Original chart from Worldometers.info.
I overlapped a four-month zig zag, clearly it's not a perfect match, second half of 2021 was two lower peaks either side of where they 'should' have been (initial impact of the vaccinations 'flattening the curve'?).
Looking at that, I won't be surprised if there's another peak in June 2022. They'll blame it on the Ukraine war or the resulting commodity price hikes/shortages, but who's to say it's not somehow pre-programmed by the typical speed at which the virus has mutated enough to go round and infect everybody again?
Obviously I hope that there won't be any more peaks and it will all fizzle out, but we'll see.
Sunday, 13 March 2022
Covid 19 - four month waves (part 2)
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11 comments:
You'd expect a peak in the winter anyway. The big question, as you say, will be whether there is a peak four months on.
I had it for the second time 2 weeks ago, despite being vaccinated. It was quite mild though and if I were not chronically sleep deprived (long story) I think it would have been ok.
Assuming, it is the same again, I would certainly rather have Covid again in 4 months than the flu, tonsilitis or food poisoning.
B, agreed on winter peaks. But the Southern Hemisphere has a winter season as well.
(If there are more four month peaks, it doesn't really 'prove' anything, I just wonder why they are/have been there or why nobody else seems to have noticed.)
LF, glad to hear that you recovered. Covid isn't that bad IMHO, it's Long Covid that's a real bugger. Anecdotal says Covid getting milder, which is what you (and indeed I) haved experienced, but the global deaths chart doesn't really show that.
Thanks Mark.
I wonder if the vaccine stops long covid if it does and reduces hospitalisations then we should be out of this.
LF, I had two jabs in March and June 2021.
My usual Autumn/Winter cold, started about last August, I had Covid proper Xmas 2021 and while the Covid itself was no biggie (two days in bed?) I have only just started properly recovering from tiredness/digestion problems... I guess that's Long Covid, even though nobody knows what it is or if it really exists.
My feeling is that because we have vaccinated virtually everybody with the same immune response, and a limited one at that (we have gained spike protein antibody response but little else) evolutionary pressure will force the selection of mutations that evade that limited immune response, and there will be regular waves of infection as new variants arrive on our shores, and sadly the vaccinated will be susceptible to them each time, even if they've already had covid fairly recently. And it will be no use giving boosters based on new variants, because the concept of Original Antigenic Sin means that you can't retrain the immune system on the fly. A recent paper showed that an Omicron based booster provided less protection to Omicron than a Wuhan strain booster (ie the one everyone had had).
So the only protection going forward will be more Wuhan strain boosters, which will provide a short term boost to the immune system, currently a few months before it wanes and protection is not only soon lost but also inverts, ie make you more like to catch covid (which is what the stats show - infection rates are currently higher in the vaccinated than unvaccinated). And each Wuhan booster will probably provide a shorter period of protection, diminishing returns will set in. By the time people are on their 5th or 6th boosters the protection period could be down to 6-8 weeks.
Thus we could use Wuhan boosters for the elderly in the winter months, say giving them in November to tide them over the Dec/Jan/Feb high respiratory illness months, but if we get the timing wrong, and a new variant turns up outside that time (like Delta arrived in summer) then they are all screwed, there won't be time to get everyone injected again before its everywhere.
The fall out of the botched vaccination program will be felt for many years to come, maybe all our lives.
S, yes, I assume it is something like that. In other words, it's like the common cold that will never go away, just a bit worse.
The jabs did help short term though. They're not the panacea some seem to have thought; neither are they the work of Satan/Bill Gates/The Illuminati.
"The jabs did help short term though. They're not the panacea some seem to have thought; neither are they the work of Satan/Bill Gates/The Illuminati."
Sadly very few people agree with that statement. I do but most people seem to think taking/not taking the vaccine is really really bad.
I agree with you I think they help but not so much they you can force people to take them
LF, if they had tried to make them compulsory I would have refused out of pig headed-ness :-) They were voluntary, so I did my bit for Queen & Country.
Graph shows that increases lags main school holidays rather well, I'd say.
RGD, you might be on to something there.
In the UK, they said that kids going back to school means more infections - but weren't a lot of schools shut during 2020 and 2021?
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