COVID's foolishly named "second wave" — if a species is this obtuse, should it be wiped out?

© 2020 Peter Free

 

22 June 2020

 

 

Homo "saps" is babbling about an allegedly "second wave" of COVID

 

These misleading semantics obscure the human cause of the alleged second wave.

 

 

Sloppily applied "wave" distinctions contribute to poor pandemic control

 

The idea of epidemics coming in waves is patterned after influenza's seasonal pattern. Up in fall and winter, down in late spring and summer.

 

COVID is (apparently) not like that. SARS-CoV-2 appears not to care significantly which season it is occupying.

 

Talk of "waves" conceals the fact that COVID episodes depend virtually mainly upon what people themselves are doing to slow (or speed up) its transmission.

 

This is causatively different than the virally innate seasonal "wave" pattern attributed to influenza and cold viruses.

 

The gist?

 

 

If a non-seasonal COVID characterization is accurate, there are no epidemiologically significant COVID waves.

 

Instead, there are only differentiations between rising and falling levels of human guardedness.

 

We cause the waves, not COVID.

 

 

This distinction is important

 

It means that we cannot wait COVID out.

 

The coronavirus is always there, like a herd of tigers in the brush outside our front door.

 

 

One example of causatively mistaken thinking

 

Let's use South Korea to illustrate the pattern-obscuring character of talking about COVID "waves".

 

I am selecting South Korea to demonstrate that even the most successful COVID-controlling nations are susceptible to epidemiologically sloppy thinking.

 

Reuters today reported that:

 

 

Health authorities in South Korea said for the first time on Monday it is in the midst of a “second wave” of novel coronavirus infections around Seoul, driven by small but persistent outbreaks stemming from a holiday in May.

 

KCDC [Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] director Jeong Eun-kyeong said it had become clear that a holiday weekend in early May marked the beginning of a new wave of infections focused in the densely populated greater Seoul area, which had previously seen few cases.

 

“In the metropolitan area, we believe that the first wave was from March to April as well as February to March,” Jeong said at a regular briefing. “Then we see that the second wave which was triggered by the May holiday has been going on.”

 

[J]ust as the country announced it would be easing social distancing guidelines in early May, new cases spiked, driven in part by infections among young people who visited nightclubs and bars in Seoul over the holiday weekend.

 

“We originally predicted that the second wave would emerge in fall or winter,” Jeong said.

 

“Our forecast turned out to be wrong. As long as people have close contact with others, we believe that infections will continue.”

 

© 2020 Josh Smith, South Korea says it is battling 'second wave' of coronavirus, Reuters (22 June 2020)

 

 

Does similar magical thinking — also derail other nations' pandemic responses?

 

It has been apparent, since almost the beginning of the international pandemic, that COVID did not care much about ambient temperatures and climate.

 

The coronavirus went everywhere, both north and south of the equator. Warm, cool, cold. It didn't care.

 

This coronavirus's essentially non-seasonal, non-climatic pattern was (and remains) obvious.

 

Even from just comparing news reports with maps.

 

 

So — why are we still stumbling along thinking that COVID-19 waxes and wanes of its own accord?

 

Misleading wave-pattern thinking, keeps people from adequately (and completely) focusing on COVID-19's always lurking infectiousness.

 

 

Repeating myself (for emphasis)

 

There are no especially significant seasonal "waves" of COVID.

 

The waves that we distinguish are not caused by the virus's innate behavior — but (instead) by rising and falling levels of human pandemic control.

 

We cause the waves. Waves are a human, not a viral, phenomenon.

 

COVID stays doing what it does, until people physically interfere with its spread:

 

 

When we become bored of being careful — we go out, rub shoulders and faces — and then — the exactly same pandemic grabs some of us by our (figuratively scrawny) necks and makes a bunch of us sick.

 

 

My point?

 

We get careless, we get infected.

 

Pretty much year-round.

 

 

The real issue is whether getting infected matters a lot

 

This is where leadership frequently goes completely off the rails.

 

The tiger analogy that I mentioned (above) is nuanced. COVID's tigers have a deadly taste for only proportionately few people.

 

This means that, although infectiousness is high and potentially affects most of humanity — only proportionately low numbers of us are going to 'croak' or suffer severe health consequences afterward.

 

Overall, I suspect, COVID is a classic example of genetic "fitness" weeding.

 

As I mentioned a few days ago, the appropriate response might be boosting N95 mask production to the point where vulnerable people — and vulnerable-feeling people — can protect themselves, while everyone else goes about their business in unimpeded ways.

 

 

The moral? — Why is these simple epidemiological concepts apparently so difficult to understand?

 

Is it because we are (very metaphorically) descended from monkey-like brains?

 

Or is it because scientific education sucks?

 

COVID-19 is not only demonstrating capitalism's societal awfulness, it is also doing a pretty good job of showing us how casually and complacently incurious we often are.