Covid 19

Ah I see, I was worried about both since its been a few years since I studied about the former and when it comes to the latter some things can get lost in translation or due to my own ignorance.

Does that assume that all of the person-to-person interactions in that chain are unique?

That is almost never the case; for most people most per-day person-to-person interactions will be repeats, co-workers, family, the people you usually travel on the bus/train to work with, that will massively reduce that number.


All The Best

In that particular case, yes, that would be unique interactions, which is why it's only the potential for that one person to expose that many people. But it's also not wrong.

Pathogen spread is a geometric progression. So that one person exposes three people. Those three people expose nine more. Those nine expose 27 more. After 14 cycles, assuming that those people don't expose anyone else (which isn't likely due to the window of asymptomatic shedding) you get: 3, 9, 27, 81, 243, 729, 2,187, 6,561, 19,683, 59,049, 177,147, 531,441, 1,594,323, 4,782,969 (which is the same number of people that that one person could potentially infect with unique interactions).

Will there may be some overlap in the people that you interact with on a daily basis? Yes, obviously. When I go grocery shopping I see the same faces each week, the employees, but I generally see different customers each week. Occasionally I'll see someone I recognize from a prior trip, but the city in which I live has a population over 470,000. There are going to be a lot of unique interactions. And those employees interact with far more people than I do during their eight hour shift versus my one hour trip to the grocery store. Compounding that, many of the people in this city commute for work to a larger city north of us. That city has a major international airport. Three asymptomatic people get on planes each going to different cities. Those three people each expose three more people on their flight. At their destinations each of those people go different directions. Two days later, showing no symptoms but shedding the virus, a flight attendant on one of those flights is greeting people as they board their flight, while one of the people on another flight is a teacher in another State with a class of 30 students who does hands on projects with them. As you can see, the pathogen is going to spread very fast and very far. While you might be thinking that this is just a scenario it entirely aligns with how SARS-CoV-2 has spread around the world in such a short time. 4.5 million infections from one person sounds far fetched. It's not.

It's for this reason that I find misinformation, such as has been posted in this thread by a repeat offender (I also happen to live with someone who says it's serious but keeps making comments and treating this as no worse than the seasonal flu), or the mishandling of the situation by several governments, the Trump administration in particular, so infuriating. An R0 of 3 doesn't sound so bad compared to some pathogens such as measles, which has an R0 of 12-18. But measles has a vaccine. For a lot of people it's hard to quantify how this could spread so quickly, but we only need to look at the 1918 pandemic to learn our lesson. Epidemiological models weren't a thing in 1918, but the R0 for the 1918 influenza A H1N1 virus is estimated at 2. We can see how that spread. We can see the damage that that did. And we can see how mishandling of the situation resulted in resurgences that took many, many more lives.

It is possible that SARS-CoV-2 could up and vanish like SARS-CoV-1 did in the early 2000's. It is also entirely possible, and more likely, that it's not, that it's going to make a resurgence, and that the second time around is going to be bad.

So now the tricky question, how many of you will take Cobid-19 vaccine when it becomes available?

Allow me to answer your question with a question. Provided they get a vaccine tested and approved, and my doctor recommends it, why wouldn't I?

I will, provided its been tested safely I don't see why I wouldn't. Brazilians take vaccinations seriously, and if our public healthcare system has it I don't see why I wouldn't take it, or if I can afford it through private means. Though its unlikely we'll be the first to get it as our president has been uncooperative with the World Health Organization and his handling of the pandemic is laughably idiotic, we aren't in any treaties thanks to him. Speaking of which our Health Minister just quit over disagreements with him, lasted less than a month so the situation is not about to get any better here and if a safe vaccine were made available I'd take it in heartbeat. Heck if the side-effects are only physical and not mental(as I need my brain nice and well for college) I'd even be willing to be part of trials, I believe some may be happening in the country but none within my city.

You can compare it with the vaccine against flu. Many people take it, many pay for it as its not a mandatory vaccine so not paid by health insurance. Yet they still get flu and in some cases it hits them harder than normally.

The virus also mutates so a vaccine might not be effective and u still get the virus regadless of havin exposed your body to a vaccine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAev1r7n3EI

Dasty

You gringos had some whack shows, not gonna lie I'd ironically watch that.

That we did (and do -- seriously, there is about to be a competition about Cannonballing into water to see who does it best)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHtrbTV-v6I

The good news for the world, though, is Merov applied the keen insights he gleaned listening to his parents who allowed him to accompany them into an infectious respiratory hospital wing (which all responsible parents who are medical doctors do), along with the veritable vast cornucopia of knowledge he collected emailing friends abroad (while roleplaying Dora the Explorer)...

He alone on Planet Earth knows enough about any as of yet non-existent potential Covid-19 vaccine to compare it to the flu vaccine, despite all the evidence suggesting the two are non-comparable.

Dasty