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I think that number might be coming from the idea that at that level of infection you'd get herd immunity - i.e. this thing is going to keep going around until
by kennywinker 7y ago
I think that number might be coming from the idea that at that level of infection you'd get herd immunity - i.e. this thing is going to keep going around until we hit herd immunity.
- Leary 7y agoReaching herd immunity level is a possibility but not inevitable
- ska 7y agoAgree it's not inevitable, but seems plausibly to be the highest probability path at this point.
- kennywinker 7y agoWith the current tools we have, it seems inevitable to me. Look at china or hong kong... lockdown led to getting local infections under control, which leads to an easing of restrictions, which lead to new infections from outside of the region. So by that logic, life doesn't get to go back to "normal" until either herd immunity is reached, or new tools come online.
- threatofrain 7y agoThat assumes that this virus doesn't mutate quickly, mitigating the effectiveness of herd immunity and vaccination.
- kennywinker 7y agoTotally true. Obviously nobody knows right now if that will happen or not, but that question was posed on a recent episode of This Week in Virology (great podcast, btw) and they seemed to be saying that the mutated seasonal variant is a fairly unique characteristic of the flu virus, and it would not be _likely_ to happen with COVID-19.
- ska 7y agoTrue, but that seem to be a reasonable assumption according to at least some virologists looking at it. There are so many unknowns right now that any modeling is going to have issues, best you can do is state your assumptions clearly, and explore the ones that seem most likely in some depth. Otherwise you just end up with an ensemble of models that could result if nearly anything.