COVID-19 Daily Update for Yesterday, Tuesday, 8/25/2020

Is it Signal, or Is it Noise? (World Wide Trends Update)

We discussed these two charts a few days ago. But here's the update: 

The question at the time was whether the seeming uptick in the 7 day average of the daily change in new cases seen in the 7 day average was signal or noise, given that the 14 day average was still going down. 

As of today, the 14 day average is also going up. So for now at least, it appears that this metric is getting worse. 

However, it appears that much of this is driven by the change in recovery rates. The number of daily new cases appears to be slowly declining:

First Confirmed Case of Reinfection (Is that as Scary as it Sounds?): 

The first truly confirmed case of reinfection has now been reported from Hong Kong. Previous reports of reinfection may have been due to false positives, or to a test picking up on dead viral material, or from a resurgence of the previous infection. 

However, in this case, we know it's real. The RNA of the virus was sequenced from both infections, and it is clear that the second infection was both real, and different from the first. 

I have seen quite a few news stories, and/or posts on social media with people freaking out. 

What does this really mean? And should we be panicking? 

First, it doesn't mean that the virus has mutated enough to reinfect people. The mutations were enough to use RNA tests to show this was a different strain, but we have been tracking mutations of the virus, and using those to track the family tree of the pandemic from the start. There is no evidence (yet) that the virus is mutating in ways that help it to avoid immunity (like the flu does).

Instead, it would appear that the man's natural immunity simply decreased to the point where he could be reinfected. This is how most other corona viruses (like the corona virus versions of the common cold) end up re-infecting us. Meaning this was expected. The reinfection took place after four and a half months from the time of initial infection, meaning immunity likely lasts at least that long, and most likely longer on average, since this was the FIRST confirmed case like this so far. 

That we lasted this long is GOOD news. 

What is even more exciting was that his second case was completely asymptomatic. Meaning, that his immunity wasn't actually gone. While it didn't prevent him from being reinfected, it DID prevent him from getting ill with ANY symptoms the second time through. 

This is also good news, this is VERY good news. 

We also know that many of the vaccines currently in development appear to be producing a stronger, and longer lasting immune response than the disease itself. 

While this does mean that natural herd immunity is a losing strategy, we already knew that. By the time we could conceivably anything close to herd immunity levels of population immunity... that immunity would be going away for many, and things would just start over. Although the disease would likely be less deadly to may the second time around, this would make it impossible to prevent the elderly and/or vulnerable from catching the disease at least once, and that would mean an unacceptably large death tole. 

However, with a vaccine, things look very different. 

While this case of reinfection may mean that we will need a booster at 6 months, it does not mean that a vaccine would not work. And, with a vaccine, we could actually reach (and maintain) herd immunity levels such that we could allow people who are elderly and/or vulnerable to go back out into society with minimal risk of getting infected. 

The news articles sound scary... but I believe that this isn't actually bad news.