94% of English adults have Covid antibodies, ONS data shows

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/658b3bc4-f518-11eb-8f01-2c678acbb979

by niklasbuschmann • 5 years ago

80 126 5 years ago

thetimes.co.uk

cassianoleal• 5 years ago

No paywall link: https://archive.is/IBmbl

dontreact• 5 years ago

This probably explains the previously mysterious drop in Delta cases in the UK.

In the U.S. why shouldn't we just shoot for herd immunity now? Not sure how effective restrictions and mandates will be in slowing things down and the costs to mental health and quality of life are so high.

brianwawok• 5 years ago

I wouldn't say we are shooting for it, but it looks like we are heading that direction.

SavantIdiot2• 5 years ago

The US doesn't have a choice to shoot for herd immunity because the remaining willfully unvaccinated population is both anti-mask and anti-vax.

EDIT: Guess I worded that badly. What I mean is: choosing herd immunity is inevitable, so there is no choice. It will happen.

EDIT2: It didn't occur to me that there is a huge risk if more deadly mutations happen faster than herd immunity.

carnitas• 5 years ago

That means they will be infected and subsequently immune, boosting herd immunity

wusher• 5 years ago

Herd immunity can also be achieved by the anti-vax people catching the virus. They can develop immunity by being sick instead of getting a shot.

azth• 5 years ago

because the remaining willfully unvaccinated population is both anti-mask and anti-vax.

That's not quite true. I know people who are not anti-vax, nor anti-mask, but they have an aversion to a new untested vaccine.

kzrdude• 5 years ago

Herd immunity (through vaccines) was always the goal, but I guess that's not what you mean?

rowland66• 5 years ago

The US is absolutely shooting for herd immunity now. Its just a question of how individual members of the herd want to achieve their immunity. They can take the easy way (vaccination) or the hard way (get Covid).

giantg27• 5 years ago

Not really. Officially and unofficially they are pushing everyone to the vaccine. People who have antibodies are still getting fired from their jobs because they didn't take the vaccine. There's even talk of requiring the vaccine for some schools, regardless of prior infection status. So the US is not shooting for herd immunity through either means, but only through vaccination. Even federal employees are being required to attest to their vaccinated status without similar options for those with antibodies acquired by other means.

flavius29663• 5 years ago

far from it https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#national-lab

iamtheworstdev• 5 years ago

It's unachievable in the US. Not enough people willing to get vaccinated. The bar for herd immunity is predicted at 80% or higher if covid keeps mutating to become more infectious. Measles had a 95% herd immunity threshold so who knows where covid could finally land.

akiselev• 5 years ago

Measles is one of the most infectious pathogens known to man with an R0 between 10 and 15. Even with the delta variant, COVID doesn't seem as transmissible so the threshold should be closer to 80 than 95.

giantg27• 5 years ago

So far 55% or so have been fully vaccinated. 83 million, or 25% of the population, is estimated by the CDC to have been infected. I would guess we are getting fairly close to 70%, but it's hard to say what the overlap between those two numbers is. If it's really as contagious as they say, then it's only a matter of time before we hit 80%. The issue will then be the distribution by location and how long the protection lasts.

ummonk2• 5 years ago

We seem to be trying to "flatten the curve" and "slow the spread" to needlessly take extra long to get to the same final place - natural herd immunity.

bena3• 5 years ago

Come on. It's because when we were trying to flatten the curve, there were far too many people who denied it was anything more serious than the flu and didn't take any precautions.

Same with slowing the spread. People did not listen.

Because they were "free critical thinkers who can reach their own conclusions thank you very much". And they were wrong. And now they've put us here.

galangalalgol3• 5 years ago

I wouldn't say needlessly. There are people in towns near my city that would normally be transported to the cities ICUs, but they can't because there is no room. People say the tests or the vaccine don't work but no one claims more than 3 percent of their hospitalized covid cases have been previously vaccinated. So, whatever the test tests for, the vaccine mostly prevents, and that thing is taking up way too many of my counties hospital beds. We can call it the flu, or the cold, or the vapors, but I wish everyone would go get their vapors vaccine so people who get in car wrecks could get fixed up in a timely manner.

ekster2• 5 years ago

Isn’t that what is happening? I was just in the US for a couple weeks (Portland, OR) and rules were minimal and optional everywhere. Not the kind of thing that would drive mental health issues, as best I could tell.

notJim• 5 years ago

That can't possibly be right, according to Fox News, Portland, OR is an authoritarian communist hellhole. Just glad you got out alive.

danuker2• 5 years ago

I am stunned so few governments publish such "in the wild" data.

The only way to judge the effectiveness of measures is to see how many people have actually been infected, not to count "confirmed" cases.

For instance, it seems only 8.8% is confirmed (or 88k out of 1 million) [1] . Add that to the 69% vaccinated with at least one dose [2], and you get 77.8% accounted for, which is less than the 95% quoted.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

makapuf• 5 years ago

Remember this includes vaccinated persons

danuker2• 5 years ago

Yep, just realized and edited.

FabHK• 5 years ago

Assuming the vaccination was successful in triggering the production of antibodies. It is unclear to me in what percentage of cases that is the case.

Hong Kong requires 2 weeks quarantine even for vaccinated people entering, unless they have proof not only of vaccination, but of antibody count.

Animats5• 5 years ago

The CDC publishes that data.[1][2] It runs 6 weeks behind, though.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/abou...

[2] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#national-lab

cjlars• 5 years ago

Are these numbers comparable to OP? It's hard to reconcile that FL is at 24%, or NY at 13% w/ antibodies vs the headline.

criticaltinker9• 5 years ago

The only way to judge the effectiveness of measures is to see how many people have actually been infected

Can anyone provide links to recent peer-reviewed primary sources that estimate the number of individuals who have been infected in the U.S.?

If ~70% of people are asymptomatic, and we assume just about everyone has been exposed to and infected by the virus - haven't we already achieved herd immunity in the U.S.?

EDIT: Answered in solid source provided by animats - the seroprevalance estimate for the U.S. is 21.6% (95% CI - 21.2% to 22.22%). I also found a couple recent primary sources regarding the asymptomatic rate, see thread below.

bagels• 5 years ago

This assumes infection leads to immunity. It doesn't seem to be clear that this is true.

IfOnlyYouKnew2• 5 years ago

The fact that more people are in the hospital in Florida right now than at any time in the last two years would seem to disprove any speculation of here immunity.

comicjk• 5 years ago

If we assume everyone has been infected? Why would we assume that? The estimates I've seen (including asymptomatic) are around 1/3 infected. The source you cited is from 2020, so it doesn't tell us much about today.

nradov4• 5 years ago

The CDC estimates that 36% of Americans have been infected. Of those, only 15% were completely asymptomatic but most had mild symptoms.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

logifail4• 5 years ago

I am stunned so few governments publish such "in the wild" data

[warning: tinfoil hat...] Can you think of an incentive for governments to be honest with such "in the wild" data?

If you were a senior politician trying to assist your government in driving up the vaccination rate, then publishing hard data that 94% of your population already have the antibiodies is hardly going to help, is it?

MrBuddyCasino• 5 years ago

Simultaneously true:

* it is clear everyone will get it

* policy will be slow to adapt to that reality and continue strategy of containment

gpmcadam2• 5 years ago

When you’ve ran an 18 month fear campaign its hard to get people to stop being scared

scotty795• 5 years ago

Now it begins the game of how many times will everyone get it, and every bit of immunity and slowing the spread helps so when we arrive at a variant that spreads as easily as chicken pox that is also accidentally as lethal as SARS, we will have vaccine for this specific variant delivered faster than people die.

mortehu• 5 years ago

I can't access the article, but is this a random sample or a convenience sample?

dirtyid• 5 years ago

So UK is what living with covid19 will look like for those in highly vaccinated western countries?

gpmcadam2• 5 years ago

The OP mentions England, not the whole of the UK

kcartlidge2• 5 years ago

They do, but similar results are being seen in the other nations of the UK.

IfOnlyYouKnew2• 5 years ago

Yes, but with better haircuts.

tatersolid• 5 years ago

Wait… who has the bad haircuts? The UK or the rest?

Because as a rural-by-birth American who has travelled a bit, I’d say Berlin beats London or even urban USA in their awful haircut percentage by a wide margin. But nobody can top central Indiana, USA for sheer quantity of nasty-ass mullets with scraggly mustaches.

stevesimmons• 5 years ago

The original ONS (Office for National Statistics) analysis is here:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

Much more detail, more rigorous, primary source, and no pay wall.

(@dang: maybe use this as the post's URL?)

criticaltinker9• 5 years ago

Great source and includes the downloadable data, thanks for sharing.

While antibody positivity in the oldest age groups remains high, it decreased slightly in some regions and countries. This means that some people in these groups did not have enough antibodies to be detected in the test, not that they do not have any immune protection against the virus.

I found that sentence intriguing, here is the link they recommend for more information to explain why people might still have immune protection even with low (undetectable) levels of antibodies [1].

[1] https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2021/04/28/antibodies-and-immunity-h...

Tarsul• 5 years ago

this data arguably shows that the choice really is between vaccination (+possibly weak infection) and infection. We can't hide from the virus.

This doesn't mean that the only choice is opening up everything, but eventually... yes. Concious governments should first try to get more people vaccinated. Long covid is too frequent, otherwise. (400k have it in UK, see: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/01/almost-400000-ha... )

logifail4• 5 years ago

Long covid is too frequent, otherwise.

Q: Is there something about this that we need to worry about particularly?

I ask in the context of having had the Epstein-Barr virus in my late 30s and having been essentially knocked completely flat by it for the best part of a month, and not having recovered to full fitness for several months more.

When I was a child, my Dad had shingles (apparently for the first time) in his late 40s, he was really quite poorly, that also took him months to get over.

Endemic viruses already do this stuff, if you've even had a proper dose of seasonal flu you'll know what I'm taking about.

Is there a reason (and non-anecdotal data...) to specifically worry about the long-term effects of C19 _more_ than all the other endemic viruses?

Animats5• 5 years ago

Useful overview for the UK.[1] This is the Financial Times chart of cases and deaths by state and country, updated daily since early 2020. Things to notice:

* UK cases spike. They go from 3 cases per 100K people in May to 71 cases per 100K in mid-July. That's the increased R0 of the Delta variant in action. Now they're declining rapidly, down to 39 cases per 100K people. Keep watching that graph; that shows herd immunity starting to take effect.

* US cases are way up, too, but started later than in the UK. The US curve is still going up, following the UK curve, but about a month behind. That's why medical authorities are saying the next two months will be really bad in the US.

* The US has about the same case rate as Tunisia, but a far lower death rate. Without good medical care, this is a killer disease.

[1] https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=eur&areas=usa&are...

phreeza2• 5 years ago

Amazing to see that the UK has >90% positive vaccine sentiment, and close to 90% with at least one dose of vaccines now. Am I reading that right? How did they manage to avoid the politicization of the issue that is keeping people from getting the shot in other Western countries?

scotty795• 5 years ago

They had Wakefield creating antivaxxers and then they had a journalist that got to the bottom of his BS. This expose was highly publicised so people got through into their heads that antivaxx is BS.

Wakefield then ran away to US and Brits lived happily ever after ... till Brexit.

At least that's what's postulated here https://youtu.be/8BIcAZxFfrc

kcartlidge2• 5 years ago

There were a few things that strike me (I'm British) as being quite relevant.

The first is that from very early on the PM was flanked by medical professionals who appeared to be apolitical and were considered by all 'sides' on the vaccine debate to be honest (even if their opinions were sometimes contentious). That credibility meant they were listened to.

The second is that the NHS is almost a religion over here - this contributes to the medical profession being extremely well trusted.

In many places in the world the frontline medical staff are trusted but the system isn't. We're lucky here in that largely both aspects retain their respect. Note that I'm not commenting on other nations health systems or their population's opinion of it. We (the UK) are not unique in having reasonable healthcare; this is more about our high perception of the system providing it.

Finally, as a society we are very compliant, and also with the not-for-profit AZ vaccine there was a certain feeling of a national champion who was also helping to save the world.

hifly• 5 years ago

I think the number is more like 50 odd percent of the population? I think the 90% number is of some limited subset like "adults who have received at least shot"?

phreeza2• 5 years ago

It's percentage of people over 16.

74d-fe6-2c6• 5 years ago

That plus ...

- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9

- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01557-z

... actually implies that we do not need widespread vaccination campaigns.

But guess what stocks the members of your government have in their depot and you bet they make sure you get your jab and the booster and the update and another booster ...

This is biggest scam in the history of the earth.

94% of English adults have Covid antibodies, ONS data shows

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