When this whole thing started back in March and everyone was comparing it to the 1918 flu epidemic, I pointed out it was not 1918 anymore. Not only are standards of hygiene superior, but our biotech capabilities were undreamed of back then. This virus had every molecule in it mapped and analyzed before it even became famous. There are 199 vaccines in development, a handful of which are far along. There is even one that you can do at home now if you have some level of medical knowledge. In fact, I would expect that the only thing that prevents us from having a vaccine by year end is incompetent bureaucracy. Given our revealed inability to intelligently assess risk and return and to find the compromises with rules and regulations that are required in extreme circumstances, I wouldn't put it past our regulators and politicians to screw this up.
But there I go getting dark and snide again. I will stop. The point is that it is amazing what our capabilities are and entirely possible that when all is said and done and we look back on this from five years hence, it will be a source of pride. I found this recap of the vaccine research process encouraging.
Also under the heading of tooting my own horn, while the rest of the world was obsessed with the idea that how well you adhered to the prescribed methods -- social distancing, masks, sheltering, etc. -- was explaining all the variation in infection rates, I maintained there was something else, something we hadn't discovered yet. A couple of things have since come to light.
The thing that gave me, and many others, pause was that almost all the cause and effect theories that people had in their heads and were making policy based on, fell apart because there was always data that confounded them -- all suppositions had counterexamples that suggested there was too much margin for error. Eggheads call that heterogeneity of results. Now, humans being human, since we could determine what was going on with certainty, we just made up stories that coincide with our existing prejudices, filtered the data we acknowledged to fit our made-up stories, and got on with our standard hostilities.
There are a couple of important bits of information in this Marginal Revolution post.
First, there have been two major strains of the virus, one significantly more contagious than the other. Which strain is prevalent in a certain area has a huge effect on the rate of infection. South Korea, which was applauded for such a successful response, had almost entirely the less contagious strain. New York had almost entirely the most contagious strain. Perhaps public policy and adherence to it wasn't the crucial element after all.
Second, there is evidence that there is a genetic component to how susceptible you are to infection and the viral load you can carry. And as any genetic component will do, it broadly follows ethnic and racial lines, which makes it nearly taboo to speak of.
This Washington Post story finds other interesting things. Namely that Covid does not appear to progress through the population in a general steady manner like, say, measles. What we now call Superspreaders and Superspreader Events play a large role. They also walk right up to, but do not outright declare, that there may be a genetic component to being a superspreader.
Scientists suspect these "super-emitters" may have much higher levels of the virus in their bodies (viral load) than others, or may release them by talking, shouting or singing in a different way from most people. Research based on the flu, which involved college students blowing into a tube, showed that a small percentage tended to emit smaller particles known as aerosols more than others. These particles tend to hang or float, and move with the flow of air -- and therefore can go much farther and last longer than larger droplets.Furthermore they note that a key to accelerator to superspreading is HVAC. To me that implies the best bang for the buck might be investment in air filtration systems. Essentially putting a mask on your air vents.
And here is a wonderfully clear and informative article about how the immune system works. Can you work all the information in this article into your own thinking? Does it leave you still believing the other side in the culture war is the cause of all the problems? If so, I don't think objective communication is possible for you.
The point I am trying to make is that if some small percent of the people refuse to wear masks as some sort of silly protest, it may not be making a big difference; it might not be the cause of any of the variations we are seeing in infection rates. Maybe we could dial back the hostilities in this area.
In any event, there were only two ways this was ever going to end. One was to fight it off as best we can until a vaccine is found. The other was to just protect yourself as best you can and wait until it infects through enough people to burn itself out (herd immunity). It looks like we are going for the first alternative. I have high hopes that we can finish the job by the end of the year, although that may be giving our bureaucracy too much credit.
