White House officially embraces “herd immunity” COVID strategy

[Anomalocaris]

The White House has embraced a declaration by a group of scientists arguing that authorities should allow the coronavirus to spread among young healthy people while protecting the elderly and the vulnerable — an approach that would rely on arriving at “herd immunity” through infections rather than a vaccine.
Many experts say “herd immunity” — the point at which a disease stops spreading because nearly everyone in a population has contracted it — is still very far-off. Leading experts have concluded, using different scientific methods, that about  to the coronavirus.
On a call convened Monday by the White House, two senior administration officials, both speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to give their names, cited an October 4 petition titled , which argues against lockdowns and calls for a reopening of businesses and schools.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/13/...irus-covid

It’s worth noting that a good-sized portion of this analysis in the Great Barrington Declaration hinges on the very questionable assumptions made by two scientists (Sunetra Gupta and Gabriela Gomes) that herd immunity could happen with COVID when 10-20% of the population gets it. Unfortunately, this is not really backed Up by the science.

1st or all, the notion that herd immunity occurs when everyone in the herd became immune from having contracted the disease is false.     If that wren the case, and given the typical 2% death rate we’ve seen with COVID-19, attainment of herd immunity will cost 7 million American lives. 

Herd immunity actually occurs when a disease is contagious, but not very contagious.   Put it another way, the diesease’s actual degree of contagiousness Is only somewhat higher than the minimum degree of contagiousness required for it to propagate through a population.     So in order for the disease to propagate through the population, it depends on most chains of transmission it can manage not being broken.     

With such a marginal degree of contagiousness. severing a just a small percentage of the potential chains of propagation gums up the works Enough to stop the disease from propagating.   Herd immunity occurs when a small percentage of people acquire immunity and becomes the glue that gums up the transmission chain. 

As we;be seen, COVID is anything but “not very contagious”.    So herd immunity at 20% infection rate seems improbable.