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GidMK's profile
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
Verified account
@GidMK

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Health NerdVerified account

@GidMK

Epidemiologist. Writer (Guardian, Observer etc). "Well known research trouble-maker". PhDing at @UoW Host of @senscipod Email gidmk.healthnerd@gmail.com he/him

Sydney, New South Wales
theguardian.com/profile/gideon…
Joined November 2015

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    1. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 31 Aug 2020

      Since everyone's talking about herd immunity in the United States at the moment, I thought I'd quickly run some rough calculations of the number of deaths required to get to the herd immunity threshold for COVID-19 in the U.S.

      60 replies 421 retweets 838 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 31 Aug 2020

      The age-stratified IFRs that I'll use are from my and co-authors paper available here:https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v4 …

      3 replies 16 retweets 99 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 31 Aug 2020

      Taking the ages/population figures from the US census, and the midpoint of the age brackets as the mean IFR for that group, you get this breakdownpic.twitter.com/CZS0k0dXCB

      3 replies 22 retweets 117 likes
      Show this thread
    4. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 31 Aug 2020

      Using our bog-standard Herd Immunity Threshold calculation, which requires 70% of people to become infected, we get just over 3 million deaths required to reach herd immunitypic.twitter.com/UgiZSL8SYO

      10 replies 104 retweets 220 likes
      Show this thread
    5. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 31 Aug 2020

      Now, this requires something that we actually don't see - for the older age group to be infected as often as the young This isn't very common for COVID-19

      4 replies 15 retweets 101 likes
      Show this thread
    6. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 31 Aug 2020

      If we instead assume that people >65 are infected a bit less, and those >80 are infected a LOT less (in line with current trends), we get a perhaps more realistic figure of 1.76 million deaths in the U.S. before herd immunitypic.twitter.com/tSpxwwko4X

      6 replies 37 retweets 152 likes
      Show this thread
    7. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 31 Aug 2020

      "But wait!", I hear some people cry, "The herd immunity threshold is lower than 70%!" Well, maybe. If we reduce the threshold to 20%, which is one of the lowest figures proposed, we see either 880,000 or 504,000 deaths depending on who gets infectedpic.twitter.com/uciCBcJUiL

      9 replies 28 retweets 129 likes
      Show this thread
      Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 31 Aug 2020

      What this means is that even in a 'best case' scenario, where elderly people are protected AND only a small fraction of people need to be infected to reach herd immunity, the U.S. would still be facing 100,000 more deaths Pretty scary stuff

      8:59 PM - 31 Aug 2020
      • 50 Retweets
      • 181 Likes
      • Jonathan A. Goff Nina Milanov Oliver Maclaren Derek Mereweather moneyman10k razh Nicole Tay ☀️🦅Daya G.✨🐢 SLMR
      9 replies 50 retweets 181 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 31 Aug 2020

          With a more realistic situation, where elderly people are protected a bit but you still need 40-50% of individuals to be infected, the U.S. would be facing well in excess of 1 million MORE deaths than it already haspic.twitter.com/9mNlNROgI0

          4 replies 70 retweets 199 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 31 Aug 2020

          As I said, these are very back-of-the-envelope calculations, so they're certainly not exact predictions, but it gives you some idea of what we would expect to see if the U.S. does try for herd immunity in terms of deaths

          12 replies 16 retweets 145 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 1 Sep 2020

          This is, of course, assuming that it is possible to reach herd immunity at all. It is still entirely possible that the immunity to COVID-19 does not last long enough for herd immunity to be a realistic possibility

          24 replies 42 retweets 245 likes
          Show this thread
        5. End of conversation
        1. New conversation
        2. Robert Warren‏ @robvwarren 31 Aug 2020
          Replying to @GidMK

          Why 100k more if total needed is 500k? Doesn't that mean ~300k more?

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
        3. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 31 Aug 2020
          Replying to @robvwarren

          Yes, typo! Meant to say 100,000s

          0 replies 0 retweets 8 likes
        4. End of conversation
        1. New conversation
        2. Ian Sharp-Smith‏ @Iansharpsmithy 1 Sep 2020
          Replying to @GidMK

          This is the most likely scenario. 100K sounds scary, but looking back in 12 months it would be negligible as sadly most of these would have been due to die in the next 12 months. eg The UK has now had 8 weeks of lower all cause deaths. In summary, it's equal to a bad flu season

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. Sara Lucy‏ @SaraLucilleBene 2 Sep 2020
          Replying to @Iansharpsmithy @GidMK

          "100k sounds bad, but it's not if you don't actually care" is what this dismissal sounds like.

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
        4. Show replies
        1. Tom Andrews 💙‏ @0bj3ctivity 1 Sep 2020
          Replying to @GidMK

          Sadly most of the anti-maskers would say how does this compare to a flu season, then say, so what (61,000 in 2017-18 by the way) https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018/archive.htm#:~:text=CDC%20estimates%20that%20influenza%20was,the%202017%E2%80%932018%20influenza%20season ….

          0 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
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        1. Stupor Mundi‏ @RAFALOCA1 1 Sep 2020
          Replying to @GidMK

          I guess we will have to live with that! People die from falling down the stairs.

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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        1. #BlackLivesMatter  ✍🏽‏ @RobSample 1 Sep 2020
          Replying to @GidMK

          You lost me on this one- 100,000 more deaths than…?

          0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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