8 ms·

This idea that the primary aim of the UK Government is herd immunity is plain wrong. The primary aim is to flatten the curve with specially timed interventions

This idea that the primary aim of the UK Government is herd immunity is plain wrong. The primary aim is to flatten the curve with specially timed interventions and any herd immunity is a by product of that. The aim is to flatten the curve so that the systems are able to cope better. Herd immunity will be a by product in almost every western countries actions today. Ask them and if they are honest they will say the same that it's a long term effect but not the primary driver or the main aim. The difficult non sound bite criticism is about the flattening of the curve based on their models which basically means they need to get both the timings and the interventions spot on for it to work correctly.

DanBC 7y ago
> This idea that the primary aim of the UK Government is herd immunity is plain wrong. You can understand people's confusion when the government have said, repeatedly, that they aim to create herd immunity. https://www.ft.com/content/38a81588-6508-11ea-b3f3-fe4680ea68b5 https://www.ft.com/content/38a81588-6508-11ea-b3f3-fe4680ea6... > Britain’s chief scientific adviser stoked controversy on Friday when he said that about 40m people in the UK could need to catch the coronavirus to build up “herd immunity” and prevent the disease coming back in the future. > Defending Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision not to follow other European countries by closing schools and banning mass gatherings, Patrick Vallance said it was the government’s aim to “reduce the peak of the epidemic, pull it down and broaden it” while protecting the elderly and vulnerable. > But Sir Patrick told Sky News that experts estimated that about 60 per cent of the UK’s 66m population would have to contract coronavirus in order for society to build up immunity. > “Communities will become immune to it and that’s going to be an important part of controlling this longer term,” he said. “About 60 per cent is the sort of figure you need to get herd immunity.”
- madaxe_again 7y ago
  You just need to be down with doublespeak. They say one thing, but you have to understand that they meant something entirely different. To think otherwise would be to think that our leaders are either dishonest or incompetent - and because they are our leaders they cannot be either dishonest nor incompetent. Therefore, you must adjust your comprehension. Honestly, if their intent is as GP says, I’ve not seen it communicated - I’d love a source other than goodthink.
- rebuilder 7y ago
  None of those quotes say they aim to create herd immunity. They just say you won't get herd immunity until about 60% are infected. There's a difference.
  - DanBC 7y ago
    The government has changed from "containment phase" and is now in their "delay phase", and that means they think millions of people will become infected. Patrick Vallence: > ‘So our aim is to tray and reduce their peak – broaden the peak – not to suppress it completely. Also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some degree of herd immunity as well. https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/13/millions-brits-get-coronavirus-can-develop-herd-immunity-12393966/?ito=cbshare https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/13/millions-brits-get-coronaviru... Herd immunity is a direct aim of the current phase of the government plan -- it has to be, because they think that covid-19 will become a seasonal illness. https://www.ft.com/content/0475f450-654f-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68 https://www.ft.com/content/0475f450-654f-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6... > The prime minister and his scientific advisers hope to manage the epidemic by “flattening the curve” of infection and delaying the peak until the summer, when the National Health Service will face less seasonal pressure. > Then — or so the theory goes — enough people will have acquired resistance to Covid-19 to avoid a second wave of disease next autumn or winter. Downing Street believes that other countries that have taken draconian action now will be vulnerable later in the year. > Mr Johnson’s strategy depends on building up the so-called herd immunity. If a high enough proportion has become resistant through Covid-19 infection, the virus will not have enough new people to catch and the epidemic will not be able to sustain itself. It will burn out.
  - Bendingo 7y ago
    > They just say you won't get herd immunity until about 60% are infected But even this is wrong, or at least, unsure. Herd immunity relies on low (or zero) re-infection. It works for diseases like measles, where the risk of re-infection (after either infection or immunisation) is effectively zero. We don't yet know if re-infection with covids-19 is possible or not.
- kingosticks 7y ago
  Health Secretary Matt Hancock reiterated this morning in his BBC interview that this is not the government's main aim. It is is a fun buzzword that officials have mentioned and some people have since obsessed about. Which is unfortunate as it really distracts from the real issues so it would be great if we could move on.
  - chishaku 7y ago
    > some people have since obsessed about The burden is on the government to better unify the messaging in a time of extreme uncertainty.
    - kingosticks 7y ago
      Sure and I didn't say those obsessives were to blame. In fact, I'm going to say blaming anyone is a waste of our efforts right now. Edit, maybe by 'burden' you didn't mean 'blame', exactly. It is part of the government's job to communicate properly and it seems they didn't get it right. But we can accept that and now be open to the explanations of what they really meant. So we can get on with what matters.
- thinkingemote 7y ago
  I understand that there is confusion and seek to address it. The quotes provided come from the press which are spinning this in an inaccurate way and leading to letters such as this.
scarmig 7y ago
This is a bit too cute by half, especially considering that leading UK politicians have themselves cited "herd immunity" as the reason to do what they're doing. Your rephrasing sounds reasonable, but I'm not sure what it concretely means, particularly how it differs from every other country's approach. It's vague enough that you could pretty much say the same thing about everything from China's to Singapore's to the United States' approach.
- dmix 7y ago
  > Matt Hancock insists 'herd immunity' not part of government's plan for tackling coronavirus > Mr Hancock added: "Herd immunity is not a part of it. That is a scientific concept, not a goal or a strategy. Our goal is to protect life from this virus, our strategy is to protect the most vulnerable and protect the NHS through contain, delay, research and mitigate." https://politicshome.com/news/uk/health-and-care/illnesstreatments/news/110595/matt-hancock-insists-herd-immunity-not-part https://politicshome.com/news/uk/health-and-care/illnesstrea... The amount of politicizing people are engaging is a bit sad. Especially when you take a wider view at how every country with the best doctors and scientists have dealt with it. Significant criticism has happened across party and ideological lines (Which you’d hope the healthcare bodies would be largely independent of and instead follows the best scientific advice). Even here in Canada where our prime minister’s wife got COVID-19 and are both in isolation, yet they’ve been even less aggressive than the policies the UK has already announced. It’s obvious few countries and even WHO were well prepared for something of this scale and a ton of criticism today has the benefit of retrospect. Meanwhile aggressive policies, like the US closing borders and China locking up entire apartment buildings when one resident gets sick, also got immediate heavy push back, and globally has been far more the exception than the rule. Even with better preparedness, which no doubt will be adopted after this event, there is still a difficult balance between scaling up restrictions on daily life without being accused of being “draconian” (which is how I remember the same UK press characterized Italy’s early moves). Especially politically, let alone scientifically. We should be spending more effort on finding the right balance, which is still not obvious nor scientifically well established for countries with lower rates, even today. Those are the hard questions, political opportunism is easy and low effort.
VieEnCode 7y ago
The strategy of all countries is to flatten the curve to enable their respective health services to cope. My concern is that the U.K. is now proposing isolation for the over 70s “within weeks”: this demographic has been shown to be at serious risk as of now, when looking at the experiences of China, Italy and Spain. Further, in the UK, testing is only now being carried out on cases serious enough to hospitalize, so I do not understand how the UK government can have confidence in its data as to the spread of the virus.
- simonh 7y ago
  As you say, the UK government's strategy is to isolate those most vulnerable first, exactly as is the main point of this letter. It's just a mater of timing. The letter isn't asking them to do anything they haven't already committed to doing. On timing, the longer people are in isolation, the harder it is to maintain it. Vulnerable people might need to remain isolated for 3 to 4 months. Many of them will inevitably end up compromising their isolation during that time, so it's vital that the isolation period does not start earlier than it needs to. It's trading increased exposure risk now when the virus has a very low prevalence, for better isolation later when the virus is everywhere.
  - tomatocracy 7y ago
    Yes - and moreover, the very old and frail living on their own are vulnerable to many things other than Covid. Having a neighbour check in on them every day, for example, might mean that if they have a fall then they are found before they die from injuries or lack of food or water. There is very real risk in isolating these people for months that this type of protection is lost and costs more lives than it saves so there is a complex tradeoff involved.
    - CaptArmchair 7y ago
      It's even more complex then that. Even if you do end up isolating the elderly, there will still be an increased influx of patients who will take up hospital beds. At that point, the problem isn't just an elder person taking a fall, it literally affects anyone who contracts another illness, gets a stroke, a heart attack, organ failure, a traffic accident,...
thom 7y ago
This flatten the curve stuff kinda presupposes that we have more than zero capacity as things stand _today_.
starfallg 7y ago
There are almost no drawback to the health system by introducing strict measures sooner rather than later. Studies supporting stuff like lockdown or containment fatigue is also sorely lacking. Basing our epidemic response on this is completely bonkers. The overwhelming consideration is the blow to the economy. The government should at least have the balls to admit it and not hide behind 'science'. (The only issue with closing schools which might affect the healthcare system is childcare for healthcare workers. This is already in place as a mitigation in other countries.)
- Angostura 7y ago
  > There are almost no drawback to the health system by introducing strict measures sooner rather than later Yes there are, as set out in the chief medical officer and chief scientific offer's press conference. > The overwhelming consideration is the blow to the economy. The government should at least have the balls to admit it and not hide behind 'science'. So, to be clear do you think the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific advisor were simply lying about the science?
  - pnako 7y ago
    I'm so glad the tech bros, here and on twitter, are on top of this epidemic. I don't trust the professors of medicine and scientists advising our governments either if I can't see some Python code and a condescending tweet about how no one understands exponential growth.
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      The current response to the outbreak in the UK/US is supposedly being driven by "behavioral modeling", which basically means glorified techbro-Python code. So your argument is backwards, if anything. The WHO didn't used to think of "lockdowns" as a recommended approach either, but they're now changing their mind, as this has worked in China and elsewhere.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
m-i-l 7y ago
"The primary aim is to flatten the curve with specially timed interventions and any herd immunity is a by product of that" That is my understanding too. I've read through a lot of the official publications[0] and nowhere found reference to "herd immunity". The best reference to "herd immunity" I've been able to find is the quote from the UK's Chief Scientific Advisor Patrick Vallance that "our aim is to try to reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely; also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission, at the same time we protect those who are most vulnerable to it."[1] but this still seems clear that the main aim is to "broaden the peak" and get the benefits from buying more time that this brings, possibly including the "herd immunity" point (but not limited to it - there will be other benefits, e.g. more time to find a vaccine). What isn't clear to me is what the exit plan is for the countries that have a full lockdown in place at the moment. Are they going to keep lockdown in place indefinitely and hope a vaccine is found? Or are they going to lift the lockdown and then repeat when the virus begins spreading again? [0] e.g. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-action-plan https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-actio... [1] https://www.ft.com/content/38a81588-6508-11ea-b3f3-fe4680ea68b5 https://www.ft.com/content/38a81588-6508-11ea-b3f3-fe4680ea6...
learnstats2 7y ago
> Herd immunity will be a by product It won't, though: at least, not in the way that 'herd immunity' is commonly understood. We technically had herd immunity from measles, but it wasn't effective at stopping people from dying until there was a mass vaccination program.
- cameronh90 7y ago
  The R0 of measels is 12-18, and CFR of 25%. This is an entirely different set of parameters. If covid-19 looked like this, the response would be completely different. Herd immunity isn't a binary thing. Outbreaks reduce as herd immunity increases. Nobody is saying covid-19 will go away thanks to these measures. Indeed, the government have been saying it'll probably become a mild seasonal illness much the same way the Spanish flu is now. Remember our species has only eradicated one single infectious human disease in our history, Smallpox, and it took hundreds of years. Coronaviruses are notoriously hard to vaccinate. Locking down society indefinitely (which itself had a human cost) based on the hope we'll eradicating covid with vaccines seems like wishful thinking. Scientists are saying a vaccine is at least a year away and this disease is beginning to spread through India and Africa. What is the alternative plan here?
  - dTal 7y ago
    >Herd immunity isn't a binary thing. Moreso than you'd think. The effect of some percentage of the population being immune is to reduce the effective R0 (transmission ratio). At an R0 of less than 1, the disease cannot sustain community transmission and dies out. Above 1, you get exponential growth. This is a stark threshold. Usually you need a population that's 60-80% immune to achieve this threshold.
    - cameronh90 7y ago
      Technically, yes, there is an R0 above which a virus is self sustaining. But if something has R0 of 1.25 the herd immunity threshold is about 20%, whereas if it's 18, the HIT is nearly 95%. Additionally, R0 isn't an absolute property of the pathogen, so even assuming there is this absolute HIT, if R0 is around 1, some people will be above 1 and some below 1. As herd immunity increases, the R0 decreases. A disease with a low R0 spreads more slowly (hence the logistic curve) and is therefore easier to track and trace manually, and has a lower peak and total infection count. I don't think this is binary at all, or even _that_ stark of a threshold. Transmission doesn't continue at the same exponential rate until it hits around 60% and then suddenly disappear. It doesn't even come close to approximating that behaviour.
jon889 7y ago
But flattening the curve involves things like cancelling events and closing bars/pubs/clubs/restaurants and telling businesses to have employees work from home if possible. And the government is doing none of that.
- postingawayonhn 7y ago
  While they haven't officially done most of these things yet there's plenty of commentary from officials saying these are the next steps.
  - nicoburns 7y ago
    Yes, but now is the time to be doing it! The earlier the measures are started, the more eeffective they are.
bjornsing 7y ago
I’d say that there are only two strategies that make sense: 1) early containment or 2) herd immunity. The west seems to have gone with herd immunity. Flattening the curve is just a no-brainer.

DanBC 7y ago

> This idea that the primary aim of the UK Government is herd immunity is plain wrong. You can understand people's confusion when the government have said, repeatedly, that they aim to create herd immunity. https://www.ft.com/content/38a81588-6508-11ea-b3f3-fe4680ea68b5 https://www.ft.com/content/38a81588-6508-11ea-b3f3-fe4680ea6... > Britain’s chief scientific adviser stoked controversy on Friday when he said that about 40m people in the UK could need to catch the coronavirus to build up “herd immunity” and prevent the disease coming back in the future. > Defending Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision not to follow other European countries by closing schools and banning mass gatherings, Patrick Vallance said it was the government’s aim to “reduce the peak of the epidemic, pull it down and broaden it” while protecting the elderly and vulnerable. > But Sir Patrick told Sky News that experts estimated that about 60 per cent of the UK’s 66m population would have to contract coronavirus in order for society to build up immunity. > “Communities will become immune to it and that’s going to be an important part of controlling this longer term,” he said. “About 60 per cent is the sort of figure you need to get herd immunity.”

madaxe_again 7y ago
You just need to be down with doublespeak. They say one thing, but you have to understand that they meant something entirely different. To think otherwise would be to think that our leaders are either dishonest or incompetent - and because they are our leaders they cannot be either dishonest nor incompetent. Therefore, you must adjust your comprehension. Honestly, if their intent is as GP says, I’ve not seen it communicated - I’d love a source other than goodthink.
rebuilder 7y ago
None of those quotes say they aim to create herd immunity. They just say you won't get herd immunity until about 60% are infected. There's a difference.
- DanBC 7y ago
  The government has changed from "containment phase" and is now in their "delay phase", and that means they think millions of people will become infected. Patrick Vallence: > ‘So our aim is to tray and reduce their peak – broaden the peak – not to suppress it completely. Also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some degree of herd immunity as well. https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/13/millions-brits-get-coronavirus-can-develop-herd-immunity-12393966/?ito=cbshare https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/13/millions-brits-get-coronaviru... Herd immunity is a direct aim of the current phase of the government plan -- it has to be, because they think that covid-19 will become a seasonal illness. https://www.ft.com/content/0475f450-654f-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68 https://www.ft.com/content/0475f450-654f-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6... > The prime minister and his scientific advisers hope to manage the epidemic by “flattening the curve” of infection and delaying the peak until the summer, when the National Health Service will face less seasonal pressure. > Then — or so the theory goes — enough people will have acquired resistance to Covid-19 to avoid a second wave of disease next autumn or winter. Downing Street believes that other countries that have taken draconian action now will be vulnerable later in the year. > Mr Johnson’s strategy depends on building up the so-called herd immunity. If a high enough proportion has become resistant through Covid-19 infection, the virus will not have enough new people to catch and the epidemic will not be able to sustain itself. It will burn out.
- Bendingo 7y ago
  > They just say you won't get herd immunity until about 60% are infected But even this is wrong, or at least, unsure. Herd immunity relies on low (or zero) re-infection. It works for diseases like measles, where the risk of re-infection (after either infection or immunisation) is effectively zero. We don't yet know if re-infection with covids-19 is possible or not.
kingosticks 7y ago
Health Secretary Matt Hancock reiterated this morning in his BBC interview that this is not the government's main aim. It is is a fun buzzword that officials have mentioned and some people have since obsessed about. Which is unfortunate as it really distracts from the real issues so it would be great if we could move on.
- chishaku 7y ago
  > some people have since obsessed about The burden is on the government to better unify the messaging in a time of extreme uncertainty.
  - kingosticks 7y ago
    Sure and I didn't say those obsessives were to blame. In fact, I'm going to say blaming anyone is a waste of our efforts right now. Edit, maybe by 'burden' you didn't mean 'blame', exactly. It is part of the government's job to communicate properly and it seems they didn't get it right. But we can accept that and now be open to the explanations of what they really meant. So we can get on with what matters.
thinkingemote 7y ago
I understand that there is confusion and seek to address it. The quotes provided come from the press which are spinning this in an inaccurate way and leading to letters such as this.

scarmig 7y ago

This is a bit too cute by half, especially considering that leading UK politicians have themselves cited "herd immunity" as the reason to do what they're doing. Your rephrasing sounds reasonable, but I'm not sure what it concretely means, particularly how it differs from every other country's approach. It's vague enough that you could pretty much say the same thing about everything from China's to Singapore's to the United States' approach.

dmix 7y ago
> Matt Hancock insists 'herd immunity' not part of government's plan for tackling coronavirus > Mr Hancock added: "Herd immunity is not a part of it. That is a scientific concept, not a goal or a strategy. Our goal is to protect life from this virus, our strategy is to protect the most vulnerable and protect the NHS through contain, delay, research and mitigate." https://politicshome.com/news/uk/health-and-care/illnesstreatments/news/110595/matt-hancock-insists-herd-immunity-not-part https://politicshome.com/news/uk/health-and-care/illnesstrea... The amount of politicizing people are engaging is a bit sad. Especially when you take a wider view at how every country with the best doctors and scientists have dealt with it. Significant criticism has happened across party and ideological lines (Which you’d hope the healthcare bodies would be largely independent of and instead follows the best scientific advice). Even here in Canada where our prime minister’s wife got COVID-19 and are both in isolation, yet they’ve been even less aggressive than the policies the UK has already announced. It’s obvious few countries and even WHO were well prepared for something of this scale and a ton of criticism today has the benefit of retrospect. Meanwhile aggressive policies, like the US closing borders and China locking up entire apartment buildings when one resident gets sick, also got immediate heavy push back, and globally has been far more the exception than the rule. Even with better preparedness, which no doubt will be adopted after this event, there is still a difficult balance between scaling up restrictions on daily life without being accused of being “draconian” (which is how I remember the same UK press characterized Italy’s early moves). Especially politically, let alone scientifically. We should be spending more effort on finding the right balance, which is still not obvious nor scientifically well established for countries with lower rates, even today. Those are the hard questions, political opportunism is easy and low effort.

VieEnCode 7y ago

The strategy of all countries is to flatten the curve to enable their respective health services to cope. My concern is that the U.K. is now proposing isolation for the over 70s “within weeks”: this demographic has been shown to be at serious risk as of now, when looking at the experiences of China, Italy and Spain. Further, in the UK, testing is only now being carried out on cases serious enough to hospitalize, so I do not understand how the UK government can have confidence in its data as to the spread of the virus.

simonh 7y ago
As you say, the UK government's strategy is to isolate those most vulnerable first, exactly as is the main point of this letter. It's just a mater of timing. The letter isn't asking them to do anything they haven't already committed to doing. On timing, the longer people are in isolation, the harder it is to maintain it. Vulnerable people might need to remain isolated for 3 to 4 months. Many of them will inevitably end up compromising their isolation during that time, so it's vital that the isolation period does not start earlier than it needs to. It's trading increased exposure risk now when the virus has a very low prevalence, for better isolation later when the virus is everywhere.
- tomatocracy 7y ago
  Yes - and moreover, the very old and frail living on their own are vulnerable to many things other than Covid. Having a neighbour check in on them every day, for example, might mean that if they have a fall then they are found before they die from injuries or lack of food or water. There is very real risk in isolating these people for months that this type of protection is lost and costs more lives than it saves so there is a complex tradeoff involved.
  - CaptArmchair 7y ago
    It's even more complex then that. Even if you do end up isolating the elderly, there will still be an increased influx of patients who will take up hospital beds. At that point, the problem isn't just an elder person taking a fall, it literally affects anyone who contracts another illness, gets a stroke, a heart attack, organ failure, a traffic accident,...

thom 7y ago

This flatten the curve stuff kinda presupposes that we have more than zero capacity as things stand _today_.

starfallg 7y ago

There are almost no drawback to the health system by introducing strict measures sooner rather than later. Studies supporting stuff like lockdown or containment fatigue is also sorely lacking. Basing our epidemic response on this is completely bonkers. The overwhelming consideration is the blow to the economy. The government should at least have the balls to admit it and not hide behind 'science'. (The only issue with closing schools which might affect the healthcare system is childcare for healthcare workers. This is already in place as a mitigation in other countries.)

Angostura 7y ago
> There are almost no drawback to the health system by introducing strict measures sooner rather than later Yes there are, as set out in the chief medical officer and chief scientific offer's press conference. > The overwhelming consideration is the blow to the economy. The government should at least have the balls to admit it and not hide behind 'science'. So, to be clear do you think the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific advisor were simply lying about the science?
- pnako 7y ago
  I'm so glad the tech bros, here and on twitter, are on top of this epidemic. I don't trust the professors of medicine and scientists advising our governments either if I can't see some Python code and a condescending tweet about how no one understands exponential growth.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    The current response to the outbreak in the UK/US is supposedly being driven by "behavioral modeling", which basically means glorified techbro-Python code. So your argument is backwards, if anything. The WHO didn't used to think of "lockdowns" as a recommended approach either, but they're now changing their mind, as this has worked in China and elsewhere.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

m-i-l 7y ago

"The primary aim is to flatten the curve with specially timed interventions and any herd immunity is a by product of that" That is my understanding too. I've read through a lot of the official publications[0] and nowhere found reference to "herd immunity". The best reference to "herd immunity" I've been able to find is the quote from the UK's Chief Scientific Advisor Patrick Vallance that "our aim is to try to reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely; also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission, at the same time we protect those who are most vulnerable to it."[1] but this still seems clear that the main aim is to "broaden the peak" and get the benefits from buying more time that this brings, possibly including the "herd immunity" point (but not limited to it - there will be other benefits, e.g. more time to find a vaccine). What isn't clear to me is what the exit plan is for the countries that have a full lockdown in place at the moment. Are they going to keep lockdown in place indefinitely and hope a vaccine is found? Or are they going to lift the lockdown and then repeat when the virus begins spreading again? [0] e.g. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-action-plan https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-actio... [1] https://www.ft.com/content/38a81588-6508-11ea-b3f3-fe4680ea68b5 https://www.ft.com/content/38a81588-6508-11ea-b3f3-fe4680ea6...

learnstats2 7y ago

> Herd immunity will be a by product It won't, though: at least, not in the way that 'herd immunity' is commonly understood. We technically had herd immunity from measles, but it wasn't effective at stopping people from dying until there was a mass vaccination program.

cameronh90 7y ago
The R0 of measels is 12-18, and CFR of 25%. This is an entirely different set of parameters. If covid-19 looked like this, the response would be completely different. Herd immunity isn't a binary thing. Outbreaks reduce as herd immunity increases. Nobody is saying covid-19 will go away thanks to these measures. Indeed, the government have been saying it'll probably become a mild seasonal illness much the same way the Spanish flu is now. Remember our species has only eradicated one single infectious human disease in our history, Smallpox, and it took hundreds of years. Coronaviruses are notoriously hard to vaccinate. Locking down society indefinitely (which itself had a human cost) based on the hope we'll eradicating covid with vaccines seems like wishful thinking. Scientists are saying a vaccine is at least a year away and this disease is beginning to spread through India and Africa. What is the alternative plan here?
- dTal 7y ago
  >Herd immunity isn't a binary thing. Moreso than you'd think. The effect of some percentage of the population being immune is to reduce the effective R0 (transmission ratio). At an R0 of less than 1, the disease cannot sustain community transmission and dies out. Above 1, you get exponential growth. This is a stark threshold. Usually you need a population that's 60-80% immune to achieve this threshold.
  - cameronh90 7y ago
    Technically, yes, there is an R0 above which a virus is self sustaining. But if something has R0 of 1.25 the herd immunity threshold is about 20%, whereas if it's 18, the HIT is nearly 95%. Additionally, R0 isn't an absolute property of the pathogen, so even assuming there is this absolute HIT, if R0 is around 1, some people will be above 1 and some below 1. As herd immunity increases, the R0 decreases. A disease with a low R0 spreads more slowly (hence the logistic curve) and is therefore easier to track and trace manually, and has a lower peak and total infection count. I don't think this is binary at all, or even _that_ stark of a threshold. Transmission doesn't continue at the same exponential rate until it hits around 60% and then suddenly disappear. It doesn't even come close to approximating that behaviour.

jon889 7y ago

But flattening the curve involves things like cancelling events and closing bars/pubs/clubs/restaurants and telling businesses to have employees work from home if possible. And the government is doing none of that.

postingawayonhn 7y ago
While they haven't officially done most of these things yet there's plenty of commentary from officials saying these are the next steps.
- nicoburns 7y ago
  Yes, but now is the time to be doing it! The earlier the measures are started, the more eeffective they are.

bjornsing 7y ago

I’d say that there are only two strategies that make sense: 1) early containment or 2) herd immunity. The west seems to have gone with herd immunity. Flattening the curve is just a no-brainer.