How am I roasted? Dingle's bias is pretty hard right so of course he thinks 538 is a lefty cover. But most independent organizations rate it as a fairly neutral site since it focuses more on analysis of numbers, etc than political opinion. I wonder what dingle's thoughts on the Cato Institute are?
He says he thinks 60% is the herd number. Almost all experts through a countless variety of sources say it ranges from 60-90. 60% is the number that corresponds to a R naught of 2.5. That was the original estimate. But as many posters have been telling us, the virus appears to have infected a lot more people than originally thought. That means a higher R naught. The current estimate of R naught is actually 5.7 and that converts to a herd rate around 82%
But anyway, someone else has said that all viruses fizzle out around 30% so we will never hit herd immunity anyway. Oh wait, there's that one paper somewhere that says herd at 10 or 20% now. That's awesome how that all worked out neatly. Crisis averted!!
I'm a numbers guy through and through. I like numbers because they don't lie. People can use them to lie, but they just hope that no one is actually paying attention. But if you understand the numbers well, you see how easily their arguments fall apart.
I really don't pay any attention to the Cato Institute. I'm not a libertarian. I do believe in the smallest government possible and think our government has gotten out of hand.
As far as population immunity goes, I've always read and heard 60%. That said, in an uncontrolled travel environment, I'm not sure it is possible to reach a high enough population immunity to eliminate this virus. We're too mobile and with the number of asymptomatic carriers, I think this thing will probably linger for years....or maybe not. Maybe it dies out in the summer heat and humidity. The bottom line is as my wife said tonight "even 80% of the senior citizens with all of their health problems are going to survive this thing". Could we say the same thing about an unvaccinated senior citizens and influenza?
The media wants to scream from the roof tops about the exceptions where a young person dies from complications from the virus. Those are exceptions that are very rare that also happen with influenza and we all know how resistant young healthy people are to getting the flu vaccine.
As you know, I was all in on this in January. As more and more information has come out it became obvious that while a bad deal, it's way over blown. It is also obvious that some people are more concerned about furthering their social agenda than they are about the crisis at hand. It's too bad that this has gotten turned in to a left versus right. It shouldn't be that way. As I've said before, I'm in a fairly high risk category, but need to be responsible for myself. IF I get it, it will be because I didn't protect myself well enough. I don't care how many people stay home, it's probably going to be out there well in to next year at least. I would rather take my chances with catching it than to make my neighbors hide out in their houses so I don't get it.
FWIW, nothing touched by ABC news in unbiased. Numbers are very easy to hide bias in.
