Putting this here for posterity. Wild ### guess here as why the case load is not creating piles of bodies.
Something has happened, the virus is far more contagious but far less deadly than when it hit NYC and Italy. It's as if once it circulates somewhere it self weakens. Herd immunity may not be so much immunity altogether but immunity from symptoms and is happening sooner than anyone thought. Maybe at even 20-30% of population
I follow one of the Italian doctors who hypothesized an adapting/weaker virus in Italy several weeks ago. He posted an update a few hours ago. Translated from Italian so kind of rough. He seems to latch onto the belief that there is perhaps more undetected immunity in their population.
Prof. Matteo Bassetti- Infettivologo
@Prof.MatteoBassetti · Scientist
Since the opening of the lockdown despite some catastrophists ′′ waiting on the river ′′ or ′′ you'll see in 15 days that we'll be over ", we've witnessed a progressive decrease in clinical cases and Covid-19. numbers. This is happened rather quickly, faster than expectations.
Especially in Liguria, one of the most affected regions by the Covid-19 emergency, by a peak of 178 hospitalized in ICU we are at 3 (and all dating back to longtime Covid-19 sick) , from a peak hospitalized of 1320 we are at 44, it's been 5 days that we have been at 0 deaths and positive swabs (attention not sick but only feedback of positivity on the buffer) we are at 2 ; practically the disease seems to have died since the period of ′′ infectious ′′ of the disease, at most lasts about 1 month.
It seems to me an absolutely positive and comforting fact because we are more than two months away from opening after the lockdown and we practically don't see the pathology from Covid anymore, but only positivity to the buffer in asymptomatic or not symptomatic subjects.
Similar data come from almost every other Italian region where total hospital hospitals are under 100. units and those in ICU less than 100.
But more than taking note of these (fortunately) encouraging and objective given the question everyone asks is WHY?
How come the clinical disease is practically (at least in Liguria and Northern Italy where the virus hit hard) CLINICALLY GONE?
Various hypotheses have been in recent weeks, all suggestive waiting to be tried in the laboratory: the virus has changed in a lighter form?, has the viral load decreased? Has the virus adapted to the host? Is the virus deactivated by heat and ultraviolet? We'll see...
Today is a very interesting study of the Karolinska Institute and Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden and of which we attach the link (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.29.174888v1) that could explain why despite the ′′ motides ′′ and the almost total opening continue to decrease the cases in particularly affected areas like ours... the answer would be because most of us have immunity that is difficult to detect.... a much greater immunity than that detected by serological tests that have the big limit of low sensitivity Good morning. The study that is a new research shows that many Covid-19 sick people in a mild or asymptomatic way - and therefore have not, in many cases, never realized that they have contracted the disease - have developed the so-called ′′ immunity ′′ SARS-CoV-2 mediated T-cells, although they do not test positive for antibodies in serological tests. According to researchers, in other words, this means that probably more people in the population have developed immunity to SARS-CoV-2 than suggested by antibody tests.
This research might also explain why some people who have fallen ill with Covid-19 are not positive for serological tests, focusing on another part of the immune system's response to the disease. I mean by extrapolating the message of work, the fact that the virus is much more harmless comes from a high percentage of immunes that do not allow the virus to replicate.
Serological tests have been tested on very serious patients, with viral loads and their respective high antibody responses and therefore the sensitivity of the test (meaning the ability of a test to properly identify the subject affected by the disease) of approximately 80 % Good morning. She has probably been overestimated and not by little; therefore the real immune are many more.
This original work could therefore represent a ′′ scientific ′′ explanation and not just hypothetical and deductive of the current benign clinical behavior of the pandemic. Obviously if this is confirmed by other studies, the pandemic ′′ could have less arrows in its bow ". Let's hope so
