Here in the DC area (USA) people are getting infected left and right. I personally know of numerous people infected in the past few weeks. However, the official case numbers are at medium levels. This is because few people are getting PCR tested anymore. People are using home tests or not testing at all. It makes it pretty hard to track infection waves here due to the lack of reporting.
Short-term reinfections (i.e. within 90 days of each other) USED to be quite rare to virtually nonexistent. But then came the jabs, which then collided with a variant that the jabs just happened to be a magnet for, and the rest is history....
Apart from the scary fact that Denmark keeps the actual DNA/RNA data for every (government done) PCR test on file, it does look pretty good. The only thing is that this is also around the time home tests started to get common, and some people may not have bothered to retest using PCR.
The 90 days is obviously just a political number that somewhere was made up in the health establishment apparatus, but it seems to be pretty reasonable that one does not immediately get reinfected. That is the expectation for almost any disease.
Natural immunity pre-omicron was in virtually every study above 90% for months after infection, and I have seen no evidence this is different with Omicron. The Delta-Omicron transition from lung/lower respiratory to upper-respiratory illness caused an obvious reset in infections, but that should be a one-time thing.
The issue is also how to define infected. Traditionally it would be some test *with* symptoms. But as the symptoms are so common and PCR tests and some others just means 're-exposed' that won't work. You sneeze and cough for random illness X and test positive for covid because you were too close at the bus-stop to someone. And the health establishment definition of illness is just test positive, which means even less.
We could define it as PCR (or some other test) with a minimum viral load, but no such studies exist for many practical and ethical reasons. The ethical, the Danish managed to get around, so I think this is likely as close as we'll ever get to an estimate.
At least before Fall. If many people get reinfected with being sick, without some serious sudden one-off mutations we may conclude covid will become like flu and its natural genetic drift will suffice. But if not, and if covid has no animal reservoirs it may actually die out in a few years
They found approximately 1:1,000 infections in the study were reinfected between 20 and 60 days after their initial infection. This seems like a small proportion, but remember that the other infections included reinfections over a much longer timescale.
The other important aspect is that the relatively important IgA antibodies in the respiratory tract decline over a 60 day period -- I'd expect the 60 to 90 infection rate to be somewhat higher.
I agree, over time the rate should increase. But two important caveats. First this is in the Delta - Omicron period, and hence the transition from lower to upper tract. IgA as you state is even more key for upper infections. This is a one-time reset of the immune response of many, as having had a Wuham or B.1 flavor, provides more limited cellular protection in the upper tract against BA.1/2 as there was simply less virus replicating there.
Second is that in this study they define infections pretty much as PCR positive. That means they overestimate reinfections, be it they were looking at subgenomic RNAs in the diagnostic swabs and would have eliminated the "breath stuff in it at busstop" cases.
But back in the days (or in most European countries today still) when kids were not vaccinated against chickenpox, preschool teachers would get 'infected' every on or two years when a new class arrived and inevitably get their outbreak. Still they would get no symptoms, as they are what we consider immune. Now chickenpox is not an upper or lower respiratory tract illness, so I know the analogy is not perfect, but to illustrate getting exposed and having an actual immune response, still does not mean infected in the classical sense.
Hence with covid I expect in fall a lot of people 'getting it', but many without any noticeable symptoms. Should we consider that a reinfection? I ask, as defining infection is key for estimating its rate.
Official testing rates in fall may drop with all the home tests, but some may still get PCR tested and if they have symptoms due to something else, still get counted as a covid case. We know from at least two studies in 2020 that the co-infection rate can be estimated at about 5%, and that was pre-omicron. Hence with an endemic virus like omicron we have to be extra careful defining and measuring illness.
Who are all these people who keep being infected with covid? My daughter had it in the summer of 2020 (back when everyone was reporting everyone else so she had to get tested). It was a nasty cold and she moped about for a week (with her boyfriend who failed to catch it from her). She hasn't had so much as a sniffle since then and has been working in London throughout. She is unvaccinated. My cousin and her husband didn't catch it in 2020. They waited until the vaccinations started and haven't stopped catching it since (3 jabs in and almost continuous covid). Their immuno-compromised son (also well jabbed) has failed to catch it from them. To my non-scientific brain all of this seems almost made-up. Who are these people who are continually testing and reporting themselves? Are they actually ill? Very confusing!
The Zoe data is made up of enthusiastic people who were keen to 'support science' back in 2020 and who can't seem to stop themselves.
Most of the other data is either based on random sampling (eg, the ONS data) or on entry to hospital (eg, the data in the veterans paper).
I don't think 'normal people' are interested any more -- Covid is now a cold for most. This might change if it evolves to become more pathogenic -- there's a risk period this autumn, so we'll see what happens. This would be seen as an increase in conditions caused by viral damage, rather than the traditional severe covid (which is due to an out-of-control immune system) -- I'd imagine that these conditions would include heart damage, clotting and possibly neural problems.
But the reinfection period is a bit suspicious -- for other coronaviruses people seem to manage a good few years between reinfections with the same strain. I suspect that immune tolerance is making infections more likely in the vaccinated (recent papers show that vaccination raises IgG4 antibody levels, which usually induces immune tolerance). It is difficult to know what's going on in the unvaccinated -- there's too much propaganda and not enough science in this group.
There seems to be a strong correlation between how many jabs someone has had, and how quickly and frequently they have been getting reinfected. But that's just a "coincidence", since the government would NEVER lie to us, right?
Note that ZOE data does NOT in any way concern itself with reinfections. It answers only one question: how many people in the UK are having Covid "right now". It does not matter if that covid in any given individual is a reinfection, rebound of an existing infection, continuous infection, first infection or whatever.
The Zoe algorithm isn't published, but my understanding is that at least in late 2021 they were assuming that positive tests within 90 days of the end of a covid infection (not first positive test) were regarded as 'echos' of the original infection and weren't reinfections.
However, they've since published some articles on positive tests within the 60-90 day period, but where there were some negative tests prior to this period. It isn't clear if they've updated their algorithm to include these cases. It also isn't clear what they do with symptomatic infections in this 60-90 day period without negative tests in the 0-60 day period.
Note that they have to have some peroid of 'reset' in their algorithm, otherwise they'd be identifying new positive tests in the short term after infection as a new infection -- the question is how long this period is.
The infections trigger clotting as part of the immune response. Sometimes, clots protect the volume with some of the infection. As the body recovers clots are dissolved and there is 'reinfection'.
Taking proteases, enzymes that dissolve clots, will reduce the immune response and stop reinfection.
The immune response is not designed to preserve an individual... it is there to preserve the DNA of many species. The immune response will often kill, to protect.
Can the Zoe model can be evaluated against actual number of positive tests and test positivity rates to assess whether its predicted trends are accurate? This pandemic is already a horror show of trying to manipulate data to fit predictive models.
Does that constrain the "worst case" impact of the "90 day" assumption on COVID wave modeling? Or is there a similar issue with positive test data? I seem to remember at one point there was a time threshold within which a second positive test was considered the same infection.
It appears that this has occurred -- the infection rate in the UK started to turn in the last week of August and is now at the level where the media are reporting it.
There is still a question about how this current wave will develop -- it clearly is still in its early stages, but will it follow the pattern of prior Omicron waves (well defined peak with recovery back to lower levels) or the pattern seen in prior autumns (a peak in cases but which then falls back to give a relatively high plateau in cases until a well pronounced late winter wave (Feb probably).
One very interesting aspect of the wave currently forming is that there wasn't a 'new variant' to seed it -- there are new variants but they were all present at 'relevant levels' for some time before the wave started. I imagine we'll now see government scientists desperately trying to identify a 'new variant' to blame it on (variants exist, but it is simply the normal evolutionary behaviour of an RNA virus).
We'd expect to see an upward trend in cases around 4-5 weeks before the peak, so this would mean the wave would be seen to turn at the beginning of September.
"My guess is that we’ll see around 125,000 new cases a day" so you guys do enjoy wasting resources using the tool of the scam... the PCR kit and keeping the COVIDIUS CIRCUS TENT up and running?!
Covid clearly isn't a serious threat any more, and we don't need excessive testing. The data I'm looking at is mainly coming from surveys; they extrapolate up to population level.
But I do think it is necessary to continue some surveillance -- mainly because it shows that the vaccines don't offer any advantage -- this then removes any reason for keeping on giving people the vaccines (and the mandates that accompany them).
The side effect information comes from other sources.
Here in the DC area (USA) people are getting infected left and right. I personally know of numerous people infected in the past few weeks. However, the official case numbers are at medium levels. This is because few people are getting PCR tested anymore. People are using home tests or not testing at all. It makes it pretty hard to track infection waves here due to the lack of reporting.
Australia followed the "no reinfection exists within 90 days" dogma for a while... they changed the reinfection period to be 28 days recently https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/news/Pages/20220712_00.aspx
Short-term reinfections (i.e. within 90 days of each other) USED to be quite rare to virtually nonexistent. But then came the jabs, which then collided with a variant that the jabs just happened to be a magnet for, and the rest is history....
What about this study: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.19.22271112v1
Apart from the scary fact that Denmark keeps the actual DNA/RNA data for every (government done) PCR test on file, it does look pretty good. The only thing is that this is also around the time home tests started to get common, and some people may not have bothered to retest using PCR.
The 90 days is obviously just a political number that somewhere was made up in the health establishment apparatus, but it seems to be pretty reasonable that one does not immediately get reinfected. That is the expectation for almost any disease.
Natural immunity pre-omicron was in virtually every study above 90% for months after infection, and I have seen no evidence this is different with Omicron. The Delta-Omicron transition from lung/lower respiratory to upper-respiratory illness caused an obvious reset in infections, but that should be a one-time thing.
The issue is also how to define infected. Traditionally it would be some test *with* symptoms. But as the symptoms are so common and PCR tests and some others just means 're-exposed' that won't work. You sneeze and cough for random illness X and test positive for covid because you were too close at the bus-stop to someone. And the health establishment definition of illness is just test positive, which means even less.
We could define it as PCR (or some other test) with a minimum viral load, but no such studies exist for many practical and ethical reasons. The ethical, the Danish managed to get around, so I think this is likely as close as we'll ever get to an estimate.
At least before Fall. If many people get reinfected with being sick, without some serious sudden one-off mutations we may conclude covid will become like flu and its natural genetic drift will suffice. But if not, and if covid has no animal reservoirs it may actually die out in a few years
That's an interesting study.
They found approximately 1:1,000 infections in the study were reinfected between 20 and 60 days after their initial infection. This seems like a small proportion, but remember that the other infections included reinfections over a much longer timescale.
The other important aspect is that the relatively important IgA antibodies in the respiratory tract decline over a 60 day period -- I'd expect the 60 to 90 infection rate to be somewhat higher.
I agree, over time the rate should increase. But two important caveats. First this is in the Delta - Omicron period, and hence the transition from lower to upper tract. IgA as you state is even more key for upper infections. This is a one-time reset of the immune response of many, as having had a Wuham or B.1 flavor, provides more limited cellular protection in the upper tract against BA.1/2 as there was simply less virus replicating there.
Second is that in this study they define infections pretty much as PCR positive. That means they overestimate reinfections, be it they were looking at subgenomic RNAs in the diagnostic swabs and would have eliminated the "breath stuff in it at busstop" cases.
But back in the days (or in most European countries today still) when kids were not vaccinated against chickenpox, preschool teachers would get 'infected' every on or two years when a new class arrived and inevitably get their outbreak. Still they would get no symptoms, as they are what we consider immune. Now chickenpox is not an upper or lower respiratory tract illness, so I know the analogy is not perfect, but to illustrate getting exposed and having an actual immune response, still does not mean infected in the classical sense.
Hence with covid I expect in fall a lot of people 'getting it', but many without any noticeable symptoms. Should we consider that a reinfection? I ask, as defining infection is key for estimating its rate.
Official testing rates in fall may drop with all the home tests, but some may still get PCR tested and if they have symptoms due to something else, still get counted as a covid case. We know from at least two studies in 2020 that the co-infection rate can be estimated at about 5%, and that was pre-omicron. Hence with an endemic virus like omicron we have to be extra careful defining and measuring illness.
Thank you for your great work as usual. Any stats anywhere on the unvaccinated? I jest 😏
Who are all these people who keep being infected with covid? My daughter had it in the summer of 2020 (back when everyone was reporting everyone else so she had to get tested). It was a nasty cold and she moped about for a week (with her boyfriend who failed to catch it from her). She hasn't had so much as a sniffle since then and has been working in London throughout. She is unvaccinated. My cousin and her husband didn't catch it in 2020. They waited until the vaccinations started and haven't stopped catching it since (3 jabs in and almost continuous covid). Their immuno-compromised son (also well jabbed) has failed to catch it from them. To my non-scientific brain all of this seems almost made-up. Who are these people who are continually testing and reporting themselves? Are they actually ill? Very confusing!
The Zoe data is made up of enthusiastic people who were keen to 'support science' back in 2020 and who can't seem to stop themselves.
Most of the other data is either based on random sampling (eg, the ONS data) or on entry to hospital (eg, the data in the veterans paper).
I don't think 'normal people' are interested any more -- Covid is now a cold for most. This might change if it evolves to become more pathogenic -- there's a risk period this autumn, so we'll see what happens. This would be seen as an increase in conditions caused by viral damage, rather than the traditional severe covid (which is due to an out-of-control immune system) -- I'd imagine that these conditions would include heart damage, clotting and possibly neural problems.
But the reinfection period is a bit suspicious -- for other coronaviruses people seem to manage a good few years between reinfections with the same strain. I suspect that immune tolerance is making infections more likely in the vaccinated (recent papers show that vaccination raises IgG4 antibody levels, which usually induces immune tolerance). It is difficult to know what's going on in the unvaccinated -- there's too much propaganda and not enough science in this group.
It is better to describe the IgG4 effect as desensitization. True tolerance is Treg mediated.
Indeed, the jabs seem to make the immune system stand down faster than NORAD on 9/11.
There seems to be a strong correlation between how many jabs someone has had, and how quickly and frequently they have been getting reinfected. But that's just a "coincidence", since the government would NEVER lie to us, right?
Good point about reinfections, I never thought about that.
Very interesting!!!
Note that ZOE data does NOT in any way concern itself with reinfections. It answers only one question: how many people in the UK are having Covid "right now". It does not matter if that covid in any given individual is a reinfection, rebound of an existing infection, continuous infection, first infection or whatever.
The Zoe algorithm isn't published, but my understanding is that at least in late 2021 they were assuming that positive tests within 90 days of the end of a covid infection (not first positive test) were regarded as 'echos' of the original infection and weren't reinfections.
However, they've since published some articles on positive tests within the 60-90 day period, but where there were some negative tests prior to this period. It isn't clear if they've updated their algorithm to include these cases. It also isn't clear what they do with symptomatic infections in this 60-90 day period without negative tests in the 0-60 day period.
Note that they have to have some peroid of 'reset' in their algorithm, otherwise they'd be identifying new positive tests in the short term after infection as a new infection -- the question is how long this period is.
The infections trigger clotting as part of the immune response. Sometimes, clots protect the volume with some of the infection. As the body recovers clots are dissolved and there is 'reinfection'.
Taking proteases, enzymes that dissolve clots, will reduce the immune response and stop reinfection.
The immune response is not designed to preserve an individual... it is there to preserve the DNA of many species. The immune response will often kill, to protect.
Interesting, do you have any further information and links on this please?
It's my idea. Does that devalue it?
Try Google. The Illness Industry makes a lot of $$$. Why cure when you can treat?
Curiouser and curiouser! Thanks for the great insight!
Can the Zoe model can be evaluated against actual number of positive tests and test positivity rates to assess whether its predicted trends are accurate? This pandemic is already a horror show of trying to manipulate data to fit predictive models.
It aligns well with the ONS data, based on random sampling.
Does that constrain the "worst case" impact of the "90 day" assumption on COVID wave modeling? Or is there a similar issue with positive test data? I seem to remember at one point there was a time threshold within which a second positive test was considered the same infection.
As far as I can tell there are no official data that include positive tests within 90 days.
The ONS and Zoe data both discount positive tests within 90 days of a prior test.
You're right in that it is 'considered the same infection'.
Well, in that case looking forward to seeing if the next "wave" peaks at right around 90 days since this latest one...
It appears that this has occurred -- the infection rate in the UK started to turn in the last week of August and is now at the level where the media are reporting it.
There is still a question about how this current wave will develop -- it clearly is still in its early stages, but will it follow the pattern of prior Omicron waves (well defined peak with recovery back to lower levels) or the pattern seen in prior autumns (a peak in cases but which then falls back to give a relatively high plateau in cases until a well pronounced late winter wave (Feb probably).
One very interesting aspect of the wave currently forming is that there wasn't a 'new variant' to seed it -- there are new variants but they were all present at 'relevant levels' for some time before the wave started. I imagine we'll now see government scientists desperately trying to identify a 'new variant' to blame it on (variants exist, but it is simply the normal evolutionary behaviour of an RNA virus).
We'd expect to see an upward trend in cases around 4-5 weeks before the peak, so this would mean the wave would be seen to turn at the beginning of September.
"My guess is that we’ll see around 125,000 new cases a day" so you guys do enjoy wasting resources using the tool of the scam... the PCR kit and keeping the COVIDIUS CIRCUS TENT up and running?!
Good for you!
Covid clearly isn't a serious threat any more, and we don't need excessive testing. The data I'm looking at is mainly coming from surveys; they extrapolate up to population level.
But I do think it is necessary to continue some surveillance -- mainly because it shows that the vaccines don't offer any advantage -- this then removes any reason for keeping on giving people the vaccines (and the mandates that accompany them).
The side effect information comes from other sources.