What percent of US population?

[Teaching3bears]

I have heard that over a third of the US population has had Covid.  I have have also heard 8 percent.  What is it exactly?  If we add this to vaccines, why had herd immunity not been achieved?  I know people can get it more than once but it is not that common. Why is this thing not going away?

[freesia]

3 minutes ago, Teaching3bears said:

I have heard that over a third of the US population has had Covid.  I have have also heard 8 percent.  What is it exactly?  If we add this to vaccines, why had herd immunity not been achieved?  I know people can get it more than once but it is not that common. Why is this thing not going away?

I think bc there is overlap. A lot of folks who had it early got vaccinated. In states like Texas and Florida 10% of the population is at least 2 million people, which is ALOT of people.  Children are also not vaccinated and not being kept from other children unlike last year  

Nevertheless, I am still hopeful the numbers will drop or there won’t be a huge surge in deaths this fall in places like the Northeast bc of high vaccination rates plus having had it. 

[HeartString]

I have seen predictions saying that we are getting close. I think one predicted Florida hitting a peak and starting to taper off by mid Sept., based on the patterns observed in England and India. 

[ScoutTN]

Having had it and being immune to a previous variant does not make one immune to delta, or whatever new variants are coming. Many people have had covid more than once and still not had delta. 

Edited September 8, 2021 by ScoutTN

[Ausmumof3]

17 minutes ago, Teaching3bears said:

I have heard that over a third of the US population has had Covid.  I have have also heard 8 percent.  What is it exactly?  If we add this to vaccines, why had herd immunity not been achieved?  I know people can get it more than once but it is not that common. Why is this thing not going away?

Singapore has 80pc vaccination rate now and it’s still growing.  Many epidemiologists aren’t talking about herd immunity being possible anymore due to waning immunity and breakthrough infections.  What we hopefully can achieve is dramatically lower death rates and slower transmission via vaccination.

[catz]

Well there was a large recent study based on over a million blood donations that showed high numbers have antibodies either by infection or vaccine now   

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article253987048.html

i think delta changed the trajectory.  Also, these levels aren’t consistent throughout the population.    Like maybe closer to urban populations.   And having antibodies does not mean you won’t get Covid, but would be more likely to get something minor.   The other thing is having a high level infection will keep it burning through where it can.  That may be why some areas have a slow burn going without a huge spike rather than the steep spikes some other places are having.   Maybe those places that were hit harder earlier are less likely to have large spikes now?   We will just have to wait and see.  I do think it will be endemic.  But for those with multiple vaccines, exposures won’t be likely to cause problems and hopefully then infection levels will drop to less crazy levels.  

[Katy]

32 minutes ago, Teaching3bears said:

I have heard that over a third of the US population has had Covid.  I have have also heard 8 percent.  What is it exactly?  If we add this to vaccines, why had herd immunity not been achieved?  I know people can get it more than once but it is not that common. Why is this thing not going away?

Herd immunity will NEVER be achieved. For the same reason we have flu vaccines but herd immunity can’t be achieved there either. The virus not only mutates too fast, there are hundreds of strains in animals that can lead to new human strains.  At this point the virus is going to be endemic.  We’ll get shots for the dangerous strains.  Once small children can get the vaccines deaths will go down and those who die will mostly be the immunocompromised.

As far as I can tell the concept of herd immunity came from people in the Trump administration who had no scientific training or literacy but were pushing the idea for the sake of the economy and political power. Dr Fauci said he expected it to become endemic in his first public interviews back in March of 2020. Around the same time it was speculated that small children had some immunity due to milder coronaviruses they’d already recently had in the form of a cold. 

I know people who have had lab-confirmed Covid 3 times.  Most are teachers, pharmacists, or work with tourists in Florida. You can get each new strain, just like influenza.

[kokotg]

I've seen predictions that this is likely the last big wave. fingers crossed. I've been eyeing the Dakotas suspiciously, because it seemed like if anywhere was close to herd immunity, they should be after their giant waves last year (and their vaccination numbers aren't great, but they're not as bad as a lot of southern states--especially South Dakota). They had some of the fastest rising cases in the country a week or two ago....but I just checked again, and it looks like they're going back down already. So maybe a fast spike (post Sturgis) where delta burns through the relatively few available hosts? We'll see.

[SKL]

In the U.S., confirmed cases are over 12% of the population.  Actual cases are likely much, much more than that.  Most people I know who have had Covid never had a positive test - either they learned later that they had natural antibodies, or they were a family member where only one/some member(s) got tested when everyone had a bug.  And then of course there are those who had asymptomatic or mild cases and just never felt the need to test.  And those who, early on, couldn't get tested due to test kit shortages.

My guess is it's at least 25%, but I can't prove it of course.

There is definitely overlap between those who've had Covid and those who've been vaccinated.  Even people who think they are immune often get the vax so they can do things like travel.  But there are many who haven't had the vax, because they consider natural antibodies to be comparable to the vax, and they don't think it's a great practice to take unnecessary vaccinations.

[Pam in CT]

1 hour ago, Teaching3bears said:

I have heard that over a third of the US population has had Covid.  I have have also heard 8 percent.  What is it exactly?  If we add this to vaccines, why had herd immunity not been achieved?  I know people can get it more than once but it is not that common. Why is this thing not going away?

The two COVID data consolidators I use most are Johns Hopkins' (for cases / deaths / testing / positivity) and Bloomberg (for vaccination).  Both have gobs and gobs of information if you delve into the sub-pages and drill down to particular countries and states.

 

To the first bolded, prior infections: As of today, JH reports that in the US there have been a total of 40,282,910 confirmed cases.  As the US population is ~330 million, that would work out to a prior-infected rate of ~12%.  (Adjust upwards for cases that were never clinically confirmed and thus are not counted; then adjust downward for people who've been infected twice and are thus double-counted... but I don't think you can plausibly get anywhere close to "over a third.")

 

To the second bolded, vaccinations:  As of today, Bloomberg reports that in the US, 58.8% of the total population has been vaccinated with at least one dose (you can scroll down and use the pull-down screens to get more granular and state-specific numbers).

But as previous pp have noted, we can't just add the ~12%  prior-infected folks to the ~60% vaccinated folks, because there is a LOT of overlap between folks who were infected early on, and folks who got vaccinated once the vaccine was available.  In the early-hot-spot, now-highly-vaxxed region where I live, literally every single individual I know who was infected early on, has been vaccinated since, aside from the kids <12.

 

To the third bolded, "herd immunity": As well, two issues are confounding the concept of "herd immunity" -- the virus is quickly mutating, and also, terrifyingly, immunity seems to wane.  The early confirmed cases were of the original strain of COVID, and the vaccinations were developed around the original strain of COVID... but now we're dealing with Delta.  And increasingly it's looking like immunity conferred from EITHER prior infection OR the vaccine wanes over time.

 

But to the fourth and ultimate bolded, why isn't this going away... the way I think of this question is that the virus, so far, is adapting to us faster and better than we are adapting to it.  There's a long form and a short form version of this.  The short and somewhat anthropomorphized form is: It's a race. The tools that COVID has to continue flourishing are: more efficient transmission that increases its ease of spread, and rapid mutation that enables it to evade immunity to prior strains.  The tools that WE have to combat its spread and continuance are: behavioral (distancing, masking, ventilation, avoiding crowded gatherings, avoiding travel) and science (testing followed by rigorous contact tracing & quarantining, and above all vaccines).

So far, COVID has utilized the tools it has to win.  And so far, we're lagging in using ours. So COVID is still winning.  Until we're willing to the tools WE have, it isn't going to "go away" anytime soon. At this point, we're basically just hoping that as we let it rip across the globe, it will burn out (like 1919 influenza) as it mutates into less-virulent forms.  Maybe, but equally, maybe it will mutate into more-virulent forms that continue to evade waning immunity to prior forms of the disease. 

Hope is not a strategy.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 8, 2021 by Pam in CT
adding "testing + subsequent real action" to list of science-based tools, which I overlooked since the US has *literally* never used it, but other countries definitely have

[BlsdMama]

1 hour ago, ScoutTN said:

Having had it and being immune to a previous variant does not make one immune to delta, or whatever new variants are coming. Many people have had covid more than once and still not had delta. 

This. 
Coronavirus mutates more rapidly than many viruses. It’s more like the flu. Coronavirus was around before Covid 19, it’s just that the mutation (spikes, right?) made it more deadly. It’s not going away ever. 
 

On a personal note, because I won’t take the vaccine for medical reasons, I’ve stopped keeping myself away from things. Getting it is inevitable. I wish I’d gotten the more mild Covid 19 rather than facing Delta with no previous antibodies. I potentially hurt myself in this choice, IMO. 

[RootAnn]

1 hour ago, Teaching3bears said:

 I know people can get it more than once but it is not that common. 

Actually, much more common than perhaps you've heard.

Herd immunity is probably not a thing although the concept is still discussed (including by Fauci). It was used as a hopeful goal post to motivate people to get vaccinated so life could go back to normal. 

[TexasProud]

17 percent of our small town has had it. Now how many were vaccinated I am not sure, but definitely some of them. 40 percent are vaccinated.

16 percent of the neighboring town has had it. Also 40 percent vaccinated.