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You seem incapable of understanding that people in demographic groups cluster. The problem is most of my dads friends and associates are over 60. You can only g

You seem incapable of understanding that people in demographic groups cluster. The problem is most of my dads friends and associates are over 60. You can only get herd immunity by infecting 60-70 percent of THEM. A high infection rate in the under 45 set does NOTHING to protect them.

arcticbull 7y ago
That's... not how herd immunity works. If it was, all your dad's friends would have Polio right now :P It's literally how vaccines work. The proposal (again, without opining on its validity) is the same as vaccination, but comes with much greater risk.
- RealityVoid 7y ago
  I think he does have a point. Thorough the social measures you take and depending what age groups you expose the most, you can (should) be able to skew the numbers in having more infections in a age group than he other. If you skew the numbers towards the younger population, the end result is _better_ than the normal, presumably uniform, distribution. EDIT: I misunderstood GP's point. I'll still leave my reply as-is since i still think the general idea I was trying to convey is sound.
tripletao 7y ago
The comment above is overstated, but more or less correct. All the naive herd immunity calculations assume a well-mixed population. A large fraction of recovered and immune young people will protect the elderly from contacts with their children, with store clerks, etc., but not from contacts with other elderly. If we successfully protect the elderly, then herd immunity among young people will decrease the probability that the virus gets introduced into a nursing home; but it does nothing to slow the virus's spread once it does. That heterogeneity also goes the good way though, since people in jobs most prone to spreading the virus (doctors, nurses, store clerks, etc.) tend to get infected first and therefore become immune first. There are models suggesting we might reach overall herd immunity with only ~30% infected (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23149725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23149725), though this is obviously speculative.

arcticbull 7y ago

That's... not how herd immunity works. If it was, all your dad's friends would have Polio right now :P It's literally how vaccines work. The proposal (again, without opining on its validity) is the same as vaccination, but comes with much greater risk.

RealityVoid 7y ago
I think he does have a point. Thorough the social measures you take and depending what age groups you expose the most, you can (should) be able to skew the numbers in having more infections in a age group than he other. If you skew the numbers towards the younger population, the end result is _better_ than the normal, presumably uniform, distribution. EDIT: I misunderstood GP's point. I'll still leave my reply as-is since i still think the general idea I was trying to convey is sound.

tripletao 7y ago

The comment above is overstated, but more or less correct. All the naive herd immunity calculations assume a well-mixed population. A large fraction of recovered and immune young people will protect the elderly from contacts with their children, with store clerks, etc., but not from contacts with other elderly. If we successfully protect the elderly, then herd immunity among young people will decrease the probability that the virus gets introduced into a nursing home; but it does nothing to slow the virus's spread once it does. That heterogeneity also goes the good way though, since people in jobs most prone to spreading the virus (doctors, nurses, store clerks, etc.) tend to get infected first and therefore become immune first. There are models suggesting we might reach overall herd immunity with only ~30% infected (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23149725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23149725), though this is obviously speculative.