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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 839 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 100 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 119 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 219 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 102 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 153 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 130 likes
      Show this thread
    8. 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

      9 replies 50 retweets 182 likes
      Show this thread
    9. 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 200 likes
      Show this thread
    10. 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 146 likes
      Show this thread
      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

      1:01 AM - 1 Sep 2020
      • 42 Retweets
      • 246 Likes
      • Deirdre O'Kelly 🕷🎵🇪🇺🇬🇧🇮🇪#FBPE Proud European from Austria🇪🇺🇦🇹 🌏 Shawanda Greene Jesus Tejero Hailey 🌻 Bl@z3r Jonathan A. Goff Wiesie de Kock S⊙l Infectus
      24 replies 42 retweets 246 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Naim Matasci‏ @nmatasci 1 Sep 2020
          Replying to @GidMK

          I don't want to be macabre, but I think people underestimate the sheer economic cost of these deaths, when taking about the economic costs of the lockdown. You could add a column for the economic value of life loss. Using BotE of 13 years of life lost on average at $129,000/y

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
        3. Naim Matasci‏ @nmatasci 1 Sep 2020
          Replying to @nmatasci @GidMK

          one would get $2.1 trillion, i.e. more than 10% of the GDP. Of course the estimate varies according to the age-specific death rates .

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
        4. End of conversation
        1. Containment Nu! #VoorWeinigCovid‏ @ContainmentNu 1 Sep 2020
          Replying to @GidMK

          Now talk about damaged health, and receding immunity. Worst case: most Americans damaged for life.

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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        1. New conversation
        2. Ono no Komachi‏ @OnoNoKomachi1 1 Sep 2020
          Replying to @GidMK

          Annoying common cold viruses have been around forever, circulating freely. Is there herd immunity to those? This herd immunity thing isn't science. The threshold may be 10 %. It may not be. It's probably different in different places. No one knows.

          2 replies 1 retweet 1 like
        3. Onlyme‏ @Onlymehere9 1 Sep 2020
          Replying to @OnoNoKomachi1 @GidMK

          Imagine "X" thousand yrs ago, when a "cold virus" mutated, whole isolated communities died. Maybe a few survivors were immune & reproduced. Eventually "humans" became immune..... EVENTUALLY. 1000's of years later, "we" survive "colds" But, there is no more isolation.

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
        4. End of conversation
        1. New conversation
        2. SonoranSunrise  🇺🇸  🌵 🏜‏ @SunriseSonoran 1 Sep 2020
          Replying to @GidMK

          Reinfection is happening. Unless this is the warm up to judgement day, there has to be a reprieve of some sort because we weren’t fashioned to be isolated. This period in history is gonna suck.

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. Matt Ellenbecker‏ @mattde5er 1 Sep 2020
          Replying to @SunriseSonoran @GidMK

          We’ve got a handful of reinfections out of tens of millions infections. We don’t know enough about this yet.

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
        4. Show replies
        1. New conversation
        2. James Griffin‏ @spawnofKahn 1 Sep 2020
          Replying to @GidMK

          On a related note, just because individual trickle back into the susceptible pool, that doesn’t mean herd immunity can’t be attained. You can actually factor this into your SIR models (which you, other epis, but apparently no one else seems to recognize).

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. James Griffin‏ @spawnofKahn 1 Sep 2020
          Replying to @spawnofKahn @GidMK

          It’s far easier to control a pandemic, and stay at, say, a 40% recovered rate (with 1% trickleback per day) if you’re starting at 35% recovered. This will (presumably) allow for other methods of controlling this pandemic.

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        4. Show replies
        1. New conversation
        2. Del Amia‏ @milladeema 1 Sep 2020
          Replying to @GidMK

          Sweden chose herd immunity as a strategy. It wasn't a wise decision, instead it was a horrible example what happens when one person is handed over too much power.https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/mishagajewski/2020/08/11/stop-trying-to-make-herd-immunity-happen-swedens-attempt-at-covid-19-herd-immunity-failed/amp/ …

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. Del Amia‏ @milladeema 1 Sep 2020
          Replying to @milladeema @GidMK

          Not a medical nor scientific source but pretty accurate this time.

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
        4. End of conversation

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