Why, indeed.

It's almost like people just don't want to know the CFR of this thing... Why wouldn't you want to know the CFR, in exquisite detail, down to groups refined by as many distinguishing details as you can possibly measure? But, surprise! You simply cannot know the CFR of Covid-19 without statistically valid immunity studies of the general population. Which nobody is doing! Just ... crazy.

Its stunningly clear that outcomes for this disease are wildly variable. For some, its extremely risky, for other groups, its not even a passing thought!

And yet, here we are -- global, carte-blanche "quarantining", to "flatten the curve" -- that big, ill-defined "curve" that means sudden death to our civilization if we get near it!

And yet, here I sit in a community with virtually empty hospitals, but almost no progress toward herd immunity. But, with an undercurrent of well-distributed carriers -- because nobody is interested in testing the general population (for either infection or immunity). And, we're starting to "open up". Heaven help the elderly and immune-compromised -- they are just toast.

In 2-3 weeks, a brutal "second wave" is just ... guaranteed. And, it'll be presented as a "surprise"! Who could have possibly predicted it! By golly, we'll have to really put the hammer down, this time!

I pray that this bungled, too-terrible-to-be-an-accident response to Covid-19 comes home to roost on those who should have known better. But, the truth won't be coming out from the criminally complicit "media". If only we had any "Journalists" to expose this thing! But, big-media is on the gravy-train of the politicians (here in Canada, at least), so there's no hope of that.

Independent journalists need to step up, somehow run the gauntlet of our controlled Internet media outlets (say something contrary to WHO -- ban-hammer!), and expose this thing!

Fortunately, evidence-based reality cannot be suppressed forever!

> In 2-3 weeks, a brutal "second wave" is just ... guaranteed. And, it'll be presented as a "surprise"! Who could have possibly predicted it! By golly, we'll have to really put the hammer down, this time!

I don’t think this will happen in the northern hemisphere, thankfully. There is reason to believe both that effective R drops off a cliff in the summer months, and that we’re much closer to herd immunity (or whatever is possible with this kind of virus) than most people think. If you want references I can dig them up, but I guess we’ll see either way in a few weeks.

> we’re much closer to herd immunity (or whatever is possible with this kind of virus) than most people think

Certainly for SF/LA, which is basically an extension of China because of the daily flights to SFO and LAX.

The SF tests show 3.6% of 78,000 exposed to corona, but nobody knows how accurate those tests are. The hospital dashboard has been flat.

I just checked, and the numbers have been flat (no growth) for over a month, with only 62 deaths to date and 38 in ICU now:

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx#ho...

> I don’t think this will happen in the northern hemisphere, thankfully. There is reason to believe both that effective R drops off a cliff in the summer months, and that we’re much closer to herd immunity (or whatever is possible with this kind of virus) than most people think. If you want references I can dig them up, but I guess we’ll see either way in a few weeks.

All sources I've seen before say something different about those two things (i.e. supposedly effective R will maybe go a bit down in summer but in all likelihood not by much; and herd immunity is in most (or all) places still very far away), but I'm not following the science very close so I might very well be wrong. I'd be very grateful if you could dig up those references!

Keep in mind these are mostly preprints, so adjust their value accordingly:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.26.115832v1

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.18.100545v1

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30610-3

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20061440v...

https://hal-pasteur.archives-ouvertes.fr/pasteur-02569149

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.21.108308v1

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.02.20120477v...

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.20081893v...

There isn't much completed research about the seasonality of COVID-19 itself (understandably), the "cliff" is mostly an educated guess based on the strong seasonal pattern we see with every other respiratory virus. Here are a couple papers:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.12.20034728v...

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.22.20025791v...

Yes, indeed. When you talk to an epidemiologist (e.g. a doctor of physics), ask him to look at f'/f (death per day/death total) in a log-chart they'll tell you that it is 'useless' to look.

If you show him a straight line with R²>0,99 (e.g. Germany using 7 day averages) - they will tell you that it all means nothing and that the curve in fact is bending - because the 'policies' must have worked.

If you tell them that working policies should have left visible marks in the curve and that the curve is converging: They will just block you.

Science is dead - at least in the field of epidemiology.