What these people are urging is that the Covid19 virus be allowed to spread freely among those who are least are risk of serious illness or death, thereby achieving herd immunity.
Herd immunity acquired naturally through the spread of a novel infectious agent depends on the acqusition of immunity by survivors of the infection, which thus limits viral spread, since the proportion of the population to which the virus can be spread is reduced. This effect is measured by changes in the so-called Reproduction number or R0, which is the number of persons to whom each infected person passes the virus. As the virus spreads and the proportion of the population with immunity rises, R0 falls and, with it, the number of new infections. Ultimately, R0 reachs a value of one at which point the number of new infections stabilizes at a low level relative to the number at the height of the epidemic. At this stage the virus is said to be in a state of endemic equilibrium, meaning it won't go away but the number of new infections will not flare up as during the epidemic, but remain at a more or less constant low level. In due course, it is hoped that an effective anti-Covid19 vaccine will be available. Then R0 can be driven well below 1.0 and the disease will become quite rare.
One question this strategy raises is how close is the world or any particular country to achieving herd immunity. According to the Johns Hopkins University Corona Virus Resource Center, the total number of Covid19 cases worldwide is 35 million. or about zero point four percent of the world's population. That implies we are very far from worldwide herd immunity, which would require perhaps four and a half billion infections, or 60% of the world's population. Or so it is believed. However, some research suggests that due to differences among individuals and groups in their social interactions, herd immunity requires infection of only about 40% of the population of concern, or three billion infections worldwide, but that is still vastly greater than the number of infections reported by the Johns Hopkins University Corona Virus Resource Center.
But the number of infections worldwide may be much greater than the data from Johns Hopkins suggest. According to an announcement today from the World Health Organization, global infections now total 750 million, or more than 20 times the Johns Hopkins University estimate. That number, combined with the lower estimate of the numbers for herd immunity, implies that worldwide, the population could already be one quarter of the way to herd immunity. If that is correct, and if as proposed by the scientists calling for an end to lockdowns we protect the vulnerable part of the population, which is to say those over 60 years of age, then we could be shot of Covid19 as a major problem quite soon.
Related:
The Great Barrington Declaration
As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.
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I haven't had a chance to look at this yet, but just by the first paragraph I can see it is going to be excellent.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I am commenting is so I don't forget to mention something I'm seeing when I come to your site. Instead of coming here directly I am routed through the Google main page. After a short delay, during which your web address disappears from my browser, I successfully arrive.
Could be nothing, or it could be something I have unintentionally done when I am locating your site. (The way I get here is by typing "c" in the top web address bar. I come here so often Google knows to do the rest. Anyway, maybe others have a similar experience or better insight to what's happening. This does not happen for any other place I regularly visit.
Re: access to this site.
DeleteI think the access route to this site that you describe is the one I also follow.
Does that mean that Google is controlling the flow of traffic to this site? I don't know, although there is not doubt that Google is not a passive agent. Follow one topic on Google news and soon you're seeing a whole bunch of stuff on the same topic. In that way Google serves not to broaden the mind but shrink it! It's the same at Google's U-tube.
Whether Google has this blog on one of its blacklists thus to ensure limited traffic, I have no idea. Still traffic has declined over the years from up to ten thousand a day, to now, a hundred or two.
No doubt with the advance of age my mental acuity has declined, but probably not a rapidly as those numbers suggest. But I don't really care whether people read my random thoughts or not. I write chiefly to find out what I think. Indeed, without composing one's thoughts in speech or writing can one be said to think anything?
However, it is certainly both cheering and instructive to receive feedback from "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers" who seek to set politics aside, hoping to grasp, however feebly, what is actually going on.
"Follow one topic on Google news and soon you're seeing a whole bunch of stuff on the same topic."
ReplyDeleteYes, and it is likely on other places than Google news. Your comment is uncanny, really. I was just at U-tube and saw Google is prominently suggesting I watch Tom Jones sing "I'll Never Fall in Love Again." I've never watched or thought of watching Tom Jones (it's not that I don't like Tom Jones). The other day I did click on one of those celebrity infotainment links I usually avoid-- to a human interest story about Tom Jones. (How he has always kept his family life private.) It can't be coincidence. Note how often we have to say, "probably it was nothing," without being able to dismiss entirely that it might be something.
You have been way out ahead of the learning curve and coherently painting a picture the monopoly-owned and controlled mass media does not wish to see painted.
Yes, I think what you say is correct. What I've said is not specially perceptive, but it contradicts the propaganda the media are catapaulting.
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