Talk:Herd immunity

Covid-19

Do we have anything, or can we produce, on herd immunity issues around covid-19? There's a clear demand for this (70k pageviews / day in the last week). Andy Dingley (talk) 11:43, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I added COVID-19 to the table of HITs. There may not be a good place to mention it in prose but that may be fine. The references I used were taken from the article for SARS-CoV-2. ComfyKem (talk) 23:20, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I checked the references given on R0 and HITs for COVID-19. The references provide estimates of R0, I did not find anything on HITs. I doubt that HIT is known at this stage. Consider to delete the HIT estimates for COVID-19.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Behinddemlune (talk • contribs) 16:01, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Populations can become more resistant after multiple sweeps of a disease

Without immunisation I understand populations can become more resistant after multiple sweeps of a disease, so possibly with smallpox, mortality was high in previously exposed populations in Europe, but without that prior exposure First Peoples had catastrophic mortality. This was not herd immunity. That is, after repeated exposure morbidity and mortality in a population may reduce. Is there/should there be an article covering that. Paul foord (talk) Paul foord (talk) 09:43, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Genetics and blood types in disparities of Covid-19 deaths and recoveries

A popular theory of a new virus which humanity wasn't exposed to before, but looking at 95% recovery/5% death rates, some people are harder or easier affected by Covid-19. Scientists check into genetics of Covid-19 patients (and high risk factors like age, immunity compromise and health conditions), along with blood types such as A, B, AB and O; and the RH factor to determine why some people are easily recovering and others are dying faster. One way to explain this phenomena is ancestrally, there were rare but probable Covid-type plagues in human prehistory or plagues of "unknown origin" described in global pandemic history. A new virus wouldn't kill a scant 5% of their infected rate population, then again a coronavirus similar to its relatives like the common cold, influenza, poxes (i.e. chickenpox, measles, rubella and the now extinct smallpox), herpes (STD) and canker sores can be recognized as "familiar" in some people's immune systems geared up to fight it. And oddly, SARS and MERS which are the worst type of coronaviruses keep originating in East Asia (then spread outward globally in an age of massive travel, but they tend to disappear like SARS or reappear like MERS). Is there evidence of many Chinese and East Asians were previously exposed to Covid-type disease than Europeans and caucasians who had higher death tolls? 2605:E000:100D:C571:7D82:A683:E434:DB3D (talk) 15:15, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

"These calculations assume ..." what?

In the section Mechanics, the paragraph that starts with "These calculations assume ..." alleges an assumption about the calculations in the preceding paragraphs – more specifically, that the entire population is susceptible. Is this a left-over from an older version? The calculations explicitly use a variable S, representing the proportion of the population who are susceptible to infection. I do not see the difference between the effective reproduction number R_e and R₀ · S. Any objections to removing this paragraph (with an appropriate adjustment to the next)? To make things cleaner, we should define the notion of "effective reproduction number" in the article Mathematical modelling of infectious disease and define it mathematically by R_e = R₀ · S.  --Lambiam 11:55, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Lambiam I checked the sources used for that portion and this reference appears to define R_e as you say. So some sentences seemed unneeded and I reworded a bit in the "Mechanics" section. Velayinosu (talk) 03:13, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

One assumes something as a hypothetical, whereas one presumes something to be the case. "Let us presume Timmy went to the bus stop at 8:00 a.m. as he does every weekday" vis-à-vis "Let us assume that Timmy was kidnapped". kencf0618 (talk) 02:36, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

BBC R0/HIT

I've included today's BBC report on the estimated HIT range, but it would be best to include the more recent scientific papers I think. kencf0618 (talk) 10:07, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

I added a review article about this since that is more appropriate than a news article. Velayinosu (talk) 01:01, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

R0 and HI threshold for Covid

COVID-19 herd immunity: where are we? - Nature Reviews Immunology  More accurate R₀ range is 2.5-4. I don't know where the HI threshold 50-83% have come from. Someone with expertise needs to weigh in and update maybe. - hako9 (talk) 22:59, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Could someone comment whether renaming the table in #Mechanics section with title changed to "Estimated R₀ and HITs (herd immunity threshold assuming no pharmaceutical interventions) of well-known infectious diseases" would be appropriate or not, or is it just assumed that the lower and upper limits are a function of R₀ only? - hako9 (talk) 01:34, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

No idea. I only know that absent pharmaceutical intervention herd immunity takes a lot of dead cows. kencf0618 (talk) 02:37, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Free Riding not validated by the data

I have been threatened with banning for supposedly vandalising Wikipedia, but it is clearly baseless and without merit. User:Julius_Senegal quotes Quackwatch.org, which is not a reliable source as born out by the court case brought by it's owner, Stephen J. Barret, in which he and his associate "were found to be biased and unworthy of credibility." (https://cases.justia.com/california/court-of-appeal/b156585.pdf?ts=1396114003). More details at http://www.truthwiki.org/stephen-barrett-quackwatch/

Then an anonymous coward User:CLCStudent threatened me with a permanent editing block!

I quoted the Weston A Price foundation website which is fully referenced with sources from peer revieved scientific journals. Not all may like the the content of this site, but my quote is fully and substantially referenced out of accepted peer-reviewed literature.

I have therefor created a new section for this information.

Lifeboy (talk) 09:13, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

stop spreading claims like these.

the WPFoundation is everything but reliable. What they do is cherry-picking and citing trash references. If they were right, then it would be easy to find better sources (CDC, FDA, meta-reviews etc.). --Julius Senegal (talk) 09:37, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

It's you that's making these claims about peer reviewed, published science. You're the one cherry picking what you don't like it seems. CDC, FDA, etc are definitely not more reliable or trustworthy than The Journal of Clinical Microbiology, are they? (https://doi.org/10.1128/jcm.33.9.2485-2488.1995). The expert fallacy should not have a place here, so drop it. And is PLOS also not good enough for you? I think you need to substantiate your claims and if you're unhappy with something I contribute, then be specific or keep quiet. Lifeboy (talk) 16:35, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Is this possible, an error, deliberate, what is up with the WHO?

Without looking for it the following irrelevant but disturbing headline came up in a search result.

It seemed to be fake news as the WHO cannot be so brazen in promoting vaccines that they will mess around with our language.

I wonder if they have tried to adjust reality in the other languages they may publish opinion in.

WHO (secretly) changed their definition of “Herd Immunity” Global health body dishonestly alters meaning, claims you need a vaccine to achieve it

If they have adjusted the robots.txt file to clear archive.org scans of their site after this (or some other propaganda act) then they need to be censured. Preventing archive.org from crawling a global health site is not right. What if the servers are blown up and the only copy is at archive.org, only it isn't, this is not a good sign.

Is there a place on this wiki page that we can add the proposed new meaning that the WHO gives to Herd Immunity so that people know what to expect when they decide to embark on a career of helping people against the best wishes of the largest ally they though they had.

Idyllic press (talk) 20:19, 4 January 2021 (UTC)