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GidMK's profile
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
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@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 Feb 10

      A lot of people have been talking about it, so I thought I might do a bit of a thread on plausible reasons for the decline in COVID-19 cases in places where behaviour hasn't changed much recently 1/npic.twitter.com/QXNwGErMcN

      20 replies 45 retweets 124 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

      2/n The basic background is that there are some places across the world where there hasn't been a reportedly huge behavioural change since Nov/Dec last year where cases are dropping, sometimes quite quickly So what's causing this?pic.twitter.com/Pwb4bHW2Ma

      1 reply 0 retweets 25 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

      3/n The explanation proposed by some has been that these places have reached "herd immunity", essentially a threshold where enough people have been infected and recovered such that the disease can no longer spread

      1 reply 0 retweets 20 likes
      Show this thread
    4. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

      4/n Is this likely? Well, we know that these locations almost certainly haven't reached a traditional herd immunity threshold. Serology and other data points to most places in the US and Europe as being far below the 60-70% infected requiredpic.twitter.com/cqczg07eyJ

      1 reply 0 retweets 29 likes
      Show this thread
    5. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

      5/n It's also probably not vaccines. While vaccine efforts are ongoing in all of these places, few countries have managed to vaccinate more than a small % of their citizens (with some very big outliers)pic.twitter.com/Eq0omJgoe4

      1 reply 0 retweets 29 likes
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      Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

      6/n Some have proposed lower herd immunity thresholds, that only require 30-40% of the population to be infected. Now, it is ~possible~ that these have been reached and this is causing the decline However I'm not sure it's likely

      4:30 PM - 10 Feb 2021
      • 21 Likes
      • Abundant Pedestrian Sheds Eden We gotta yeet this virus 🇺🇸🇨🇦 Tally Ben Long Rod The Friendly OT Ivan B. Mathematiker plädiert für Ruhe und Rationalität Guffy hbd chick
      1 reply 0 retweets 21 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

          7/n We know from places like Manaus that not only can a large proportion of people in the population get infected, but that you can see a massive epidemic even after at least 30% of an area has recovered and become immune to COVID-19https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00183-5/fulltext …

          3 replies 1 retweet 31 likes
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        3. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

          8/n This doesn't entirely discount the lower herd immunity threshold, but it does make it somewhat less likely What else could be happening here?

          1 reply 0 retweets 18 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

          9/n I think one very plausible explanation is simply a combination of behavioural changes and some herd effects. This sounds complex, but it's actually pretty simple

          1 reply 1 retweet 34 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

          10/n We tend to think of herd immunity as a fixed concept. Reach a threshold - 30%, 40%, 50% etc - and the disease stops spreading and eventually goes away This is actually only one aspect of herd immunity as an idea

          2 replies 1 retweet 24 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

          11/n Herd immunity is ultimately based on a simple fact - if some proportion of people in a population are immune to a disease, the disease will spread less

          1 reply 0 retweets 23 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

          12/n The threshold may be when the disease stops spreading - when the reproduction number (Rt) goes below one - but even at lower levels of immunity there will be some impact on the spread of the disease This is what I mean by herd 𝘦𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴

          5 replies 0 retweets 28 likes
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        8. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

          13/n What does this have to do with COVID-19? Well, say we're talking about the US. Depending on which estimate you take, somewhere between 20-30% of the entire country has been infected with and recovered from COVID-19pic.twitter.com/2ttjhfIH1A

          1 reply 0 retweets 20 likes
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        9. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

          14/n In addition, we know from various data sources (this is Google mobility data) that while behaviour might not have changed substantially since late last year, it still isn't *normal* from a 2019 point of viewpic.twitter.com/pOaesOGGZR

          1 reply 0 retweets 28 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

          15/n You also have to consider that even mobility doesn't paint a fulsome picture of how our behaviour has changed while living through a global pandemic. There are many minor differences in our lives that may at a population level have an impact on disease spread

          1 reply 0 retweets 20 likes
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        11. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

          16/n What this means is that it's not unlikely that rather than the traditional R0 of COVID-19 of ~2.5-3, the US is really looking at a number a bit lower than that even before you take immune people into account

          1 reply 1 retweet 18 likes
          Show this thread
        12. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

          17/n And given that somewhere around 30% of the entire country is immune to the disease - vaccinated+recovered - we are starting to see herd effects come into play This is speculative, but I think a reasonable argument to makepic.twitter.com/ruII2nJX21

          3 replies 0 retweets 28 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

          18/n The big caveat to this seemingly good news is that the declining numbers require people in the US to maintain various cautious behaviours until the vaccinated population is much bigger

          2 replies 1 retweet 34 likes
          Show this thread
        14. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

          19/n If this speculation is correct, and everyone entirely dropped their guard against COVID-19, even in places that were very hard-hit you'd expect to see another resurgence of the disease As we did in Manaus

          3 replies 2 retweets 42 likes
          Show this thread
        15. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Feb 10

          20/n TL:DR I think a reasonable explanation for declining COVID-19 cases in a number of places is a combination of long-lasting behavioural changes alongside enormous numbers of infections. Hopefully vaccines can bridge the remaining gap in the near future

          12 replies 7 retweets 76 likes
          Show this thread
        16. End of conversation

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