Trevor Bedford: ‘zero chance’ virus was circulating last fall

[jon-nyc]

VDH and others are promoting a theory that CA has developed herd immunity because the virus was circulating last fall. Trevor Bedford, the genetic virologist at UW, says no chance this is true. Read the whole Twitter thread.

[Loki]

I agree but hadn’t heard that, strange.

Florida and Louisiana are doing really well relatively speaking. We should seek to understand why.

[George K]

@Loki said in Trevor Bedford: ‘zero chance’ virus was circulating last fall:

I agree but hadn’t heard that, strange.

Florida and Louisiana are doing really well relatively speaking. We should seek to understand why.

Florida has the 5th fastest rise in cases, and Louisiana is 4th.

Normalized for population, Florida is in the middle of the pack, and Louisiana trails New York and New Jersey.

[Jolly]

Think he was talking about current R values...

[Horace]

I was curious, so I tracked down where VDH "promoted" the CA herd immunity theory. Here is the piece:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/coronavirus-pandemic-california-herd-immunity/

He also wrote this response to the backlash he got:

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-power-of-medcoronavirus-pandemic-power-media-ignoranceia-ignorance/

[Mik]

I don't think VDH was promoting it so much as listing it as a stated possibility.

[jon-nyc]

I think this is the piece that got his name attached to it.

https://www.ksbw.com/article/new-study-investigates-californias-possible-herd-immunity-to-covid-19/32073873#

[Horace]

Yes it's likely that without that piece, in which VDH's thoughts were re-characterized, you and presumably many others wouldn't have been calling VDH out for "promoting" this.

I got a sense that the one-sentence paragraph in the middle of that piece, "VDH is not affiliated with the study", was edited in sometime after publication.

[jon-nyc]

Really VDH was tangential. Presumably those quotes are real?

Anyway, It’s a theory that’s been drifting about and Trevor’s post seemed interesting.

[Horace]

Yeah I don't really think he promoted the theory.

[jon-nyc]

That’s fine, Horace. This wasn’t about attacking VDH.

He’s definitely backed off now.

[Horace]

No, it wasn't about attacking him. My contribution to the thread was about correcting the accidental mischaracterization. It is indeed fine. We can move on, now that your accidental mischaracterization has been corrected.

[LuFins Dad]

Wait, Bedford states that CA Herd Theory is empirically false, but then provides no empirical evidence. He gives empirical evidence on Washington and Seattle, but then just supposes the same would be true for CA. He hypothesized...

[Rainman]

"Oddly, the more one agreed to go on California radio or be interviewed to correct the glaring media errors, the more the media ignored the correction and instead wanted to know about “your ongoing lab studies” and “herd immunity.”

Ya can't win for losing. An apt old saying that comes to mind.
Or, for VDH, "it's all Greek to me" might be a good comeback.

[jon-nyc]

Stanford study completed, estimated 1-3% have been exposed in Silicon Valley area.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1

A long way from herd immunity.

[jon-nyc]

Don’t love the fact that they recruited through FB ads. probably catches the attention of people who think they might have had it.

[jon-nyc]

It’s even worse, they did some post adjustment afterward to make up for the fact that the volunteers weren’t properly distributed geographically. Makes sense, but the further people were from the test sites the more likely they tested positive, so they end up adjusting everything upward.

Why is that an issue? Again, self-selected volunteers. It’s already a problem that people who think they might have had something would be more likely to seek confirmation. But that seems doubly true if you had to travel an hour to a test site.

The good news is there are many other serological studies happening now, so we should get some better data.