Monday, April 27, 2020

Oddities about COVID-19

One of the characteristics of this virus is its extreme variability in causing evidence of itself. This is highlighted by recent information from prisons. Testing for the virus in a prison in Ohio showed that most prisoners tested positive for the virus, even though 90+% were symptom-free. So what if most of the population already has the virus?
Another bit of strange information is that even after those infected with the virus recovered, had an immune response, some could still get the virus again. Surely this should damper the optimism that a vaccine is going to make some difference -- if the immune response to the real virus isn't so protective, why should the vaccine be any better?
I'm not one of those who thinks we should abruptly discontinue all protective measures, but this should begin to seep into the decision-making about this. At some point we will need to hand back the decisions about risk-taking to individuals instead of relying on governmental restrictions.

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