DuckQueue t1_j2ws3t1 wrote on January 4, 2023 at 2:23 PM

Reply to comment by SnooPuppers1978 in COVID-19 vaccines, prior infection reduce transmission of Omicron: Vaccination and boosting, especially when recent, helped to limit the spread of COVID-19 in prisons during the first Omicron wave, according to researchers that examined transmission between people living in the same prison cell. by lolfuys

> So in the end with all those factors together, unless the efficacy is enough to create herd immunity it's going to be waves with not much differing total amount of cases.

You seem to be assuming that the disease will exhaust itself and run out of people to infect, but as the real world shows, that isn't generally how infectious diseases - especially ones this effective at escaping the immune system - work.

It's only meaningful to talk about the total number of cases up to a given point in time - if you're trying to talk about the total where the number of new infections permamently drops to 0 you're talking about circumstances that might apply to some newly-arising zoonotic diseases but decidedly does not apply to the disease we're talking about.

SnooPuppers1978 t1_j2wsv97 wrote on January 4, 2023 at 2:28 PM

> You seem to be assuming that the disease will exhaust itself and run out of people to infect

For certain amount of time, hence the waves. There will be smaller amount of population still having the virus, until the virus mutates or immunity wanes enough after which it will start all over again.

After certain amount of time like a year or two years, the total cases amount would be similar in terms of magnitude. They won't be 10x based on 22% efficacy.

Because you were suggesting 7k vs 1 million which is different in magnitudes.

I'm suggesting that difference would probably be less than 2x after 2 years for example. And if I had to guess it would probably be something like 25% difference similarly, if we tried to make our model more comprehensive.