For COVID-19, attempt to build 'herd immunity' is a losing strategy

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opin...g-strategy-ex-cdc-director-column/6052231002/

Reading someone who actually knows what he is saying, this former CDC director, is refreshing. Read the above to understand why the herd immunity strategy for Covid-19 is a boneheaded, losing proposition. Then compare with what the White House is doing:

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-covid-advisers-now-pushing-010011513.html

This, with the help of that moron, that quack known as Scott Atlas, a radiologist who has no experience whatsoever with infectious diseases and epidemiology.

Most posters here also misunderstand the concept of herd immunity, how it's calculated, and what intervening factors limit it. They think it's the silver bullet that will solve everything.

No, it's not. At least, not isolated, not through natural infection only. It will just cause a huge number of preventable deaths. An educational campaign on how to prevent the infection and why vaccines are likely to be safe and necessary, followed by a large vaccination campaign and continuous testing and tracing, masks, social distancing (no lockdowns due to too much economic damage) is the way to goal. Not natural infection-driven herd immunity.

I know that the usual suspects will join this thread to say that the above is all BS. Oh well.

 

@CenterField, I got curious about the smallpox outbreak in the supposed 90% vaccinated population in Nigeria. Read this (ironically by the author of the USA Today piece) and tell me what you think about it’s use as evidence 90% vaccination rate didn’t result in herd immunity. I draw the opposite conclusion.
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/67462/WHO_SE_68.3.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
I’m confused as to his point. He says natural infection won’t provide herd immunity and neither will vaccines. Is he advocating for attempting to eradicate C19 through contact tracing and quarantine? I don’t know how you can compare smallpox to C19 in that scenario. It’s my understanding there is little to no pre or asymptomatic spread of smallpox. And we can’t even identify C19 almost half the time it is present in an individual. How on earth could you eradicate C19? Another head scratcher is his claim vaccination didn’t lead to eradication of smallpox. The CDC claims vaccination was the main avenue to eradication. But you know how much faith I now have in the CDC!

Very interesting subject. Hopefully someone comes up with a good vaccine or we are going to be faced with the fact of at least partial natural herd immunity being a cold hard reality. I still hope I’m wrong on that.

 

Yes, I don't agree with that part, which is why in MY post I said "followed by a large vaccination campaign".

 

Cool.

On a side note, when phase 3 trials conclude on a vaccine do we get efficacy data? Or will it be leaked before conclusion of the entire trial?I’d feel a lot better with some idea of efficacy “on the ground” as opposed to theoretical based on immune response and animal trials.

 

Oh, of course there will be efficacy data, based not only on the presence of neutralizing antibodies, IgG, IgM, and titers, but also based on the comparison between the rate of infection in the active group versus the control group. Which is why we need to wait for sufficient number of infections to manifest, so that we can reach the point of opening the envelopes.

 

Yep, infection rate data is what I’m after. I’ll try and be patient.

 

To some degree herd immunity is developing, which is to say the human species will learn to live with the virus just as it has learned to live with so many other virus.

The bogus nature of the PCR tests means we will never know the actual numbers. Humans will be like the 2 blind mice examining the elephant.

The weak will die, and the strong will survive. Life goes on until the species is destroyed by other means, and still life will go on.