could be legit, but after I got my second shot I was constantly thinking 'am I feeling different? Is that a fever? Did I just lose my balance? Am I concentrating as well as before?'
My point is, without measurement, there could be a range of reasons these anecdotes are illegitimate. They're you're friends and you should believe them if you choose. As for me, I know no one who claims to have been reinfected and I know of no studies suggesting that the reinfection rate will be different than the "normal" flu. So, I'll take your anecdotes into consideration, particularly since you're someone who I respect, but I'll respectfully reserve judgment for now.
I've talked to a *lot* of people who've had Covid. I became a kind of a central figure in my extended friend network during the early ramp because liberals who were scared of covid shaming knew I wouldn't judge them so they came to me for advice, and I ended up being sort of a central fixture for the exchange of personal experiences about it. It's a peculiar disease with a lot of strange manifestations, but the taste and smell thing is profound. Imagine not being able to taste a ghost pepper for two months. This is not something other diseases do.
I was absolutely a reinfection skeptic until around the end of February of 2021. My February substack article barely mentioned it. I think it's real. YMMV.
I will forever wonder how much of the underreaction/over-reaction between February and the end of of 2020 was politically motivated as we are certainly not going to get a straight answer from anyone ever. The Floyd riots and subsequent protests made it abundantly clear that some causes were virtuous enough to supersede the dangers of covid while some ( the welfare of our entire economy and well being of our school children) were not. What is clear is that the government will be in no hurry to relinquish the expanded power ceded to it by the frightened public.
Minor quibble - I think the mask studies were referring to reductions of 0.5%-1.5% *per day*, which would theoretically compound into much larger reductions in spread.
But if that were the case, one would think it would be much easier to separate counties wearing masks from those not wearing masks without needing a bunch of fancy statistical tools.
Who knows.
re: Kotkin's Neo-Feudalism analysis: left-totalitarians regressing to anti-Enlightenment paradigms
I'm in the central valley of northern California (not SF, not LA), in a suburban area, "purple" voting, trending toward "blue'. The number of insane SJWs/ZOMGs is noticeable, but there is still a lot of pushback from independent-centrists and conservatives. The deepest pockets of infection that remain in in trailer trash neighborhoods, the very ones that Rush Limbaugh used to makes jokes about. Generally, low income, various races, lots of poor hispanics that live in small multigeneration houses that have "essential" workers at high risk.
Anyways, California returning to "normal" is pretty meaningless, IMO, given the pre-COVID plunge into abnormality (disruption of fragile "Blue church" stuff). Consider Joel Kotkin's analysis of the deep, complex problems in California that were exposed by (not CAUSED by) COVID:
https://www.chapman.edu/communication/_files/beyond-feudalism-web-sm.pdf
A bit of recent news about previously infected getting reinfected - not very likely per https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v2. But was only 5 months. Big brother SARs immune cells showed reponse 17 years after initial infection. CoV-2 remain under study. Some people are intrinsically immune anyway but nobody knows why.
Oh yeah natural immunity lasts at least 6 months, probably closer to a year. We'll see how it plays out soon enough.
To be explicitly clear, I was very skeptical of the "reinfection narrative" in 2020, and made that position pretty public over on Medium during that time. But now I know people who have gotten reinfected, and these are not "through the grape vine" connections, they're people I speak to in person regularly. Reinfection is real.
Now whether that's "they caught a different strain" reinfection or it's "their immunity wore off" reinfection is probably questionable. But one lady I know in particular had a very unusual symptom profile the first time and got that same unusual symptom profile the second time.
Cool. I appreciate the additional color.
And, to be clear, I'm not saying I don't believe reinfection is possible. I'm just saying that there's little evidence the rate is higher than the seasonal flu . . . at this point.
Here's a small study (7 participants) where they attempted to infect people who had a particular strain of the seasonal flu a year later. 3 of the 7 got reinfected with the same virus a year after the initial infection. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/70/5/748/5429562
The study's too small to demonstrate anything other than the seasonal flu reinfection rate may be higher than is commonly believed. So, it may be that all the reinfection stories you're hearing are true -- but that wouldn't necessarily distinguish them from seasonal flu reinfection rates.
I would be interested in knowing common flu reinfection rates, but even that wouldn't tell us that COVID is more "reinfectious." As I understand it, the initial fear of COVID was partially attributed to the fact that none of us had any natural immunity to it. That may not turn out to be true, but it's undoubtedly true that most of us did not have any natural immunity to it. As a consequence, those claiming to be re-infected would have naturally had a much greater chance of secondary exposure simply because all (or most) of the herd had no immunity until at least a year into the thing, so more could go around.
At any rate, I'm done on this issue. I'll wait for some more data. I always enjoy reading your stuff BJ. Keep it up, my friend!
Oh yeah, I see what you're saying now and I think you might be right. It could be that I know a dozen or more people who got re-exposed and only a few got reinfected.
And this whole thing is an asymptote anyway, and is specific to each person.
There's another alternative, as well. We know the cycle count on the tests was cranked way up. They wanted to detect the earliest hint of possible COVID so folks would quarantine at the earliest possible time. Laudable goal, but we also know this resulted in a significant amount of false positives -- detecting dead COVID in individuals who never actually manifested any infection.
These people -- the ones who were falsely told they had COVID when they didn't and their bodies never developed antibodies -- could get COVID "again" and look like reinfections, when they are first timers. The best way I know to disprove this hypothesis would be if those told they had COVID had gotten an antibodies test at some point between the initial diagnosis and the alleged reinfection. If we see alot of that, then I'll put more stock in the "novel" part of the so-called novel Corona Virus.
I get all that and you are making the sorts of arguments I would make (and did make) last year. I am sympathetic to your case, but I'm telling you that these are legit instances of Covid reinfection. The loss of taste and smell is not something you can fake or mistake for something else.
Sure, but as someone who is great with data, I hope you can appreciate that I need something more than "I had COVID because I lost my taste and smell." As an aside, before I got vaccinated, I asked several others how they felt afterwards, particularly after the second shot (which the internet tells me is worse than the first). I got a range of responses -- my arm was dead for a week; painful gas; bad fever and headaches for days; I noticed nothing; I had a mild fever; I couldn't concentrate.'
All could be legit, but after I got my second shot I was constantly thinking 'am I feeling different? Is that a fever? Did I just lose my balance? Am I concentrating as well as before?'
My point is, without measurement, there could be a range of reasons these anecdotes are illegitimate. They're you're friends and you should believe them if you choose. As for me, I know no one who claims to have been reinfected and I know of no studies suggesting that the reinfection rate will be different than the "normal" flu. So, I'll take your anecdotes into consideration, particularly since you're someone who I respect, but I'll respectfully reserve judgment for now.
I've talked to a *lot* of people who've had Covid. I became a kind of a central figure in my extended friend network during the early ramp because liberals who were scared of covid shaming knew I wouldn't judge them so they came to me for advice, and I ended up being sort of a central fixture for the exchange of personal experiences about it. It's a peculiar disease with a lot of strange manifestations, but the taste and smell thing is profound. Imagine not being able to taste a ghost pepper for two months. This is not something other diseases do.
I was absolutely a reinfection skeptic until around the end of February of 2021. My February substack article barely mentioned it. I think it's real. YMMV.