> Why would Floridas numbers start to decrease if not for herd immunity? We know they aren’t being more careful. Disney land reopened and there is a police sheriff who literally made a rule that police officers and people going into the station were not allowed to wear masks.
This is idiotic. Rather than “herd immunity” one could, in fact, be seeing the impact of large numbers of people having been scared straight simply avoiding further contact.
The author’s conjecture could be correct but they offer no proof.
“Yuval Levin is director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute, editor of National Affairs, and a senior editor of The New Atlantis.” Useful context before the click.
I don't know why this is being downvoted as much as it is.
Wife works in a related field of neuro-sci, and regularly laments this difference, especially how it's played up in both in reporting and in assuming consistency in treatment and response. To the best of my knowledge there's not even consensus that plaques are the "root cause" we should be focusing on, so this sort of model may be multiple steps removed from applicability. (Similar problems exist even in 'more well understood' neurological systems, e.g. early vision pipeline)
It's an unfortunate but very real limitation to the current research that I think is important to understand so as to be realistic about the progress and directions of study. To be very precise, I say this as someone who, both of of scientific interest, and selfish interest (Alzheimers in my family) loves that this research is happening.
The amyloid hypothesis has been pretty popular for ~25 years, and it's pretty clear that the plaques have something to do with Alzheimers, but it's been a absolute disaster as a treatment target. It feels very much like treating a fever by slathering the patient in antiperspirant.
Biogen announced this morning that they're giving up on Phase III trials of aducanumab, an antibody that was supposed to target and remove the plaques (their stock is doing...badly as a result). https://www.reuters.com/article/us-biogen-alzheimers/biogen-...
