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This analysis seems largely correct but for one thing, the author assumes that people who contract the virus will develop immunity that lasts long enough to ben
by sn9 7y ago
This analysis seems largely correct but for one thing, the author assumes that people who contract the virus will develop immunity that lasts long enough to bend the exponential growth curve as herd immunity develops.
(The curve will slow for other reasons as a sufficient number of people get infected such that there just aren't enough people who haven't been infected to be newly infected.)
I didn't see a source for that --- it seemed like an assumption --- and everything I've read suggests that this is a major unknown at the moment.
It's possible the author has a source that was not included. Either way, the author should either include the source or more explicitly take describe the epistemic status of that hypothesis and work through the consequences of it not being true.
- chme 7y ago> This analysis seems largely correct but for one thing, the author assumes that people who contract the virus will develop immunity that lasts long enough to bend the exponential growth curve as herd immunity develops. I am not a medical professional, but I would have assumed that the body develops a immunity because otherwise why would they search for a vaccine?
- sn9 7y agoI guess I was being overly broad. I'm not an immunologist or anything. I was thinking more of the kind of immunity one gets for something like chicken pox, where one childhood infection basically protects you for life, vs something like the seasonal flu which you can get again and again. Now I don't know if the reason you keep getting the flu is because it mutates more rapidly than the chicken pox virus and you still remain immune to the particular strain you got infected with or if that initial immunity weakens over time. Maybe someone better informed can chime in.