WHO: Second wave of COVID-19 seems less likely.
Sorry for not having a link. This appears on Reddit. Can be found by googling Dr. Maria Neira COVID-19 second wave.
The article is in Spanish so here's a rough translation:
WHO sees a second major wave of COVID-19 increasingly unlikely
The director of Public Health of the World Health Organization (WHO) , María Neira , said on Monday that the models they work with are "increasingly" ruling out a second wave of the coronavirus.
However, Neira has called for "great caution" and "common sense" in this "very critical" phase of the pandemic (de-escalation), and, in statements to RAC-1, has requested that the population should not be paranoid nor should they relax too much, but they should "learn to live with infectious diseases ".
“There are many models that predict many probabilities such as a punctual regrowth or a major wave, but this last possibility is increasingly being ruled out. We are much better prepared in all areas'', said the Spanish doctor.
According to Neira, “ we have lowered the transmission rate so much that the virus will have difficulty surviving . We must be very careful to say whether this is the end of the wave, but the data at least shows us that the transmission and explosion of the first weeks have been avoided''.
However, she pointed out that "it is worth not making many forecasts because the next few weeks are a very critical phase."
«With reopening you have to see how the virus behaves. We hope there will be no other outbreaks, but it will be a day-to-day battle. In two or three weeks we will see what has happened and if it is necessary to correct it surgically ”, she said about the de-escalation in phase 1 that all of Spain has entered.
Neira has acknowledged that the WHO still has "certain doubts about the relationship of the virus with the weather" , although they are seeing that "it is doing the geographical route expected of a virus that wants to survive".
Was there any actual hypothesis or evidence that shows why this virus would not be affected by seasonal behavior patterns is the population (viral load increases when people gather inside in winter) and/or directly attenuated by the weather (temp, sunlight, humidity)?
I mean, I thought just about every virus & common cold (many CCs are corona type viruses as I understand it) behaves seasonally so what precisely about this virus' structure would make it so different?
I personally working under the assumption that Covid will generally behave like most other colds/flus until there is compelling evidence otherwise and I'd expect that's how people in decision making positions should approach this as well.
Mexico and Brazil are going through their peaks right now. Not exactly scorching there at this time of year, but still out of line with the idea that this is seasonal.
That's a good observation this virus doesn't seem to be suppressed like we typically see with "normal" influenza.
Brazil, being in the southern hemisphere, is now in late autumn - prime season for respiratory illnesses.
Mexico isn't, but if you're in a place that is so hot that you spend most of the day indoors with air conditioning, you're not going to reap much seasonal benefit. That could potentially be an issue in parts of the U.S. as well.
Mexicans don't spend most of the day indoors with air conditioning.
Only 16% of households in Mexico have air conditioning of any sort (the number is almost 90% for the USA).
But in a country of about 125 million people, 16 % is still quite a lot. I imagine the proportion is greater than that in Mexico City, which is the richest part of the country (and also home to the worst COVID outbreak).
Mexico City isn't a particularly hot place. It's cooler than Paris in the summers (64F average vs. 68F).
They actually have a LOWER percentage of AC than the country as a whole (13%)... most buildings don't have central heat either, folks just use space heaters or nothing.
First, much of Brazil does not have four seasons. Sao Paulo in particular (chosen because it is one of the hardest hit Brazilian cities) has averaged in the mid-70s over the month of May. It's year round average daily high temperatures range between 72 and 83. References: https://www.wunderground.com/calendar/br/s%C3%A3o-paulo/SBSP
https://weatherspark.com/y/30268/Average-Weather-in-S%C3%A3o-Paulo-Brazil-Year-Round
Second, "prime season" for respiratory illnesses is typically not late autumn, it's usually over the winter. I'll use the US flu season as an example - it typically ramps up in December & January, peaking in February. February is by far the most common peak month. Reference: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season.htm
So this "late autumn prime season" statement you made doesn't apply to Sao Paulo anyway (because it doesn't have four seasons), but it is still wrong about the US since the peak is typically in February.
The Spanish flu killed millions in the tropics; the H1N1 virus is still a seasonal thing anyway. I don't think the presence of the virus in tropical latitudes is proof that COVID isn't seasonal. If someone goes to the US, brings the virus to Mexico and spreads it, it's going to spread for a time. But eventually, a good six-month soak in ultraviolet light is likely going to have the same results as every other respiratory virus.
Most of what I have seen with assertions like this is an inversion of logic from the original hypothesis. The original hypothesis isn't that transmission isn't affected by weather, but that it is affected by weather, just like every other virus. This is an assumption that pushes experts to say something like "there is no evidence to support the transmission of the virus being affected by weather". People then take that as an assertion that weather does not affect transmission, which isn't the case. We simply don't have data to make those assertions beyond assumptions based on other viruses.
The same thing happens with data about immunity in those who have already had the virus. It happens when discussing the efficacy of drugs. People just don't understand that the answer is that we don't know for sure either way and it gets twisted into talking points on both sides of the argument.
The first SARS followed a seasonal pattern as well.
I guess these officials fear that people will let down their guard if they are told that they are less likely to contract the virus in the summer. But - as with the mask fiasco - it could damage their credibility.
Even a profoundly ignorant fool can be serendipitously correct. On most any matter informed, knowledgeable people will disagree. One can find expert opinion on the internet that will support most any position. Here, the physician is not suggesting that we throw all caution to the wind-and anyone doing so should be dismissed out of hand...and there appear to be more people doing this than there are those being pathologically cautious. This is not a matter of employing "common sense" because, here, the ignorance of a significant majority of the population is profound.
I’ll wait for a single major news source to pick this up before I believe what you’ve posted here.
Also she seems to be speaking specifically about Spain.
I think your second point is the important one, I agree she does seem to be referring to a specific country in those quotes.
One can hope, but Iran seems to be in the midst of a bona fine second wave of new cases...
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/iran/
I hope its just increased testing of milder cases though, as their deaths have not spiked again yet
There are many parallels between Coronavirus and the Spanish Flu. I hope she's right but it goes against common sense to think that a highly infectious upper respiratory virus that most of the populace hasn't been exposed to won't flare up when people start gathering again.
The Spanish Flu dies out, mainly, when it ran out of people to infect from what I understand.
WHO doesn't have a whole lot of credibility in this area, but we're all hoping for this to go away.
Won’t get fooled again!
The first reply in that Reddit thread has a link to the top WHO official in Europe warning about a winter resurgence.
It's all politics at this point. Probably has been for a while.
Businesses need to open and people need to get back to work.
Businesses need to open and people need to get back to work.
Agreed. My problem with the discussion is..has there ever been another option? We were always going to go back to work and back to living our lives before a vaccine came out.
The other option would be to trust the American people to make the best decisions and that includes corporations.
And as we've seen since Day One, both those entities will not do the right thing. Thus, the heavy handed solution (brought on in large part because of the bumbling fool in the White House) to shut things down.
And the MAJORITY of the people, in polls (I know, I know FAKE POLLZ) believe we did and are doing the right thing.
But yeah, "militia" fucktards and message board guy...
nah...I'd rather listen to my governor who locked down the state another couple of weeks to avoid overwhelming hospitals...uh...to flatten the curve....uh, to avoid a sudden second wave...and slowly roll out openings up north because of science...and data...we do not get to see or even have explained other than if people behave, we see more re-open...and though it seems her husband went up north to launch a boat...she swears it was just to rake leaves...in May...nothing...here....to see...I blindly follow the direction of my governor because my county is lumped in with the Detroit and thus will never re-open.
I tried Googling "coronavirus second wave" and the hits that came back all seemed to indicate suspicion that there will be a second wave, and potentially worse than the first. As others have said, perhaps this article is more country-specific.
Hopefully this is not the case, and as data comes in and we learn more we become more effective against the virus.
I am fairly certain that when the history of all this is written the public health organizations (WHO & CDC) response to this will be viewed as one of the greatest failures in modern history. The messaging on continues to be all over the place. Are surfaces dangerous or not dangerous, mask when and where, are cases increasing or not increasing, is outside OK or not OK, should I go to the grocery store or not, where the hell are the greatest risk of spread?
The media coverage of all of this has been a disaster as well. The US media appears incapable of covering this as anything other than a failure of the Trump administration and a partisan divide issue. Yes, this is a monumental failure of the Trump administration, note he also is ultimately responsible for the CDC and other administrative agencies poor response, but there is more going on here. The performance of the CDC, starting with the testing debacle, has been abysmal. This was supposed to be the greatest public health organization in the world – what the hell happened?
Also, we have a great deal more data on this than we did two months ago. Why the hell can’t the public health organizations and/or the media do some decent data analysis and use this information to guide our response, allocate resources and provide clear guidance on what to do.
As an example, I spent about a half hour looking over the data the state of Colorado has collected on outbreaks. 40% of the cases are directly tied (residents and employees) of nursing homes, prisons and food processing facilities. If we logically assume that the typical employee at these facilities infected 1 or 2 of their family members when they went home from work this ends up accounting for up to 80% of the cases in the state. That seems like some really important data that can be used to focus resources and limit the spread moving forward.
It seem like there is a fear that if we tell people some things are relatively safe (like 10 or 20 friends having a picnic at the park) everybody will just assume everything is safe (like 20 people gathering in the cramped break room at work for a birthday party – which is clearly not safe). Quit trying to baby everyone and protect your own ass. Yes, if public health officials OK park gatherings there is some increased risk but it is nowhere near the risk associated with a crowded indoor work place. In the end this is a numbers game – focus resources on the known high-risk areas and give people the information they need to focus their own personal response on areas of most risk as well.
You raise some very good points, and over the past several days, I've started coming around to many of the same conclusions. The CDC now says its best estimate (for planning purposes) is a range around 0.4% for CFR with IFR around 0.25%. Certainly worse than seasonal flu, but it's not Ebola or HIV.
Likewise, few in government or media are presenting any serious analyses. Whatever sounds worst gets talked about. Andrew Cuomo made probably the wisest remark since the pandemic began when he said yesterday that the models have all been wrong, and he was getting out of the prediction business. From here on out, he will go where the actual data takes him.
Why, for instance, is Texas seeing its number of cases per day go up, but FL and GA remain about the same? Why is California going in the wrong direction despite being under strict rules? Is the U.S. as a whole on the decline, or is that simply because NY and NJ (the two states that drove the biggest increases a month ago) are declining?
I'm pretty frustrated by all of this right now. There are too few trusted sources of information.
Why, for instance, is Texas seeing its number of cases per day go up, but FL and GA remain about the same?
Uhhh, Florida is 100% gaming their numbers, a la China. This has been documented. Given what we know about Georgia's governor, it's a very safe assumption the same thing is occurring.
My sister is a RN at a large hospital in the Orlando area. Even at the height of the wave, they never had more than a dozen or so Covid cases in her facility. In fact, they were so short of patients, that she was sent home early on most of her shifts. One data point doesn't make a trend, but her experience was pretty surprising to me. If FL is "gaming the system," I would have expected a different story from her.
" It seem like there is a fear that if we tell people some things are relatively safe (like 10 or 20 friends having a picnic at the park) everybody will just assume everything is safe (like 20 people gathering in the cramped break room at work for a birthday party – which is clearly not safe). "
My personal experiences over the holiday weekend tell me that is a completely and totally justified fear.
This is not an official WHO position (at the exact same time WHO is warning about an "immediate second peak" to the first wave...), and individual scientists at WHO have been wrong, sometimes bizarrely (see Bruce Aylward's early statements applying CFR to total populations).
Also, would any responsible epidemiologist talk about "we" here? The virus has taken very different paths depending on how it is being handled, and this is true of past epidemics as well (second waves don't necessarily hit everywhere).
Given the lack of planning, coordination and basic public health measures here, it seems to me taht a second wave of some sort is inevitable minus a vaccine. But I work with behavioral risk statistics, not epidemic stats, so I defer to all the epis - most of whom are still saying a second wave is likely.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/three-waves.htm
The 1918 Spanish Flu had 3 waves that started in Spring 1918, then Fall of 2018 and Winter of 2018-19. Some of the predictions for Coronavirus are modeling a similar timeline taking in to account "re-opening" by states.
It's interesting that in the 1918 era there were many protests about masks and restrictions iin place due to public safety https://time.com/5830265/1918-flu-reopening-coronavirus/
Note: The Dodge brothers died in their early 50s of the Spanish Flu in 1920.
https://www.ranker.com/list/famous-people-who-died-of-spanish-flu/reference
I feel like we may be going overboard with the Spanish Flu comparisons. I'm not sure how instructive a case from a century ago, which occurred in the context of huge numbers of soldiers returning from war, really is.
There are more people traveling worldwide (and MUCH faster) than at the height of troop transport during WWI.
More people fly in 35 days than the total number of soldiers involved in WW1 (~70 million). Prior to COVID almost 2 million people per day flew worldwide.
The peak of US troop transport to France had about 10,000 per day arriving.
125,000 per day people fly from the US to Europe now.
But global travelers in 2020 normally aren't coming from the squalid conditions of the WWI troops, and can be screened in ways that weren't possible a century ago.
We have a lot more resources at our disposal than we did in 1918. Testing our sewer systems may end up being a big one.
How will testing a sewer system help screen an incoming flight passenger from Paris?
I probably misconstrued your point...maybe you're saying that testing Paris sewer systems can inform the US whether they should be allowing passengers from Paris to arrive?
I may be wrong --- but I tend to think the future is "clusters and spikes in relatively local areas" as opposed to a "2nd wave that hits everywhere and anywhere."
Visually on a graph, that would look like a wavy plateau, as opposed to a notable increase.
Time will tell ............
This seems logical to me as well. It'll be a whack-a-mole scenario indefinitely. The second wave of SF was due to the war and its attendant mass transportation. As long as air traffic is kept relatively low, I wouldn't expect any new, single wave of similar size to the past 90 days.
However, there will still be big, intermittent problems with case clusters once schools reopen.
Speaking of air travel - I find this link interesting. Number of people passing through TSA per day. It is increasing, we're up to ~ 250K people (+) daily now (we had been as low as 100K in mid-April).
https://www.tsa.gov/coronavirus/passenger-throughput?referringSource=articleShare
I honestly just don't know what to believe anymore. I get that part of that is because everyone is figuring things out about COVID as they go, but the media (both sides) seem to paint a picture one day, and then the following week its something completely different.
I just try to take everything that everyone is saying, CNN, Fox, NBC, CBS, etc., take the average down the middle, and assume that's the closest I'm going to get to the actual truth.
This is actually a pretty good way to handle all information.
The information getting put out will only get worse I promise you.
As we get closer to the election you should expect all kinds of random stories to go viral.
Keeping the masses confused and divided is the goal.
The fact that all of this also comes up in an election year too....I mean....you just can't make this shit up.
This year is really an election between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich. South Park got it right.
These are the wrong attitudes. You have bought into the "Trust NO ONE" perversity of the right wing, especially under the Bag of Shit in Washington.
The right has succeeded in getting people to lose their trust and faith in all our institutions.
I like to compare it to this (like all other college message boards): There is NOTHING the University of Michigan and JIm Harbaugh can do wrong--that faith will not be even slightly disturbed and the failures of both reasoned away. Anything averse is considered banal propaganda worthy of complete derision by the Harbaugh worshippers and the pretend holders of Michigan degrees--but more so even by those who never set foot on a college campus!
This election is not at all as you say--there is a real human being on the democratic side; a grotesque burlesque show and a completely vile and evil subhuman on the republican side.
We are frolicking in the failure of our people to make the right choices in 2016 and not enough of them in 2018.
Now all people do is throw their hands up and claim everybody is lying, when that is not nearly the case.
We've seen this decent into tribalism and the lack of concern for fellow man since the republican takeover in 1980 with the election of the Original Pig--Ronald Reagan. The right wing takeover of the media by air and by monopoly is relegating people to shirking their duties to turn off and tune out and to read on their own. THAT is the victory for the so called "elites" or whatever--just throwing too much at us and never resting.
It's sad, really, because all the rationalizing won't bring back the 150,000 people who will be dead by fall or the probably half who could have been saved by a solid, directed, strong federal response.
When ONE SIDE has been breaking and dismantling the government and our institutions for FORTY years (and now can claim the SCOTUS as their puppet)--this is what we have become and we as people have let ourselves down by allowing it.
Oh totally...... it's just one side causing all the problems.
Thank the lord you talked some sense into us. I can finally see the light.
Edit*** and the fact that youre account is one day old is irrelevant.
All I can say is "WOW". You have demonstrated a level of "anyone who thinks differently than me is banal/a bag of shit/a pig/ and a pretend holder of a degree" that is truly breathtaking. Even for this board you are truly out-standing.
I congratulate you
The WHO lied and people died
That cluster f**k is also run by a commie terrorist from Ethiopia. What a waste of an organization.
AS has been said elsewhere the WHO couldn't accurately predict yesterday's weather using today's newspaper. That said, second wave, blah, blah, blah. The fact of the matter is this virus and/or its resulting mutations is now the status quo. It will always be here, and under certain circumstances will yield infection outbreaks. The question becomes how do we continue our existence in the face of that fact. For those waiting on a vaccine to be announced, do you want to be first in line for a rushed through medicine. While I often am frustrated by the governments go slow approach to things, insufficient testing can lead to horrors worse than what is being cured (look up thalidomide). Further, while it is a trite meme, even with a vaccine the flu kills 50K a year (but oh by the way with that with a move along nothing to see here mentality). I will admit a conflicted view of the path forward, but I know that demanding people run around with masks and keep 6 ft away (effectively ending things like crowds at football games which is one thing that makes the whole sport thing worthwhile) is not an existence that I think is sustainable. In the end, as one of my least favorite people , Bill Maher, has said, the only thing that ends this is herd immunity.
One last note on vaccine worship (and BTW, I am NOT an anti-vaxer, my kids got their shots) the illustrious Dr. Fauci's primary task over the last 30 years has been supporting the development of the widely used AIDS vaccine... oh wait. Again we may never get a vaccine, what is your proposal for life style then?
Your last statement illustrates where the extreme cower-in-fear mentality is really hard for me to understand. There is no guarantee an effective vaccine will be developed. "Regular" flu and the common cold are still an everyday part of life and they've existed since the inception of medical science. People a lot smarter than I am are working their asses off and I hope they have resounding success in developing a vaccine, but we have to be prepared for the non-zero chance it doesn't happen. Absent a vaccine, are people willing to spend the rest of their lives in masks, distancing, no games/concerts/casinos/movies/etc? Apologies for being blunt, but that is indeed living in fear. Unfortunately, the virus is here, and very possibly here to stay. We are going to have to accept that at some point and get on with life.
Thank you for the response. My question to the group regarding lifestyle in lieu of a vaccine was sincere. For myself, I have a number of the risk factors involved (age, hypertension) but I look at the numbers and while that increases risk, the vast majority of even those risky patients survive, so I cannot condone the rest of you, especially the younger people being pushed into the type of isolated living which is being pushed. I note that a couple of drive-bys down-voted my comment, thanks for the feedback. I would really like to know specifically what irritated you enough to do so. If I am wrong, show me where, and I will learn the error of my ways.