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It’s Herd Immunity, Stupid
This is a fascinating discussion from a data scientist about the supposed successes we’re seeing with new cases and case fatality rates in states like New York and New Jersey. It’s not because of masks, testing or anything else we’re doing, but what they’ve already done: Allow the virus to run rip shod through the state until the population reached something resembling herd immunity.
I watched this also thinking of places like the U.K. and Israel, where second lockdowns are following a massive second spike. They, unlike many states in the U.S., have yet to reach something resembling herd immunity, and their hospitals are being overrun until they get there.
For the U.S., I think it’s clear we need to reopen the states where we’ve already reached this point; but for everyone else, I’m not sure what the answer is.
Published in General
The term “herd immunity” is being used in place of “lots of people are already immune because they were exposed and developed antibodies or they already had some innate immunity.” But “herd immunity” means specifically one thing:
The essence of herd immunity is contained in the second sentence.
I think we are a year or two away from seeing so many people with immunity, either innate or learned from exposure over the past year, that people are not at risk of being infected from normal interaction with the general public.
That said, the most exciting news I’ve heard lately came from the New York Times:
This means that people are developing some useful resistance to the covid-19 virus, as evidenced in the dead bodies of the virus being detected in the PCR tests.
Herd immunity levels are hugely debatable–every epidemiologist seems to have a different number. But that’s because it’s really hard to ascertain with a new virus or bacteria. The good news is that an uninfected individual’s chances of becoming infected are declining wonderfully and steadily, but we’re a long way from a zero chance.
And we don’t know how “durable” the immunity to this virus is. We really won’t have that information until an area in which the number of active infections has declined sees an upswing in infections.
But it is good news that we are capable of developing immunity unassisted by vaccines and from light exposure to the virus. The more concentrated the exposure, the more trouble the body has in mounting a defense. It’s a time thing. It simply takes time for the immune system to recognize it and destroy it. If there’s just a little bit of it, the person won’t even notice.
We have to accept the fact that containment through ceasing all group activities and human contact is simply not feasible or desirable. We must turn our attention to learning how to live with this virus. It appears that our immune system will be helping us do that. :-) But searching or waiting for the holy grail of “herd immunity” may be a fool’s mission at this point simply because it is a geographical concept and this is a very big country. So I don’t think it’s an attainable goal. Better to focus on treatment, I think.
“herd immunity” should be replaced with “saturation.” It’s not mathematical herd immunity, because there are many, many factors that go into the calculation – which is why the number is something much closer to 15% than the often cited 70-80%.
This will probably age as well as the claim ~10 weeks ago that US COVID deaths will plateau at 170,000 and the pandemic essentially end in August.
addendum- his interpretation of the data is diametrically opposite that of others-
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/26/14857
the take home message is :“We conclude that wearing of face masks in public corresponds to the most effective means to prevent interhuman transmission”
nb- the authors are experts in the field of aerosols not data manipulation experts- they conclude that mask use was the major factor in the drop in COVID infections in NYC