President Trump’s new White House pandemic adviser Scott Atlas would advocate the strategy of building “collective immunity” to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Atlas, who is a neuroradiologist and researcher at the Hoover institution, would allow the virus to spread so widely and as quickly as you can imagine to strengthen the immunity of the world’s population. Think of it as the opposite of the final business and it is not easy to distance and mask social – all aimed at curbing the spread of the disease.
The Atlas strategy can have catastrophic consequences for other elderly and frail people, who already have the greatest threat of serious illness and covid-19 death. As of August 26, nearly 80% of other people who have died from covid-19 in the United States were over 65 years old and 57% were over 75.
Risks to the elderly
Atlas and other advocates of the concept of collective immunity are well aware of the dangers to older adults, their solution would be to continue separating the elderly from the general population, thus prolonging the confinement of many other older people that has already lasted almost This strategy ignores the well-documented dangers of social isolation to physical fitness.
According to his plan, interactions between the general population and citizens of nursing homes and others in would be “strictly regulated. “Tests and a mask would be required before contact was allowed. Your plan description is here.
Already, cases and deaths in long-term care services are starting again, after falling throughout the summer, and many public fitness officials fear a bigger increase in the fall.
More or more insulation
In this context, the collective immunity strategy poses 3 dangers for older adults.
The first is that six months after the pandemic began, long-term care services continue to undergo immediate and accurate testing. The White House has begun offering tests to some nursing services and promises them to others as well as service residences.
However, the administration provides so-called antigenic testing at the point of service, which are reasonable (about $5) and produce effects in approximately 15 minutes, but are also less reliable than the most commonly used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. much slower and more expensive. A false negative can be catastrophic in long-term care facilities, where the disease can spread rapidly.
The challenge of the moment is that allowing the virus to spread aggressively in the general population will inevitably increase the threat to long-term care patients, who will have contact with assistants, members of the circle of family members, and others living in communities where politics would be driving. . infections.
Several studies have shown that a long-term focus on a network where covid-19 instances are widespread is more likely to have outbreaks and deaths on their own. The collective immunity strategy will create instances on the network across the country.
The third threat is that while the virus is spreading widely and on the wider network and testing is not yet reliable, long-term care center operators will not do what they have been doing for months: locking up their residents.
How much longer?
How long would this isolation last? It’s been a while.
Research suggests that between 40 and 60% of the population deserves to be inflamed before immunity occurs. Today, approximately 6 million cases of covid-19 have been reported in the United States, or less than 2, according to the percentage of the population. Some analysts say that when counting uninstanded asymptomatic cases, the number may be much higher, but there is no credible evidence to help this estimate.
Sweden attempted an edition of Atlas’ proposed collective immunity strategy, but the concept failed. The country has one of the highest rates of covid-19-related diseases and deaths in the world. The only other way to discharge collective immunity is a vaccine. But we still don’t know when it will be widely available.
Is the Atlas concept real? Another White House coronavirus adviser, Deborah Birx, insisted that the White House would not adopt a collective immunity strategy. “Neither I nor anyone in the direction are willing to sacrifice American lives for collective immunity,” Birx told reporters.
But the White House’s reaction to the pandemic has been chaotic and has been based on the president’s whims for months, and Atlas tells President Trump what he needs to hear: there’s a way to create widespread immunity that doesn’t require business closure or mask wearing.
One thing is certain: if the White House adopts this strategy, the first ones affected will again be fragile elders.
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I am a member of the eBook “Caring for Our Parents” and a senior member of the Urban Institute, where I am affiliated with the Tax Policy Center and the Program on Retirement.
I am a member of the eBook “Caring for Our Parents” and a senior member of The Urban Institute, where I am affiliated with the Tax Policy Center and the Program on Retirement Policy. I also write a blog about fiscal and budget policy, TaxVox, which you can read about Forbes. com or http://taxvox. taxpolicycenter. org/ Before joining Urban, I was a senior correspondent at the Washington business week workplace.