“For a highly infectious virus like SARS-CoV-2 [the virus that causes COVID-19], the minimum point for achieving collective immunity, where we would expect other newly inflamed people to transmit the virus to less than one more user – it’s an idea that makes up about 60% of the population,” Ray says, noting that estimates of this point vary. “Even if a positive checkup of anti-virus antibodies indicates that the acquired immunity will be more than temporary, we are far from that limit.
“In fact, in countries that have moved away from lockdowns, masks and physical distances, we have not noticed evidence that any of them have been able to protect the herd nationally,” he adds.
Take, for example, Sweden, a giant country that highlighted collective immunity earlier this year as a national strategy. As a component of the plan, the Swedish government has authorized the following unrestricted activities: restaurants, kindergartens and number one schools, public transport, parks, hairdressers, yoga studios, gyms, grocery stores, cinemas and ski slopes. They have limited public meetings to 50 people or less, closed the best schools and universities, closed museums, cancelled public sporting events and banned visits to nursing homes. Social est estinement, however, is voluntary.
The effects of Sweden’s resolve to try collective immunity were disappointing and devastating. By the end of May 2020, the country had recorded nearly 41,000 cases of COVID-19, resulting in more than 4,500 deaths in a population of 10 million, for neighbors. Norway and Finland, which had fewer than 600 deaths combined with COVID-19, Anders Tegnell, a Swedish state epidemiologist and architect of the collective immunity plan, admitted at a press convention in early June that “too many people died too soon. “as a result.
As for whether herd immunity can simply be a strategy for the United States, Ray’s answer is a resounding “no. ” However, he says, much more effective remedies are being developed.
The United States has a significant vulnerable population; Different methods at community, state and national level to deal with COVID-19; and a health care formula with gaps and inequalities, so it would be very difficult to reach the necessary immunity point without an effective vaccine,” he says. For example, the inconsistency in access to COVID-19 testing in this country erodes security and weakens confidence in what the effects tell us. If you don’t know who’s infected, you can’t protect other vulnerable people or find out who has immunity. “
Ray says the most important thing that still needs an answer is whether SARS-CoV-2 infection produces long-term immunity.
“For collective immunity to work, pre-SARS-CoV-2 exposure will need to launch the immune formula to produce a strong reaction to any long-term contact with the virus and, in turn, make the user less infectious,” Ray explains. “We don’t know if this happens with this express coronavirus. “