It is interesting this herd immunity thing. I don't think a single figure of 65-70% is nuanced enough.
In the UK 60% of the adult population have had the jab now, but people without health conditions under 50 have not yet had anything at all - not even their first dose. Those under 18 are not even scheduled to get it.
So can we have "herd" immunity when the majority of the able-bodied working-age population and school kids are not protected yet? From what I've seen in media and data (http://coronavirus.data.gov.uk), the virus is running rampant in teenagers now, but everyone is apparently cool with that because "kids don't get sick from it" (ignoring any long-covid repercussions, which seems foolish to me)
Its all well and good making sure at 100% of 75+ year olds are protected, but they're not exactly representative of the people out and about mixing with strangers in shops/workplaces/bars/public transport/gyms/cafes etc
> because "kids don't get sick from it" (ignoring any long-covid repercussions, which seems foolish to me)
If one reads the actual studies about "long COVID" (and not sensationalistic media reports that leave all the nuances out), they often emphasize that severity of post-COVID symptoms correlates quite neatly with severity of illness. Because younger people rarely have severe illness, that means the risk of long-term symptoms is very low for them. Not zero, of course, but low as with many other common illnesses for which major societal restrictions are not imposed.
People might be tempted to jump in with "But my friend who got COVID...!", but please don't, this is irresponsible in a scientific context. All those people before COVID who claimed to have chronic Lyme disease, doctors tell us, likely didn't, and long-COVID self-reporting and anecdotes is the same thing.
> So can we have "herd" immunity when the majority of the able-bodied working-age population and school kids are not protected yet?
Yes. It's been one of the dumbest narratives of the last year that "herd immunity" is a single, fixed constant determined solely by vaccination rate. It isn't. The threshold itself is going to differ by subpopulation, and is affected by population mixing, mobility, climate, age distribution, current disease prevalence, natural infection rate and lots of other factors. For example, it's quite possible that large pockets of rural areas will achieve "herd immunity" long before, say, London, simply because there are fewer people interacting on a daily basis.
Even then, it's not like you hit the threshold, and infections just drop off dramatically. It's a shift as you get closer to the "threshold" (whatever that actually is), with infections gradually falling toward (but likely never reaching) zero.
This toy model version of herd immunity is appealing to the Thomas Pueyos of the world, but not at all representative of what happens in messy reality.
The thinking was that some people within a community are interacting with many more people than others and that they would be more likely to have antibodies.
Last I heard, the UK had very aggressive mass testing amongst school-age kids regardless of whether they showed symptoms, and it didn't seem to be spreading much aside from a brief spike when schools first reopened for in-person learning.
"I don't think a single figure of 65-70% is nuanced enough."
I agree with this part. My guess is that Israel is getting herd immunity at a lower overall immunization rate than expected because behavior is different too. There's still some amount of residual social distancing, social isolating, and so on. Plus whatever number of people didn't get a shot, but have some immunity from a previous (perhaps non-symptomatic) COVID infection.
The UK's strategy with vaccine roll-out was very specifically nothing to to do with herd immunity, because at the time that the vaccine roll-out started, there was no direct evidence that vaccination prevented infection - only that it was very good at preventing death, hospitalisation and illness.
So the British government built a vaccination strategy around preventing death, hospitalisation and illness. It was estimated that if the vaccines had been available during the first wave and we had just vaccinated the priority groups we would have saved 90% of the lives lost to Covid.
Those over 20 are due to get their first dose by the end of July.
One important reason that school kids aren't being vaccinated is that the vaccines haven't been approved yet because trials in that age group are still ongoing.
My understanding is herd immunity means transmission factor is < 1.0 which means cases will only decrease over time and eventually become zero.
It doesn’t mean nobody will get Covid and as you point out the immunity isn’t evenly distributed - so you could certainly have outbreaks in sub-populations.
“Health conditions” in my area included obesity and fatty liver. Plenty under-50s fit that bill and hence got the jab.
I believe in my borough that 60-70% figure is actually closer to 70-80% by now. Unfortunately Greater Manchester is really a very large system, and a lot of other boroughs have not been as efficient.
Well the most definitive measure of herd immunity would be, does the rate of cases stay low? And their rate of new cases has gotten to levels not seen in over six months, even though they have ended the lockdown and other such measures. So, either:
1) they have herd immunity, or
2) the lockdown wasn't really doing anything anyway
Or both, of course. But the theory that accords best with prior knowledge, is that because they have gotten above 70% resistant (either through vaccination or the virus itself), they have herd immunity because that's what we expected.
The real news would be if they did NOT have herd immunity by now, as that would imply that vaccination is for some reason not working. But, good news, it appears to be working.
Total cases have continued to decrease, with the most recent 7-day average showing a 30% decline, and latest figures showing 39 cases per 100,000 people per week. That's hardly "running rampant".
> people without health conditions under 50 have not yet had anything at all
This is not quite correct. There are a lot of people under 50 who've had the jab for other reasons. Frontline health and social care workers were among the first to get the vaccine.
Most health authorities have made a tradeoff regarding vaccination strategy. There is an argument to be made that it would be better to vaccinate the groups that would spread the virus most in their day-to-day activities, such that herd immunity (for the groups that actually spread the disease, making it available to everyone) is achieved faster.
But my impression is this decision has been too hard to defend, since it would necessarily mean more deaths in risk groups while the vaccination campaign is ongoing. And the difference in time to herd immunity is relatively small if vaccine access is good, only a quarter or two.
Unvaccinated youth is really interesting because they have such a clear intra age group network of contacts that they could still work like a conductor sending the virus "everywhere" even if they were the only ones susceptible. Even if the rest was 99% vaccinated, the remaining 1% of the rest would likely get it from the "conductor age group", at least unless they have so little contact with the "conductor" that they remain lucky until natural immunisation has happened within the "conductor".
But we'll be safe from scenarios like overwhelmed burial logistics in population centers so there won't be much pressure for action. Which personally I find a bit unfortunate, because with vaccinating going forward an additional month more of countermeasures has a well-defined benefit whereas earlier in the pandemic the benefit was a bit murky because countermeasures might have been just a delay of eventually inevitable infections. Cost/benefit is much better now, but cost of inaction is ceasing to be sensational failure, it's getting subtle now.
Lucky I think are countries like Portugal that have tackled a massive wave just before vaccination ramp-up, I believe that they can just watch as the infection rates recovering from hard suppression slowly creep up before vaccination eventually takes their sting, with little risk of another wave hitting unbearable levels.
It seems like if the disease is circulating among a population in which they don't often get severely sick (non-vaccinated children), there is still a some, possibly high, chance that it will evolve a mutation that enables infection of the vaccinated adults, if it is allowed to circulate unchecked among children.
From the latest ONS antibody study, (which is nearly a month out of date), 40-50% of under 50s have antibodies now. That's driven by previous infection; vaccination (a lot were done under health conditions), and also a lot are carers/health workers/social workers.
..isn't strictly true. A quick look at the local (Danish) health department says that the hospitalisation rate of 0-9 year olds are 181 out of 17004 confirmed cases and 10-19 yo 180 out of 36065 confirmed. 23% of those had an underlying disease.
Hospitalisation is defined as someone who have been hospitalised for at least 12 hours with something covid related inside 14 days from a positive test result.
So while only something like 1% needs to go to hospital compared to 27% of the 70-79 age group they do get sick and so get long-term damage too.
The priority everywhere at the moment is still to reduce pressure on hospitals, which (at least in my country, which is slower with the vaccination schedule, probably because countries like the UK and Israel pay the vaccine companies more) is still on the rise despite the number of cases stabilizing and in the past week or so reducing. And of course the number of deaths, which has been sharply declining since the start of the vaccination program, since the most vulnerable people got the jab first.
So yeah. The end goal is to eradicate the disease and to vaccinate everybody, but because of production and logistical problems that's not possible, so they focus on the in between goals of lowering death rate and hospitalizations, and that's been very effective so far.
"the majority of the able-bodied working-age population and school kids are not protected yet" - you don't believe in immune systems? I've never touch touched a mask, in London, I've been fine. If there's a pandemic then I must have had at least one variant by now.
I wonder about the effectiveness of “herd immunity” or at least anti-bodies and the various new mutations I hear about almost daily.
I have what I think is interesting anecdotal data regarding restaurant works. 1st I live in Miami Beach where it’s essentially been spring break for over a month.
Ocean drive has been blocked off since pretty early on in the shutdown with the city giving the restaurants pretty large swaths of the street for outdoor seating. These have restaurants have pretty much been at full capacity since the election if not a little before.
Even though they have been operating what would be full capacity meaning fully staffed, I noticed in the last week many of them now have hiring signs that all read “for all positions”. In my mind this can only mean these fully staffed and operational restaurants must have had larger outbreak amount staff recently. While I don’t know if it’s true, I’m left thinking that mass outbreaks is exactly what happened, meaning once a give restaurant staff is infected the restaurants are simply replacing them with new staff which will subject these new batches of employees to a mass outbreak and some point. It it turns out to be true, it’s essentially the people forced into these temporary jobs where they will inevitably get corona just to be discarded and rinse/repeat all because people need income they will willingly subject themselves to that kind of environment...it really feels like im watching a dystopia of the haves and have nots, and while it’s always been the case to a degree, the scale and stakes are deeply disturbing.
> but everyone is apparently cool with that because "kids don't get sick from it" (ignoring any long-covid repercussions, which seems foolish to me)
If kids don't get sick, then they don't get sick. What's foolish or difficult to understand about this? BTW when someone says "kids don't get sick from it" they don't talk in absolute terms. Kids also can get cancer, yet we are not screening their prostate yearly like we do with old men.
Wanting to harm children's future, education, development and mental health because out of your own fear is rather distasteful.
Probably not. See the case and death graphs by country.[1] Right now, the UK has lower death rates than Israel. Israel's line is roughly flat, not heading all the way down to 0.
Real herd immunity will result in a case rate that declines to 0.
> The critical value, or [herd immunity] threshold, in a given population, is the point where the disease reaches an endemic steady state, which means that the infection level is neither growing nor declining exponentially. This threshold can be calculated...
Mathematical and hand wavy are not necessarily opposites, often there is a lot of hand waving involved in the assumptions that reduce the real world conditions to the required conditions for the mathematical formula and that is certainly true when it comes to herd immunity.
In particular treating R0 as a constant in the basic herd immunity equation is a huge leap to make.
Herd immunity doesn't mean "nobody will ever get it." It means "we can be reasonably assured that enough people are vaccinated that we won't have widespread outbreaks."
People who think that herd immunity thinks that they can wander around without a vaccine and be complete fine are beclowning themselves, especially with a virus that is more like a cold for most of the population.
The fact that the rate of new vaccinations has slowed considerably in Israel gives us a unique look at Western(ish) nation at 50% fully vaccinated. The rate of new cases completely cratered as they approached that 50% mark and has stayed low and steady as the rate of new vaccinations has slowed.
We might hit that same benchmark in the US by the end of this month, but we'll likely glide right past 50% since supply isn't expected to be an impediment.
> Approximately 56% of Israel’s 9.2 million citizens are vaccinated and another 15% (approximately 700,000 people)
How do those numbers work, now? 15% of 9.2 million is 1.38 million, not 700k. Even NYT's tracking which has 835k positive cases for Israel falls far short of that number.
(If you instead look at people with at least one shot, and people who've tested positive, then 70% makes more sense. But even that's an overestimate that doesn't account for overlaps between those groups.)
How open is Israel about the vaccination and its rollout?
I know it varies from country to country. Norway for example has been quite public and doing weekly reports on reported side-effects and investigation into severe cases whereas other countries have not.
At present it must be possible for Israel to provide through-out statistics on side-effects, possibility of infection after shot 1, shot 2, effects of various variants, effects on overall mortality.
As someone who is strongly pro-EU I have to say that this is their biggest failure so far, and I find it shocking that there seems to be hardly any reaction as in self-criticism or restructuring.
It seems entirely plausible to me that this might tip the scales for countries that are already on the fence.
Depends; the UK is paying more for the vaccines than Europe did, because Europe got a good trade deal. Which they invited the UK to participate in, but they declined.
I mean on the plus side, they got more vaccines faster. On the downside, they're already economically downtrodden due to the Brexit debacle + companies leaving.
Second, I'm confident those companies will be destroyed with fines for not fulfilling their contract to the UK, to the point where they 'found' nearly 30 million doses in Italy bound for exports. The facility that produced these vaccines (based in the Netherlands) wasn't even approved yet for producing things for within Europe - not because they're unfit, but because the company (AstraZeneca) never even filed the request. But surprise surprise, that production company was approved for use in the UK.
>“There are no magic tricks here,” says Leshem. “If unvaccinated people travel without full quarantine and testing, we will increase the risk of reintroducing the disease to Israel.”
Why? I thought they just mentioned there is herd immunity. Why would the disease be reintroduced if most of the population is immune?
The longer the rest of the world population takes to achieve herd immunity the more surface we give to the virus to evolve with potentially disastrous consequences.
The vaccine may be effective against currently known strains but nothing says it is going to be effective against future ones.
Theory: mutations create variants, including less deadly versions. In fact, variants less likely to cause symptoms will spread more, because carriers don't get tested, isolate or take any precautions. But their immune system still generates the antibodies. In effect: a natural spontaneous viral vaccine.
It's similar to how viruses become less deadly over time (because they spread more if they don't kill their host), but I'm talking about the range of variants out in the community right now, not a platonic form that is representative of "the" disease.
[+] [-] mattlondon|5 years ago|reply
In the UK 60% of the adult population have had the jab now, but people without health conditions under 50 have not yet had anything at all - not even their first dose. Those under 18 are not even scheduled to get it.
So can we have "herd" immunity when the majority of the able-bodied working-age population and school kids are not protected yet? From what I've seen in media and data (http://coronavirus.data.gov.uk), the virus is running rampant in teenagers now, but everyone is apparently cool with that because "kids don't get sick from it" (ignoring any long-covid repercussions, which seems foolish to me)
Its all well and good making sure at 100% of 75+ year olds are protected, but they're not exactly representative of the people out and about mixing with strangers in shops/workplaces/bars/public transport/gyms/cafes etc
[+] [-] Mediterraneo10|5 years ago|reply
If one reads the actual studies about "long COVID" (and not sensationalistic media reports that leave all the nuances out), they often emphasize that severity of post-COVID symptoms correlates quite neatly with severity of illness. Because younger people rarely have severe illness, that means the risk of long-term symptoms is very low for them. Not zero, of course, but low as with many other common illnesses for which major societal restrictions are not imposed.
People might be tempted to jump in with "But my friend who got COVID...!", but please don't, this is irresponsible in a scientific context. All those people before COVID who claimed to have chronic Lyme disease, doctors tell us, likely didn't, and long-COVID self-reporting and anecdotes is the same thing.
[+] [-] timr|5 years ago|reply
Yes. It's been one of the dumbest narratives of the last year that "herd immunity" is a single, fixed constant determined solely by vaccination rate. It isn't. The threshold itself is going to differ by subpopulation, and is affected by population mixing, mobility, climate, age distribution, current disease prevalence, natural infection rate and lots of other factors. For example, it's quite possible that large pockets of rural areas will achieve "herd immunity" long before, say, London, simply because there are fewer people interacting on a daily basis.
Even then, it's not like you hit the threshold, and infections just drop off dramatically. It's a shift as you get closer to the "threshold" (whatever that actually is), with infections gradually falling toward (but likely never reaching) zero.
This toy model version of herd immunity is appealing to the Thomas Pueyos of the world, but not at all representative of what happens in messy reality.
[+] [-] wefarrell|5 years ago|reply
The thinking was that some people within a community are interacting with many more people than others and that they would be more likely to have antibodies.
[+] [-] makomk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|5 years ago|reply
I agree with this part. My guess is that Israel is getting herd immunity at a lower overall immunization rate than expected because behavior is different too. There's still some amount of residual social distancing, social isolating, and so on. Plus whatever number of people didn't get a shot, but have some immunity from a previous (perhaps non-symptomatic) COVID infection.
[+] [-] scottwitlin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Angostura|5 years ago|reply
So the British government built a vaccination strategy around preventing death, hospitalisation and illness. It was estimated that if the vaccines had been available during the first wave and we had just vaccinated the priority groups we would have saved 90% of the lives lost to Covid.
Those over 20 are due to get their first dose by the end of July.
One important reason that school kids aren't being vaccinated is that the vaccines haven't been approved yet because trials in that age group are still ongoing.
[+] [-] refurb|5 years ago|reply
It doesn’t mean nobody will get Covid and as you point out the immunity isn’t evenly distributed - so you could certainly have outbreaks in sub-populations.
But the overall trend should be downward.
[+] [-] toyg|5 years ago|reply
I believe in my borough that 60-70% figure is actually closer to 70-80% by now. Unfortunately Greater Manchester is really a very large system, and a lot of other boroughs have not been as efficient.
[+] [-] rossdavidh|5 years ago|reply
1) they have herd immunity, or
2) the lockdown wasn't really doing anything anyway
Or both, of course. But the theory that accords best with prior knowledge, is that because they have gotten above 70% resistant (either through vaccination or the virus itself), they have herd immunity because that's what we expected.
The real news would be if they did NOT have herd immunity by now, as that would imply that vaccination is for some reason not working. But, good news, it appears to be working.
[+] [-] Diggsey|5 years ago|reply
I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion based on the data at http://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
Total cases have continued to decrease, with the most recent 7-day average showing a 30% decline, and latest figures showing 39 cases per 100,000 people per week. That's hardly "running rampant".
> people without health conditions under 50 have not yet had anything at all
This is not quite correct. There are a lot of people under 50 who've had the jab for other reasons. Frontline health and social care workers were among the first to get the vaccine.
[+] [-] marvin|5 years ago|reply
But my impression is this decision has been too hard to defend, since it would necessarily mean more deaths in risk groups while the vaccination campaign is ongoing. And the difference in time to herd immunity is relatively small if vaccine access is good, only a quarter or two.
[+] [-] hinkley|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usrusr|5 years ago|reply
But we'll be safe from scenarios like overwhelmed burial logistics in population centers so there won't be much pressure for action. Which personally I find a bit unfortunate, because with vaccinating going forward an additional month more of countermeasures has a well-defined benefit whereas earlier in the pandemic the benefit was a bit murky because countermeasures might have been just a delay of eventually inevitable infections. Cost/benefit is much better now, but cost of inaction is ceasing to be sensational failure, it's getting subtle now.
Lucky I think are countries like Portugal that have tackled a massive wave just before vaccination ramp-up, I believe that they can just watch as the infection rates recovering from hard suppression slowly creep up before vaccination eventually takes their sting, with little risk of another wave hitting unbearable levels.
[+] [-] chriskanan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martinald|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iso1631|5 years ago|reply
First jab
Israel has 56% of people fully vaccinated, Chile 22%, US 19%
UK is just 8%
> but everyone is apparently cool with that because "kids don't get sick from it"
The government and media don't give a stuff about anyone under the age of 50, certainly not under 40.
[+] [-] officialjunk|5 years ago|reply
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-fully-vaccin...
[+] [-] jiofih|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Daho0n|5 years ago|reply
>"kids don't get sick from it"
..isn't strictly true. A quick look at the local (Danish) health department says that the hospitalisation rate of 0-9 year olds are 181 out of 17004 confirmed cases and 10-19 yo 180 out of 36065 confirmed. 23% of those had an underlying disease.
Hospitalisation is defined as someone who have been hospitalised for at least 12 hours with something covid related inside 14 days from a positive test result.
So while only something like 1% needs to go to hospital compared to 27% of the 70-79 age group they do get sick and so get long-term damage too.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|5 years ago|reply
So yeah. The end goal is to eradicate the disease and to vaccinate everybody, but because of production and logistical problems that's not possible, so they focus on the in between goals of lowering death rate and hospitalizations, and that's been very effective so far.
[+] [-] heywherelogingo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway_kufu|5 years ago|reply
I have what I think is interesting anecdotal data regarding restaurant works. 1st I live in Miami Beach where it’s essentially been spring break for over a month.
Ocean drive has been blocked off since pretty early on in the shutdown with the city giving the restaurants pretty large swaths of the street for outdoor seating. These have restaurants have pretty much been at full capacity since the election if not a little before.
Even though they have been operating what would be full capacity meaning fully staffed, I noticed in the last week many of them now have hiring signs that all read “for all positions”. In my mind this can only mean these fully staffed and operational restaurants must have had larger outbreak amount staff recently. While I don’t know if it’s true, I’m left thinking that mass outbreaks is exactly what happened, meaning once a give restaurant staff is infected the restaurants are simply replacing them with new staff which will subject these new batches of employees to a mass outbreak and some point. It it turns out to be true, it’s essentially the people forced into these temporary jobs where they will inevitably get corona just to be discarded and rinse/repeat all because people need income they will willingly subject themselves to that kind of environment...it really feels like im watching a dystopia of the haves and have nots, and while it’s always been the case to a degree, the scale and stakes are deeply disturbing.
[+] [-] dustinmoris|5 years ago|reply
If kids don't get sick, then they don't get sick. What's foolish or difficult to understand about this? BTW when someone says "kids don't get sick from it" they don't talk in absolute terms. Kids also can get cancer, yet we are not screening their prostate yearly like we do with old men.
Wanting to harm children's future, education, development and mental health because out of your own fear is rather distasteful.
[+] [-] Animats|5 years ago|reply
Real herd immunity will result in a case rate that declines to 0.
[1] https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=eur&areas=usa&are...
[+] [-] syntaxing|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] js2|5 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Theoretical_basi...
But, it depends on a lot of real world factors:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02948-4
[+] [-] cactus2093|5 years ago|reply
In particular treating R0 as a constant in the basic herd immunity equation is a huge leap to make.
[+] [-] MisterBastahrd|5 years ago|reply
People who think that herd immunity thinks that they can wander around without a vaccine and be complete fine are beclowning themselves, especially with a virus that is more like a cold for most of the population.
[+] [-] oliv__|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] standardUser|5 years ago|reply
We might hit that same benchmark in the US by the end of this month, but we'll likely glide right past 50% since supply isn't expected to be an impediment.
[+] [-] vitus|5 years ago|reply
How do those numbers work, now? 15% of 9.2 million is 1.38 million, not 700k. Even NYT's tracking which has 835k positive cases for Israel falls far short of that number.
(If you instead look at people with at least one shot, and people who've tested positive, then 70% makes more sense. But even that's an overestimate that doesn't account for overlaps between those groups.)
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] DSingularity|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sahyooni|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] throwaway4good|5 years ago|reply
I know it varies from country to country. Norway for example has been quite public and doing weekly reports on reported side-effects and investigation into severe cases whereas other countries have not.
At present it must be possible for Israel to provide through-out statistics on side-effects, possibility of infection after shot 1, shot 2, effects of various variants, effects on overall mortality.
[+] [-] shablulman|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mamon|5 years ago|reply
https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-covid-pfizer-hold...
[+] [-] jjjeii3|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jaynetics|5 years ago|reply
As someone who is strongly pro-EU I have to say that this is their biggest failure so far, and I find it shocking that there seems to be hardly any reaction as in self-criticism or restructuring.
It seems entirely plausible to me that this might tip the scales for countries that are already on the fence.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|5 years ago|reply
I mean on the plus side, they got more vaccines faster. On the downside, they're already economically downtrodden due to the Brexit debacle + companies leaving.
Second, I'm confident those companies will be destroyed with fines for not fulfilling their contract to the UK, to the point where they 'found' nearly 30 million doses in Italy bound for exports. The facility that produced these vaccines (based in the Netherlands) wasn't even approved yet for producing things for within Europe - not because they're unfit, but because the company (AstraZeneca) never even filed the request. But surprise surprise, that production company was approved for use in the UK.
[+] [-] duckfang|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] VLM|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] _yacj|5 years ago|reply
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-scandal-of-israels-v...
[+] [-] cblackthornekc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oliv__|5 years ago|reply
Why? I thought they just mentioned there is herd immunity. Why would the disease be reintroduced if most of the population is immune?
[+] [-] lmilcin|5 years ago|reply
The longer the rest of the world population takes to achieve herd immunity the more surface we give to the virus to evolve with potentially disastrous consequences.
The vaccine may be effective against currently known strains but nothing says it is going to be effective against future ones.
[+] [-] hyperpallium2|5 years ago|reply
It's similar to how viruses become less deadly over time (because they spread more if they don't kill their host), but I'm talking about the range of variants out in the community right now, not a platonic form that is representative of "the" disease.
[+] [-] IgorPartola|5 years ago|reply