[conspire] (forw) [offlist] Pandemic stats (was: dvlug.org reboot)

[Rick Moen]

Side-discussion in e-mail from a Diablo Vally Linux User Group remark. 
My correspondent is in eastern Contra Costa County, and seemed a bit
morose about the pandemic.

On the matter of why/how the Spanish Flu, an influenza A(H1N1 variant,
probably of avian origin, burned itself out and never had a fifth wave:
Nobody's completely sure -- a reminder of how much we don't know.
There's _lots_ of fascinating stuff from that era.  My personal
favourite is that doctors found nothing else that would alleviate
symptoms except newly discovered aspirin, which the US Navy bought in
massive amounts in fall 1918 to help fight off the 2nd wave, considering
it a "miracle drug" to alleviate suffering, and gave high doses -- which
then killed many patients, because high doses of aspirin (8.0–31.2
gm/day being administered) produces hyperventilation in 1/3 of
recipients and pulmonary edema in 3% -- thus killing patients already
having a hard time from a respiratory virus.

The leading theory about cessation of Spanish flu is the obvious one,
that it burned out because it had already killed the vulnerable and that
enough of the surviving popultion had disease-conferred immunity, thus 
lowering R-eff way below 1.0.  But nobody is certain.

A non-mutually-exclusive hypothesis is that the virus mutated to far
less virulent strains, and its distant progeny are still with us as
seasonal H1N1 flu.  Because, this is what "novel" viruses do.  This was
a plot point in Michael Crichton's novel _The Andromeda Strain_:
Scientist Jeremy Stone pointed out that disease pathogens are poorly
adapted wannabe symbiotes; that an organism that kills its host loses
its home and vehicle for reproduction, and will be outcompeted by a
variant that is more benign.

Deirdre has made a _very_ interesting point that severe COVID-19 is
actually not a disease of the respiratory system, but rather of the
vascular endothelium, the crucial tissue layer lining the insides of
arteries, veins, and microvessels.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7470753/ That is what makes
the severe disease so horrifying in its effects, and unique in human
history.  However, the pathogen in _other_ ways is subject to the same
disease dynamics as other troublesome viruses.


----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2021 12:14:11 -0800
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: [redacted]
Subject: [offlist] Pandemic stats (was: dvlug.org reboot)
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Quoting [redacted]:

> what information do you have that anything has changed! im of the
> opinion that this will never change and is for ever!

You may be right, [redacted].  I was trying to accentuate the optimistic
possibilities.

But, attempting to address your question briefly:

1.  Even the worst viral global pandemic known to science, so-called
Spanish Flu (that actually was from cattle in western Kansas), had four
terrible waves in the USA between March 1918 and April 1919, then died
out.  The reasons are contested -- an interesting subject, but I'm
keeping this short.

2.  Even with the super-infectious Delta variant, Bay Area spread of
infection has kept getting smaller and smaller since a peak in summer,
fewer cases over time.  To see a near-term projection of spread for 
Contra Costa, go to https://calcat.covid19.ca.gov/ , load Nowcasts
(takes a few seconds to load) pick Contra Costa County from the pulldown
list that starts with "Alameda", and wait a few more seconds for the
graph to reload.  Notice that key metric R-effective has been way below
the dotted line that is the R-eff = 1.0 since August.  That means that
each new infected person is infecting an average of fewer than one 
(currently estimated at 0.86) additional person, which means fewer
cases, tending towards zero.

You can verify from the county dashboard at
https://www.coronavirus.cchealth.org/ that the prediction of R-eff
modeling has been borne out by hospital case counts.  They are
continuing to go down, _even_ in the face of Delta.  The county now has
30 COVID patients including 9 in the ICU.  By comparison, a month ago on
Oct. 13th, it was 70 patients including 23 in ICU.  Cutting cases by
more than half in a month is an extremely good trend.

Thanks for writing.  I hope my cautious optimism brings you some grounds
for good cheer.


----- End forwarded message -----Z