Is the end of the pandemic at hand?

6 days ago I published my brother’s idea, that the pandemic may be nearing an end.  That post can be found below the ****

Here is some startling evidence that he might be right.  Today’s (12 August) Nature pp. 175 – 176, notes that new ‘cases’ in the UK defined as a positive test for the viral genome dropped in half from 17 July to 2 August 54,674 to 22,287. That could just be due to fewer people being tested (the total number tested isn’t given in the article).  More to the point, hospitalizations dropped from 836 25 July to 645 1 August.  It isn’t clear if all these numbers are daily or weekly.  Regardless, it is worth noting just how few cases are actually hospitalized ( 836/54674 = 1.5%)

These numbers are those persons deciding or required to be tested.  A random population survey is in order to see how many people now have antibodies to the virus.  Clearly SARS-Cov-2 can spread widely without making most people sick.

It is worth noting that the article doesn’t consider my brother’s idea as a possibility, so it likely originated with him.  If so, Bravo ! ! !

Addendum 19 August — from Nature vol. 596 p. 326 “In a nationwide survey of about 28,000 people (two-thirds of whom were unvaccinated and had therefore acquired immunity from infection) in June and July this year, researchers found that 68% had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in their blood. This represented a huge increase from the 21% with antibodies, recorded in a similar survey in December 2020 to January 2021, before the second wave.”  This is exactly what my brother was talking about — vaccination by infection. It shows that most infections are survivable — with a population of 1.3 billion, the vast majority of those coming in contact with the pandemic virus are still here.

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Sibling rivalry aside, my younger brother thinks that we’re currently in a mass vaccination situation with the pandemic virus.  He does not mean that people are willingly signing up for vaccinations. He says that the Delta virus is so infectious and spreading so quickly, and that most cases are asymptomatic that  the populace is being vaccinated by infection.  If so, those who will die because they weren’t vaccinated will die and those unvaccinated who have been infected but not sick will be immune, so that the populace will achieve herd immunity in a month or two and the pandemic will be over.Fantastic if true.